AI Fatigue Is Real

0:00Janne Parri: Hi guys. So yeah, I had a last-minute cancellation. So today it's just me here. But I wanted to take this opportunity to riff about AI. And I got to say I kind of hate AI. Okay. So I'm going to start with my general feelings about AI and then go towards like Webflow related things like what is happening with Webflow or should we check out some alternatives and so on.

0:32Janne Parri: Let's get started. So I am totally feeling like AI fatigue and I believe I'm not the only one. Just yesterday I watched this YouTube video from NetworkChuck and it was basically around this same topic. He's obviously more technical. He does videos about like Linux and servers and coding and cyber security and all that jazz. And I'm just a Webflow designer developer, not a full-blown developer.

1:02Janne Parri: But anyways, I'm feeling like the same feelings because obviously AI is like disrupting our field and it weighs heavily on many of us. And at this point, I kind of feel that the future is a big mess. So there's a lot of challenges like people are scared of losing their job. There's always a new AI tool to be tested. Your social media feeds are full of AI stuff. well, the design should be automated.

1:33Janne Parri: The development should be automated. But whenever I try something and get some sort of results out of AI, it's not usually good enough. So there are a lot of promises, but the results are not there yet. At least that's my experience. Obviously, I see a lot of cool stuff on the internet and people might know something more. They might put in more effort to their prompting, their references, and all that jazz. But yeah, I just cannot get the AI to do everything I want.

2:09Janne Parri: But that is kind of like the dream that we are sold. And this pod never was supposed to be an AI podcast, but naturally because the AI affects our whole industry, our field and building with Webflow. The topic presents itself in basically every episode. The one piece of advice that has been given multiple times on this show too is that you need to know and use AI or you will get left behind.

2:37Janne Parri: I think that is kind of true but at the same time that is super stressful like there are no resting spots on this journey like you start with ChatGPT you play around with the APIs then you change to Claude for some reason or multiple reasons you try to figure out Claude Code even if you are not a developer then you find out there's an MCPs for different apps and what about those cloud skills should you build a Clawdbot? Buy a Mac Mini?

3:12Janne Parri: Claude just rolled out Dispatch and what the heck is Perplexity Computer and should you run a open-source model locally that would be more secure and so on and so forth. I get that people are saying and advising to keep up but the landscape is constantly changing. So, where are we supposed to be keeping up and what does it actually look like? I don't like have the time to check out all of the AI tools and tips and tricks, but I totally feel that I should given the potential time savings.

3:51Janne Parri: Like AI was supposed to be helping me and take off the burden and do the heavy lifting of whatever computer job I have. Like AI was supposed to help me, but now I just feel more pressure. More pressure to automate every damn process. Pressure to learn front-end development so I can understand the actual code that AI is giving me. Pressure to produce outstanding images and text and videos for my clients. Pressure to introduce budget offerings around an automated workflow.

4:23Janne Parri: Pressure to handle everything by myself instead of outsourcing it to specialists. And yeah, it's a lot. And when I see what I'm actually capable of doing or what I have done with AI, it's not that is not that much. Like I can generate some draft responses for my emails. I can automate some CMS and page setting work in Webflow. And I can talk a lot with ChatGPT about what I should do better.

4:55Janne Parri: And yeah, those might be better than nothing, but those are so far away from the ideal scenario that all the AI companies and people on the internet have promised us. And also, whenever I'm doing clients work, I cannot help to think if AI could do this specific thing for me. Like one day, I was searching company logos for a reference slider, and that was quite a manual task, and it took me a while. In the past, I would have thought like nothing, but now I was constantly wondering if there is a way to automate this.

5:34Janne Parri: And I almost like got a bit angry because obviously there's probably some dude on the internet who has automated this specific thing that I'm spending my time right now. And that might be the cornerstone of the love and hate relationship I'm having with the AI. like we can see the easier work in the horizon but the setup and research it needs we just might not have the time for that and even if we did the results might be need at best okay enough complaining what am I going to do about this so I'll just try to sub the tsunami as Michael Wells put it and I'm not going to try do everything because that is just a road to burnout out.

6:21Janne Parri: I am going to keep an eye on Webflow related AI developments and every now and then I might play around with Claude Connector whenever I have a good use case for that and maybe with the MCP too like the Webflow MCP. I kind of want to try out building a proper website from scratch using Claude or something like that but I have way too much client work right now so that is not a priority for me. Obviously, I'll be checking out what other people are doing, but I'm not going to build any bigger systems right now.

6:57Janne Parri: Okay. What about the Webflow stuff? Yeah. I kind of made a LinkedIn post about this. People are like freaking out because some other people are having like success with the vibe-coded sites. And I'm actually going to have Julian from Memberstack as a guest quite soon to talk about this topic. But yeah, we should maybe back up a bit. Like what are we actually afraid of? Is Webflow going to be toast? Are the clients going to be vibe coding their sites? I believe when we as Webflow folks and website builders are not yet figured out this thing, it's fair to say that our clients are not going to build those sites using Claude Code or anything like that.

7:41Janne Parri: There's one thing I have seen which is quite interesting. People are coming to me with a so-called design and asking if I could build that in Webflow. And this so-called design is actually a Lovable project or even a Figma site. And I believe that there will always be those people who don't want or don't have the time to manage their site themselves. So they will need some sort of person who does that for them. even if it's super simple and just to remind like WordPress is still the number one website platform and there has probably been million blog posts well million is maybe exaggerated but there have been quite many times when someone is saying that WordPress is going to die and web design is going to die and so on but we're still we're still here but more interesting thought is that Could the VIP coding platforms be better tools for the pros?

8:43Janne Parri: That might be, as I said, I haven't figured out this myself, so I cannot give a definite answer for that. But in my mind, it kind of comes down to two factors. There's the speed and the maintainability or like editability. People are saying that building a website with Claude is basically faster than building it in a Webflow. And I believe I believe that like Finn said that on the last episode and Julian will probably say the same thing and this is where Webflow needs to catch up.

9:15Janne Parri: Basically, I'm like super confident that people at Webflow are aware of this and we already have like the Claude Connector, the Cursor plugin or actually it's a Webflow plugin in Cursor Marketplace and then we have the Webflow MCP and these are still like new things. You cannot yet check the designs from Figma and replicate them in Webflow with one prompt but they will surely get more capabilities in the future. And I kind of like the idea that I can choose the AI of my choice and have it build the thing for me.

9:51Janne Parri: And the MCP basically allows that. But we also need the native solution from Webflow. Finn said in the last episode that Webflow needs to come up with a proper AI tool this year. I don't know if and when that's going to happen, but I am pretty hopeful. A natural language feature that could edit an existing site and use the current code base or well the framework would be totally awesome and it would be very beneficial for the clients like the end users of the sites.

10:25Janne Parri: Just imagine that you have built a beautiful Webflow site with all the components. You have used Lumos or some other framework. you have the open components, the closed components and then the client wants to add a page but they haven't been editing in the site for half a year. And then they could just ask the AI to get it started and the AI would obviously respect the system that you have built for the site. It would be like best case scenario or the best balance of like editability and control and yeah the second thing was the maintenance or editability which I think still is like Webflow's strength.

11:11Janne Parri: Again, I have somewhat one-sided view on this, but to my understanding, the vibe-coded sites often need to be edited using code or prompting. Obviously, you can hook up a headless CMS there, but what about all the static pages? Or what about if you want to add a language version on the site? I, as a freelancer, want to be able to give the site to the client, and I want the client to be able to do the basic changes themselves. like I don't want to correct any spelling mistakes.

11:42Janne Parri: I don't want to change images or anything like that and I do not want to prompt like any code changes too. So as I said I believe that Webflow is still like strong in that department. So if Webflow could bridge the speed gap then I would not see a reason not to build a basic marketing site with Webflow. Obviously, it's a good thing to know alternatives and pick the best tool for the job.

12:15Janne Parri: There might be like pricing things. You might be able to find a cheaper solution, but like the Webflow plan plans, the basic the basic like self-hosted plans, they are not that expensive. Like if you have a proper business, those are like pennies for them. So again, what am I planning to do? as I said I want to try building websites from the scratch. That is more like for me to learn what is capable and maybe pick up some new things that I haven't like learned yet on my journey.

12:49Janne Parri: But I do not plan on doing client work like that anytime soon. I want to see what Webflow brings to the table and how far I can take the connectors and MCPs like basically vibe coding with Webflow with the end goal that I can get a properly built Webflow project and hand that to my clients. I'm like dreaming of the day that I can just send a design to some AI and it will copy my preferred starting template, update the variables, utility classes, components all within my favorite framework, create new pages and sections on those pages, create the CMS lists I need, import the content, and if there's some Lauram Ipsum placeholders, it could fill out those for me, to but I don't think that we are that far away of that place.

13:45Janne Parri: Yeah, it still needs work, but I'm hopeful. Obviously, I do not know how hard it would be to build that kind of system, but I am hopeful. Okay, I guess I'm going to end my rant. This was something different. Hopefully enjoyed hopefully you enjoyed this. And yeah, actually, if you are still watching, please tell me what do you think of a monopod like this? Do you want to see more these sort of things or are you here for just the guests? That is totally fine too.

14:17Janne Parri: Oh, and I have to do the Finnish thing for you guys. Just a sec. Okay, here's one for you. So, in Finnish it is and in English it is basically they don't cross their sticks. I guess I do not hear you answering but yeah basically the saying means that they do not do anything even when they are supposed to do. So they are just like lazily being passive or something like that. Yeah, that's the Finnish saying for this episode and yeah, thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one. Bye.