EP 76: AI Pulse: Jenna's Predictions for Where AI Is Heading
Stop Paying for Software That Was Never Built for You
- If you can have the same conversation in Claude or Gemini more than once, you can turn it into an app. Repetitive tasks are exactly where custom tools start saving real time.
- Designers now have the power to build the tools they always wanted, without a developer, without a big budget, and without conforming to what someone else decided their workflow should look like.
- Artifacts in Claude are the best entry point for most people. They are built into your existing subscription, they are shareable, and they are a great way to start understanding what building actually feels like.
- Plugins and third-party tools inside large language models carry real security risks. Not everything that gets approved is safe. Be selective and verify before connecting anything to your accounts.
- The goal is fewer subscriptions, not more. Start with what you repeat most, build something that handles it, and cancel what you no longer need. That is the direction everything is heading.
Three Years In: An Honest Update
Episode 76 is Jenna's most practical episode in a while. No predictions for where AI will be in five years. No crystal ball. Just a clear-eyed look at where things actually are right now, what she has been building, and where she genuinely thinks small businesses in this industry are heading over the next couple of years.
After three years of teaching, experimenting, building, stacking tools, canceling tools, rebuilding, and doing it all over again, she has landed somewhere that finally feels right. Fewer tools. More custom. More intentional. And the reason this matters for designers is that the same shift is now available to everyone, not just the people who have been doing this full time.
Jenna also shares that the podcast landed in the Apple top 100 recently, which she found out from a cold pitch email. She had not posted in three weeks. So she figured she would show up and say something worth hearing.
The Software Was Never Built for You
The tools that most designers have been using for years were not built by designers. They were built by software engineers who wanted to sell to the largest possible market, asked a pool of people what they needed, added features based on that feedback, and raised subscription prices as the product grew. The result is software that does a lot of things for a lot of people, but rarely does exactly the right things for any one business.
Designers have adapted around this for years. They find a tool that is close enough, work around its limitations, pay for more seats or features than they use, and move on. Meanwhile the subscription stack quietly grows and the workflows that are supposed to save time start creating their own kind of overhead.
The irony Jenna points out is worth sitting with: the same tech industry that has spent years building tools that cut designers out has now built AI good enough that designers can start cutting them out right back. That shift is already underway.
If You Can Chat It, You Can Build It
The core idea of this episode is simple. If you are having the same conversation in Claude or Gemini over and over again, you do not need to keep doing that. You can turn it into an app. A pricing calculator. A proposal builder. A paint schedule generator. A spec sheet tool that pulls from URLs. Whatever the repetitive task is, there is a way to stop doing it manually every time.
For most people, the best starting point is artifacts inside Claude. Artifacts are mini apps that live in your Claude account, built right inside a conversation. They are already part of your subscription, they are shareable with your team, and they are a genuinely low-stakes way to understand what building something actually feels like. A pricing calculator, a proposal outline, a client brief template. All of these can live as artifacts that you come back to instead of starting from scratch every time.
From there, the next step is a fuller app: something that connects to your calendar, your email, your storage, and does something useful when those things interact. That is where Gemini Studio, Base44, and Claude Code come in. You do not need to be a developer to explore these. You need a clear idea of what you want the tool to do.
Jenna also walks through how she uses HTML outputs to create branded, shareable proposal pages instead of PDFs. The proposal becomes a private landing page on her site, consistent with her brand, easy to send, and not clogging up anyone's storage. That is one example of what it looks like when you stop doing things the default way and start building for how your business actually works.
A Word on Security and Plugins
Not everything in this episode is optimistic, and that is intentional. Jenna follows security researchers closely because it is not her wheelhouse but it matters a lot to what she builds and teaches. And what she has been seeing lately is worth paying attention to.
Plugins inside large language models, the kind you can install to extend what the tool does, carry real risk. Some of them go through an approval process and still end up being malicious. Some of them are quietly collecting information you did not know you were sharing. The fact that something is available inside a trusted platform does not mean it is safe.
Jenna's approach: if she does not know exactly what a plugin does and who built it, she does not install it. Familiar names from companies she already trusts get more consideration. Everything else gets skepticism. That is a reasonable bar for anyone building with these tools.
This is also part of why she is increasingly interested in local models and closed workflows. Not because they are better right now, but because the direction is clear. As the big public models get more expensive and more entangled, having a more self-contained setup becomes more appealing. It is not there yet for most use cases, but it is coming.
What This Summer Is Actually About
Jenna is taking this summer to regroup, consolidate, and build. She has been quiet on social and paused the weekly email, but not because nothing is happening. The opposite. She rebuilt her website. She has been adding new apps to the AI Social Club members area, things she has wanted to build for two years but has not had the uninterrupted time to sit down and do. A new podcast format is coming in the fall that she is genuinely excited about.
The AI Social Club app itself is now what she described wanting to build two years ago. Proposals, lead generation, CRM, app studio, community, all inside one thing she built and owns. That is the destination she has been pointing toward, and it is worth understanding because it is also the destination available to designers who are willing to start building toward it now.
She also mentions making an app specifically to help her chop podcast content into social clips so she can show up more consistently without having to be in manual creation mode constantly. That is a good example of the mindset: find the repetitive thing, build something that handles it, get yourself out of the loop.
Jenna is the go-to educator for design professionals who want to use technology without losing their creative edge. A designer turned tech advocate, she's a nationally recognized speaker, podcast host, community builder, and custom app builder based in Charleston, SC.
Her previous company, eDesign Tribe, was acquired by Mydoma Studio in 2021. She started teaching AI to designers at the end of 2023 and has not stopped since.
AI Social Club is Jenna's community platform built exclusively for design professionals. It includes a no-algorithm community space, learning center, live stream access, the AI App Studio, and more.
It was built because the major social platforms are no longer serving designers who want real connection, real tools, and a space that works the way a creative business actually works.
Disclaimer: This blog was written using AI as a recap from the recording then edited by the author for accuracy and details.