The term “being sherlocked” refers to when a piece of software or application becomes quickly less useful and popular because the features it provides have been incorporated directly into the operating system or another major platform, usually by the platform’s owner.
The term originated from Apple’s inclusion of the “Sherlock” search tool in its operating system, which incorporated features from the third-party tool “Watson,” rendering Watson less necessary. Since then, it’s been used to describe similar situations where a company adds features to its products that make third-party alternatives less appealing or necessary. In essence, being “sherlocked” means that an app has effectively been replaced by a built-in feature or features, often to the detriment of the original app’s developers marketshare.
AI will “sherlock” certain common productivity apps in the following ways:
- Task Management and To-do Lists: AI-powered personal assistants will understand your goals and priorities, automatically creating tasks, setting deadlines, and prioritizing items based on their importance and urgency. This could make traditional task management apps redundant as AI assistants seamlessly integrate into your workflow.
- Note-taking and Document Organization: AI will enable sophisticated semantic search and automatic categorization within notes and documents, making information retrieval significantly faster and more efficient. This could render traditional note-taking apps less appealing, especially for those seeking advanced knowledge management features. Video and audio calls are already being transcribed by AI. AI can already perform some of your burdensome tasks like automatic categorization of scanned receipts into your accounting system.
- Calendaring and Scheduling: AI will analyze your communication patterns, project deadlines, and preferences to suggest optimal meeting times and automatically schedule appointments. This could streamline the scheduling process, potentially eliminating the need for standalone calendar apps for many users. I look forward to Microsoft and Google helping make appointment scheduling much more seamless in their respective productivity suites.
- Email Management and Communication: AI will prioritize emails, summarize email threads, and even generate smart replies based on the context of the conversation. This could drastically improve email productivity and reduce reliance on third-party email apps with similar features. I have yet to see any of this happening but the email thread summarization in Google Workspace looks promising.
- Project Management and Collaboration: AI will track project progress, analyze task dependencies, and allocate resources efficiently, facilitating seamless collaboration between team members. This could make some traditional project management tools more powerful and intuitive. Even using tools like Excel and Google Sheets makes it really easy to make a project management spreadsheet with all the right columns, filters and labels in a few seconds.
- Creation and Editing of Rich Media: AI is transforming the creation of rich media, making it faster and more accessible without the need for steep learning curves. AI-powered image generators can create stunning visuals from simple text prompts. Text-to-speech and voice cloning technologies enable lifelike audio and video generation, opening up new possibilities for audiobooks, podcasts, and voiceovers. AI-driven video and audio editing tools automate tedious tasks like editing videos using the text transcripts and removing extraneous gaps in narrative. AI can even generate entire video sequences with custom human-like avatars and original or cloned voices from text descriptions, blurring the lines between imagination and reality. There may even be a point in the near future where full websites can be designed and refined simply by speaking to an AI.
- Personal Finance and Budgeting: AI will analyze your or your organization’s spending habits, income, and financial goals to generate custom budgeting plans and investment recommendations. This could render standalone budgeting apps less useful for many users, especially those who want AI-driven financial insights. There is yet to be advanced AI capabilities in this space, but automatic paper receipt scanning/digitization is available on most accounting packages now. And more features will be coming soon.
AI wil augment common productivity apps by offering more advanced, personalized, and integrated solutions that streamline workflows and enhance efficiency. While some specialized apps might still have a place, many traditional productivity tools that do not take advantage of AI features will become less relevant as AI assistants in major platforms and operating systems become more capable and ubiquitous.
