Product discovery has always been the foundation of great products. It’s how we learn what customers truly need and find opportunities in the market. Now, generative AI is changing how we do this work.
After months of using AI tools in my own product process, I have learned one big lesson: AI supercharges our work, but it also makes our human judgment more important than ever.
AI Gives Every Product Manager Superpowers
In the past, deep market research required large teams and a lot of time. Today, genAI gives every PM access to powerful research capabilities. We can now analyze thousands of customer reviews, understand competitor strategies, and brainstorm product ideas in minutes, not weeks.
This is a major shift. But having a powerful tool does not guarantee a better product. I’ve seen some product managers fall into a trap I call "rapid iteration without deep consideration." They use AI to move quickly but don't take the time to think deeply about the results.
The most important skill for a PM today is becoming an expert AI interrogator. This means you must:
Ask the right questions.
Understand AI's limits.
Think critically about every answer it gives.
Always focus on the "why" behind the data.
How AI Changes Your Discovery Work
Let's look at how AI can change each stage of your product discovery journey:
Deeper Market Understanding: You can feed AI market reports, news articles, and competitor websites. It can give you a summary of the entire market in hours. This frees you up to think about strategy instead of just collecting information.
Finding Hidden Customer Needs: AI is very good at finding patterns that humans might miss. For example, it can analyze thousands of support tickets or app store reviews. It might find that a small number of users are complaining about a specific problem. When you solve that problem, it could lead to a feature that many more customers love.
Better Brainstorming: AI can be a great partner for brainstorming. You can give the AI a problem statement, like "How might we make our onboarding process simpler?" It can generate dozens of ideas to get you started. Your job is to pick the best ones and develop them further.
Faster Concept Testing: With AI, you can create simple mockups and descriptions for a new feature in minutes. This allows you to test your ideas with real users much faster, before you write a single line of code.
Your Real Job Starts Where the AI Stops
AI gives us a lot of information and ideas. But information alone is not enough. The most difficult—and most valuable—work still requires your human intelligence.
This is where your product sense becomes critical:
Separating Signal from Noise: AI can give you more data than you can handle. This can lead to "analysis paralysis," where you feel stuck and cannot make a decision. A great PM knows when to stop gathering data and start making choices.
Finding the Real "Why": AI can tell you what users are saying, but it can't tell you why. It cannot sit down and have a conversation with a customer. It can't hear the emotion in their voice or see the frustration on their face. That is still your job. True empathy comes from human connection.
Applying Ethical Guardrails: AI models can have biases from the data they were trained on. If you are not careful, you could build a product that excludes or harms certain groups of people. A responsible PM must question the AI's output and check it for bias.
Turning Insights into Strategy: This is the final and most important step. An AI can give you a list of customer problems or feature ideas. It cannot tell you what to build first or how it connects to your company's goals. Your job is to take all the insights and build a clear, focused product strategy.
What This Means for Your Career
Product managers are not being replaced by AI. We are being upgraded, but we must adapt. The PMs who succeed will be the ones who:
Master the art of asking AI the right questions.
Do not blindly trust AI-generated answers.
Focus on strategic thinking, not just data collection.
Build and trust their own product sense to guide the AI.
The Gaps We Still Need to Fill
Your Next Step
My advice is to start small.
Pick one part of your discovery process this week. Use an AI tool to help you with it. Maybe you can use it to analyze customer feedback or to brainstorm ideas for a feature. See what works and what doesn't.
Remember, generative AI is a powerful tool, but it's just a tool. Your product sense, your empathy for users, and your strategic mind are what turn raw data into a product people will love.
The future is not AI replacing product managers. It is about product managers who use AI to build better products, faster.
Filip Szymanski has over 20 years of experience as a product leader and is passionate about leveraging AI to power a new generation of product managers. Follow my journey at productpath.ai or add me on LinkedIn.
Want to learn more about the many ways AI can supercharge product management and development? Subscribe to Filip’s newsletter for AI-powered PMs at GenAI Works.
🚀 Boost your business with us—advertise where 10M+ AI leaders engage
🌟 Sign up for the first AI Hub in the world.
