AI is Breaking the GUI
How natural language is eating the interface.
For as long as I can remember, the computer interfaces I’ve interacted with have been the same — apps, windows, documents, and menus. It worked for a while. But I think it’s breaking now. And AI is why. We're living in this weird transition right now where the GUI, as it existed before, feels like it's being deconstructed — and a new, fluid, intelligent, and more human interface is coming.
Looking back at the past couple of years since ChatGPT seemingly appeared out of nowhere into our lives, I came to realize that the chat interfaces we were given to interact with these models were never the endgame. They’re placeholders. These natural language interfaces are extremely powerful, but they still feel like a regression to typing commands. It reminds me of the “Intro to Computing” class I had to take during undergrad where they taught us how to use Bash commands in Terminal. I hated that class. Everything right now feels very pieced together and held up with duct tape.
We're essentially in interface limbo. Old frameworks like apps, files, and windows no longer feel right, but nothing new has arrived to take their place. It's like giving a kid a box of crayons, but only letting them color inside someone else’s predetermined lines. We are ready to be given a blank page.
Some companies are aware of this shift. After WWDC, Apple responded to criticism about “Apple Intelligence” by emphasizing they never set out to build a chatbot. People expect a chatbot because that’s all they’ve seen so far, but Apple is aiming for something subtler — where you use AI without even realizing it.
Natural language ultimately changes how we access compute. In a world where SEO dictated how everyone interacted with their search bars, AI now meets us where we are, as normal people that ask questions in normal ways. We no longer have to translate our needs into this oddly worded string of unnatural words to get what we want.
The entire stack is being rethought. From operating systems to websites, traditional UI elements feel too rigid for the fluidity that AI offers. The next interfaces might not even look like interfaces — they’ll be responsive, contextual, and personal.
And we’re already seeing glimpses. Founders are building new layers of interaction. Take Dia from The Browser Company of New York. I’ve been a fan of theirs since using Arc Browser, released in 2023. Arc blurred the line between browser and application, offering a glimpse of what the future of browsing could look like. So I was naturally curious when they launched something new, aptly named Dia. But Dia isn’t just another browser. It made me consciously rethink how I interact with my computer.
On paper, Dia is an AI browser. To many that might sound like just “Chrome with ChatGPT bolted on the side,” but it’s more than that. Sure, there’s still a chat interface — we’re not past that quite yet — but Dia feels like it was built from scratch, taking a first principles approach towards integrating AI into the experience. It recognizes that the browser is one of the most-used interfaces on any device. In fact, during an appearance on MKBHD’s Waveform Podcast, CEO of The Browser Company revealed, “an Apple VP told me the most popular text box on all of Mac OS is Chrome’s URL bar”. Needless to say, we use browsers so much without even realizing it. We use it to communicate, to consume, to create, and more. And in the background, it holds a lot of context about us.
Rather than let that context sit idle in the form of endless tabs or search history, Dia asks: what if we made that useful? So it can help you retrieve a document your coworker sent a few days ago — even if you forgot the name. Or compare different vacation rental options across multiple tabs. Cool stuff, but tasks like the latter are technically doable today with enough copy-pasting into Perplexity or ChatGPT.
What really sets Dia apart is a feature named Skills. Skills are like prompt recipes — streamlined actions you can trigger with a single word. Remember when “prompt engineering” was all everyone talked about a few years ago? This feels like its evolution. Say you’re on a restaurant website. You can type “reviews” in Dia’s chat — a Skill you’ve set up to trigger a prompt like “Give me reviews of this restaurant from sites like Yelp and Eater, and tell me the best things on the menu” — and it’ll instantly surface top dishes and reviews from your trusted sources. What used to take multiple tabs and searches now takes just one word and the context of what you are currently looking at.
It’s still within a chat window — but it feels like a peephole into what comes next. A world where instead of asking “how do I find this?” — your tools just know, and help.
The GUI as we know it won’t vanish overnight, but its dominance is clearly fading. AI is enabling a new kind of experience — one built on understanding, not control. This isn’t just interface evolution. It’s a reconstruction of how we compute. A future that’s ambient, intelligent, and — finally — human.