The First Hit Is In Your Toolbar

You’ve seen them too, haven't you? Those sparkly little icons that have started appearing next to every text box. In Slack. In Notion. In Gmail. That little dealer who magically slid into your DMs, your documents, your drafts.

It started innocently. “Rewrite this,” it whispers. “Sound more professional.” Just a little bump to get you through the afternoon meeting. The first hit is always free, isn't it? The little green spiral of ChatGPT, the four-pointed sparkle of Gemini, the friendly orange asterisk from Claude. They’re all there, lined up in your digital medicine cabinet, passed on by your trusted app providers who have, it seems, become pimps on the side.

Shopify wants to write your product descriptions. LinkedIn wants to juice up your job application. Microsoft has plugged it right into the Office ribbon, a line of pure, uncut productivity ready to be snorted through your keyboard. They’re turning our most trusted tools into street corners, pushing the product directly where we work, where we live.

They aren’t just giving you a tool; they're cultivating a dependency. One click at a time.

So you take the free sample. And another. Soon, you can’t imagine writing a difficult email without your little helper. Your brain gets a little lazy, a little numb. Why struggle for the right words when the machine gives them to you instantly? This is how it starts. And once we're all hooked, once our own writing muscles have atrophied from disuse, the meter will start to run. That little $20/month subscription will start to feel less like a software license and more like paying off your dealer to avoid the shakes.

As the tech press cheers on this "AI-powered future," I can't help but see it for what it is. You can read all about the race to integrate AI everywhere in publications like The Verge, but they call it "features." I call it cutting the product with fentanyl.

What was the first app that offered you a free hit? Tell me in the comments.