{"id":353355,"date":"2026-03-18T23:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T23:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/353355\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T23:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T23:12:08","slug":"nothing-ceo-carl-pei-says-smartphone-apps-will-disappear-as-ai-agents-take-their-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/353355\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing CEO Carl Pei says smartphone apps will disappear as AI agents take their place"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carl Pei, co-founder and CEO of Nothing<\/a>, is imagining a future beyond the iPhone \u2014 and it\u2019s a device powered by AI agents, not running apps.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of AI in software, I think people should understand that apps are going to disappear,\u201d said Pei, whose consumer electronics brand makes unique smartphones<\/a> and other accessories. \u201cSo, if you\u2019re a founder or a startup and your app is like where the core value lies, that will be disrupted whether you like it or not.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pei made these comments during an interview<\/a> at the SXSW conference in Austin on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The founder has talked about an AI-first device before, as this vision helped the company close its $200 million Series C funding round <\/a>last year. At the time, Nothing was pitching the idea of a new kind of smartphone using AI and personalization technology that\u2019s accurate enough for its users to not feel they had to go behind the AI and double-check its output.<\/p>\n

At SXSW, Pei expanded on his vision for the AI-first device and the steps needed to get there.<\/p>\n

The initial step, which is being tested by some companies today, is an AI feature that can execute a command on the users\u2019 behalf, like booking flights or hotels. Pei, however, dismissed this step as being \u201csuper boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next step is where things could get more interesting, as the AI begins to learn a user\u2019s intentions long-term. For instance, if you wanted to be healthier, the device could give you nudges to help you accomplish your goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it gets even more powerful when it starts surfacing suggestions for you; you don\u2019t have to manually come up with an idea\u2026when the system knows us so well, it will come up with things that we don\u2019t even [know] we wanted,\u201d Pei explained, comparing this concept to something like ChatGPT\u2019s memory feature. <\/p>\n

In describing how he pictured an AI-first smartphone, Pei said it would be a device that would do things for you without needing to be commanded to.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current way we use phones is very old-school. It\u2019s pre-iPhone\u2026there used to be Palm Pilots and PDAs back in the day. And if you think about the user experience, it\u2019s still very similar,\u201d Pei said. \u201cYou have lock screens, home screens, apps. You browse different apps. Each app is like a full-screen thing. There\u2019s some kind of app store that allows you to download more apps. So it hasn\u2019t really changed for like, 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

This frustrated him because the technology consumers are using has evolved quite a bit, but the products we use have not. Even simple tasks have us jumping through multiple steps, he explained. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to get things done on a phone,\u201d Pei said. \u201cLet\u2019s say we want to grab coffee. That\u2019s an intention. But to execute that intention, we have to go through so many different steps and so many different apps. It\u2019s probably like four apps to grab coffee with somebody \u2014 some messaging app, some kind of maps, Uber, calendar.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cI think the future of smartphones or operating systems should just be: \u2018I know you very well, and if I know your intention, I just do it for you,\u2019 instead of having to go through all the apps manually.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt should just do it through AI,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This also means devices would have an interface that\u2019s not focused on apps for humans to navigate, but would instead feature an interface designed for the AI agent to use. <\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean apps are going away in the near-term, Pei cautioned. Nothing\u2019s own operating system even allows users to vibe code their own mini apps today. But eventually, the AI will need to be able to use the \u201capp\u201d in a frictionless way, not trying to mimic human touch on the smartphones by moving through menus and tapping options.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not the future. The future is not the agent using a human interface. You need to create an interface for the agent to use. I think that\u2019s the more future-proof way of doing it,\u201d Pei said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carl Pei, co-founder and CEO of Nothing, is imagining a future beyond the iPhone \u2014 and it\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,5697,218,219,57656,61,60,12355,575,39565,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-353355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-agents","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-carl-pei","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-nothing","16":"tag-smartphones","17":"tag-sxsw","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}