The spring conference season is in full swing. Last week, I returned to DevDays Europe in Vilnius, Lithuania. 🇱🇹

I spoke about the two approaches to browser-based AI: Bring Your Own AI (WebNN) and Built-in AI. Thanks to everyone who joined. 😊

➡️ Slides: https://www.thinktecture.com/contributions/built-in-ai-apis-webnn-ai-right-in-your-browser-local-and-offline-capable/

#WebAI

Google I/O is powering down, but the roadshow begins! 🗺️✨

I’ll be hitting the I/O Connect circuit because shipping APIs means nothing until our work gently collides with real devs solving real-world problems.

Thanks for raiding the Chrome sandbox! 🚀
#GoogleIO #WebAI #WebDev

Wrapped up two fantastic days in London at the International JavaScript Conference, where I had the chance to talk about #WebAI and #WebMCP — two explorations around bringing AI to the browser. Thanks to everyone who came by the session!

I also enjoyed catching up in person with my fellow speakers Brygida Fiejdasz and @ManfredSteyer, and with my London-based @tag colleagues @lolaodelola and Matthew Atkinson. 😊

🌸 Great #GDGKarlsruhe meetup on Wednesday!

Big thanks to Thinktecture for the space, pizza & beer 🍕🍺 — and to Sascha Lehmann for his talk on real-time AI language interfaces. 💻

I shared what's new in #WebAI: WebNN, Built-in AI, and #WebMCP. 🧠

Thanks to everyone who joined! 🚀

Is your AI feature a "Main Quest" helper or a high-friction detour?

Most AI feels like a "Pull" handle on a door that should have a Push-bar. I deconstructed an AI Alt-Text demo using the built-in AI APIs to meet users where they already go.

✅ Follow The Momentum: Why Push-bars beat Pull handles.
✅ The Latency Tax: Hide the seams or quality won't matter.
✅ Temporal Illusions: Why "instant" AI can decrease trust.

📖 https://exploractical.com/blog/2026/alt-text/
🧪 https://exploractical.com/demos/alt-text/

#WebAI #UX #BuiltInAI

New from my Web AI Lab: I’ve built an “article assistant” for my site that runs using local AI in the browser (via Chrome + Gemini Nano) when available — and falls back to a cloud model when it isn’t.

Before you dismiss this because it's AI, I think this has huge implications for the #OpenWeb. Instead of sending every interaction to BigTech clouds, users can increasingly run AI on their own device: better privacy, lower cost & more user control.

Check it out: https://ricmac.org/2026/03/19/article-assistant-local-ai-browser/ #WebAI

In most enterprise environments, third party cloud-based STT is a non-starter. That usually leaves us with mediocre OS defaults.

My colleague @paul 's "Utter" Chrome extension fixes this by keeping the intelligence loop local. It uses the WebSpeech and Prompt APIs to transcribe and polish your "train of thought" entirely on-device. 🛡️✨

A productivity unlock for AI agent workflows without the data leakage.

Give it a spin: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/utter/eejdhhjghkhkfejhbceeknhebhegijee

#WebAI #BuiltInAI