Generative UI and the Ephemeral Interface
November 25, 2025
Generative UI and the Ephemeral Interface
This week, Google debuted their Gemini 3 AI model to great fanfare and reviews. Specs-wise, it tops the benchmarks. This horserace has seen Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI trade leads each time a new model is released, so I’m not really surprised there. The interesting bit for us designers isn’t the model itself, but the upgraded Gemini app that can create user interfaces on the fly. Say hello to generative UI.
I will admit that I’ve been skeptical of the notion of generative user interfaces. I was imagining an app for work, like a design app, that would rearrange itself depending on the task at hand. In other words, it’s dynamic and contextual. Adobe has tried a proto-version of this with the contextual task bar. Theoretically, it surfaces up the most pertinent three or four actions based on your current task. But I find that it just gets in the way.
Source: Generative UI and the Ephemeral Interface – Roger Wong
One of the things people are speculating about when it comes to generative AI is that perhaps our user interfaces will be themselves generated on the fly, tailored to individual users’ needs. Esteemed folks like the Nielsen Norman Group have made such suggestions, but others like Roger Wong aren’t so sure.
