Product Managers, or Product Owners, play a pivotal role in shaping and executing a company's strategic objectives. They serve as the crucial link between the organization’s high-level vision and the specific details that developers and stakeholders need to bring that vision to life. An effective Product Manager not only drives business outcomes but also deeply understands the product’s market fit, user needs, compliance constraints, and, most importantly, the expectations of all key stakeholders. This balance of strategic insight and detailed execution makes them indispensable to a product’s success.

Like many roles, the role of the Product Manager has evolved with the advent of AI. But can AI truly replace them? While speculation exists around AI taking over Product Management, I would argue that if AI manages to take on this role, it would signify a new level of maturity—one where it can demonstrate creativity, read between the lines to grasp subtle user needs, and perfectly understand stakeholder expectations.

Only when it can consistently and accurately predict what customers truly want—something that human Product Managers have been striving to do for decades. In reality, AI still struggles with real-world complexities in this space.

If a Product Manager doesn’t know how to leverage AI, they risk being replaced by it. In today’s AI-driven world, knowing how to use these tools effectively is one of the most important skills a PM can develop. The real task of a PM is to understand where and how to use AI, without being swept away by the AI hype. Gaining a deep understanding of how AI systems, like neural networks, work will help PMs tweak and optimize features for their users.

At the same time, it’s crucial to remember the fundamental principles of product management: understanding your customers, analyzing the competitive landscape, and continuously delivering value to the business. AI is like a powerful and magical tool for Product Managers. When used wisely, it helps create incredible product features; when used poorly, it leads to user frustration and stakeholder dissatisfaction.

Key Considerations for PMs in the AI Era

With the constant demand to keep up with evolving trends and growing customer expectations, Product Managers will be increasingly needed to integrate AI into products. As the role becomes more dynamic, understanding AI will be essential.

One critical factor to keep in mind is scalability. Different branches of AI, such as computer vision or natural language processing, are often customer-specific. AI’s success depends heavily on the quality of the data it’s trained on—not just large quantities, but good, clean, and relevant data. As a Product Manager, understanding the impact of this on scalability is key. Design your systems to be as modular and adaptable as possible to accommodate AI’s evolving capabilities.

As businesses rush to stay competitive in the AI space, there’s a temptation to develop "cool" AI features just to attract attention—especially in fast-growing startups. As a Product Manager, it’s your job to distinguish between features that truly add value and those that are merely gimmicks. This awareness will help you strategically plan your feature releases and align them with your product roadmap.

How AI Can Assist You?

AI can assist Product Managers by taking over repetitive tasks, freeing them to focus on delivering value to users and the business. For instance, large language models (LLMs) excel at generating reports, product requirement documents (PRDs), user guides, and even creating JIRA tickets. View AI as a companion—let it handle administrative work like note-taking, ticket creation, publishing status reports, coordinating between teams, scheduling meetings, summarising outputs, and tracking developments.

However, it’s important to note that AI is not yet capable of fully understanding complex business requirements—this remains firmly within the human domain.

Conclusion: Embrace the Change

The key takeaway is this: embrace AI and master its fundamentals. AI will likely replace Product Managers who don’t know how to use it, but for those who do, it will become a powerful ally. I believe AI will lead to an increase in Product Managers, as it lowers development costs and enables companies to take on more products.

Intuition and innovation are still areas where AI hasn’t outpaced human abilities, and these qualities are essential to the role of a Product Manager.

Medium