Timeline for AI Assist is now available on Stack Overflow
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 16, 2025 at 13:57 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | @F1Krazy 40% is high compared to the CTR of other notifications in the inbox. All data we look at is relative in that way. We aren't concluding that all 40% wanted the feature but have enough funnel and retention data to deem it a success. | |
| Dec 16, 2025 at 13:51 | comment | added | F1Krazy | @AshZade To reiterate, I clicked the notification because I assumed it would take me to the announcement post and did not know it would take me straight to the AI Assist itself. A 40% click-through rate (which, I would argue, isn't that great to begin with) absolutely cannot be taken to mean that 40% of users who saw the notification actually wanted to use the feature, because I can't have been the only user who was wrongfooted in that way. | |
| Dec 16, 2025 at 13:42 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | @LewisCianci The goal was to inform users about a feature that we think is valuable to some of them. The data shows us that enough registered users clicked-through and used AI Assist to deem the notification as a success. We don't plan to send these sort of notifications often but AI Assist is one of our biggest investments and warranted it. | |
| Dec 16, 2025 at 9:59 | history | bounty awarded | Resistance Is Futile | ||
| Dec 16, 2025 at 1:44 | comment | added | Lewis Cianci | @AshZade it's a shame you made the wrong decision in this case. It's remiscent of how LinkedIn uses personal messages to send me spam. People who send spam or scams via email likely see some sort of click-through rate, does that make it okay that these are sent? Of course not. So click-through rate is not relevant here. | |
| Dec 10, 2025 at 16:23 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | I understand that this may have annoyed users. We made the call to send out the notification as AI Assist is significant addition to SO. We have seen 40% click-through rate. | |
| Dec 9, 2025 at 3:08 | comment | added | pythoncoder42 | This is the sort of thing that really makes me think this site has passed the point of no return. Anyone know of any alternative sites that don't pull this sort of crap? | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 21:22 | comment | added | unhappyPartner | The inbox spam really makes SO look pathetic here. If this AI feature was actually about helping the community it would be treated like every single other feature that has been done to improve the product. Clearly this is actually about chasing hype and cutting corners to try to juice the metrics so that it is a "success", users be damned. | |
| Dec 6, 2025 at 1:32 | comment | added | Bergi | "I don't recall ever being pinged about new Stack Exchange features before" - they did it before about the customisable chat room guidelines | |
| Dec 5, 2025 at 14:03 | comment | added | iBug says Reinstate Monica | Even worse, it's a junk feature that nobody likes. Like those crap ads that you want to move to spam immediately. | |
| Dec 5, 2025 at 1:19 | comment | added | remcycles | I was excited that maybe someone gave me an upvote or wrote a comment. Instead it was an advert for AI slop. :'( | |
| Dec 4, 2025 at 20:32 | comment | added | F1Krazy | @cottontail Apparently that's a known glitch that happens if you click a notification too quickly or something. | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 20:10 | comment | added | pkamb | MSO: AI Assist notification is SPAM | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 19:10 | comment | added | NoDataDumpNoContribution | If you would say that you would like the new feature, then they would listen to you. The ping is just advertisement, nothing mean about this. Just a way to get attention of people at maybe the long term cost of alienating those who are too annoyed by the notification ad. | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 18:54 | comment | added | Resistance Is Futile | This is absolutely unacceptable use of Inbox messages. | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 17:00 | history | edited | F1Krazy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 209 characters in body
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| Dec 3, 2025 at 16:51 | comment | added | Doryx | just did a quick scroll and in 8 years of message history, never got a notification for a "new" feature | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 16:46 | history | answered | F1Krazy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |