Obviously, since we're a company that serves the Jotform industry by developing solutions for its users, we should admit that we are biased and have a vested interest in not losing market share to agentic development, right?. Well, losing market share to people using AI is actually not something we're concerned about.

Why? Because generative AI within Jotform does NOT provide the same services we do.

We've been working with Jotform since long before AI made it onto the scene. We understood what it took to design and build powerful and capable forms, workflows, and approval processes in a time when putting in the effort and diligence, including testing and validating all of these things, was just accepted as necessary to get out a quality product.

Generative AI tools haven't changed what's required to do that. They simply make the easiest part of the process so easy that for the most basic purposes, someone who believes they need nothing more than a simple "Contact Us" form can type in a prompt, get something that resembles a decent product, change a style button to whatever color they like best, and then walk away, believing they're done. We're sure every entrepreneur and marketing reading this would inwardly cringe (we did while writing it).

To create an actually good, quality user experience that people will be happy to come back to again and again requires so much more investment than a simple prompt.

Nothing has made us feel quite as ill at ease while working in Jotform as testing the new AI prompt tools and watching the system generate extra work for us to go back and fix. No disrespect to the developers at Jotform - they understand what their system can do, and how to get LLMs to automate tasks within that framework.

But, that doesn't mean the LLM will impart an understanding of the platform to you, or that it will do what you expect. The same hallucinogenic thinking that powers the LLMs making 5-armed cat pictures is also the one making you a form that processes your customer's payment info and sending you what you think is their order info. Comforting, isn't it?

If you partner with a Jotform integrator worth their salt, not only will they provide a better result than generative AI, but it will also be cleaner, more polished, and at least between you and the integrator, someone will have an understanding of what just got made and how it works. AI doesn't replace that, it removes it.

Since AI doesn't need to understand what it generates — because to it the form is nothing more than a mathematical abstraction of trained behavior — it doesn't pass on any understanding of what it makes to you.

If you're one of those people who have the time and love to learn the ins and outs of software and make things yourself, then we strongly encourage you to develop your own solutions using Jotform. It is an incredibly powerful ecosystem, with nearly endless possibilities for integration and customization.

If on the other hand, you're someone who has a vision for what they want to do, but lacks the time or ability to realize it, then AI presents a very tempting but dangerous incentive. It gives the illusion of taking the learning curve out of the equation, and makes it seem as though you can quickly make your project a reality and save the cost of hiring someone to do the work for you.

The reason that this is only an illusion stems from the upkeep side of using Jotform, much like any other platform. Once you've developed something, you'll need to care for it, update it, and ensure it stays current to the changing needs of your process. If you took the time to learn and understand everything about what you developed, then this is just another day in the office. If you let AI generate everything and just hope it works, now you not only don't understand what it made for you, but even worse, you have no idea how to change it, or whether or not changing it will break something in your process.

And of course, now you have target users counting on something they expect you or your business or organization to understand and maintain, but there's no one "behind the curtain" who truly does. The argument is made that by using AI, the liability of partnering with an integrator is removed. We see it the other way around (and we would be bold enough to assume other integrators agree with us).

When you partner with an integrator, they understand what you want built, execute on it, and then support you in maintaining it. If they're a quality integrator, they'll even train you and explain the platform so you are able to maintain it yourself. Effectively, it boils down to this:

"Does the value of me learning to master Jotform, less the time and money spent doing so, exceed the cost of outsourcing the project and the peace of mind gained from putting a seasoned Jotform veteran to the task, AND — is the time spent doing it best put to this task instead of something else?"

Whether mankind likes it or not, the era of AI-augmented humanity is here to stay. This technology is as pivotal as electricity was over 100 years ago, and we all need to learn to adapt to this new landscape. Again, Jotform is no different. The platform will continue to evolve and expand its inclusion of generative AI features, as is every other platform.

But that doesn't mean that every one of these generative tools is as useful as the discovery of penicillin, or that it will make your life easier. In order to make the most of these tools, you need to understand what they will do, how they do it, and what the limitations of those tools are. As an example, picture the following scenario:

Two people ask AI for a homemade pizza recipe. They have the same ingredients, same cooking equipment, and are given the same response from an identical prompt. Crucially, however, only one of the two people has cooking experience. As the individuals step through the recipe, terms that are understandable to the person with experience are cryptic to the other and, inevitably, that person fails somewhere along the process because they simply don't grasp what they're being told to do, since they've never done it before.

It's not the AI's fault, since the person with experience does end up making a delicious pizza. The problem was that without understanding the principles of cooking and pizza, the person who had no prior experience simply didn't know what to do. This is what happens with generative AI tools. You cannot outsource the understanding portion of building.

When you understand your goal and what you need to do to make it, then using Jotform's AI builder tools to help you create is fine, so long as you know that you'll have to make some adjustments and, crucially, that you understand how to troubleshoot and fix what doesn't work.