AI hasn't made hard things easy, it has made long things short. Workflows that once had tedious parts are now a virtual snap. The most difficult part is now often writing the correct prompt. Qfield and Mergin are two apps that have made the process of collecting geospatial data in the field easy and trivial. There is however still a small learning curve, and when there needs to be a method to the data collection madness, setting up those complex form workflows can be problematic.

In cases where you want the collection workflow to be a cog in a larger process this can be more difficult to achieve. Often, if this is the case, you also need to be managing a dozen devices and app store installs.

How does AI fit in. by itself, it really does not. But the promise of HTML5 and PWA's has been that with just HTML, CSS and JS you could rule the mobile device world. Most of a mobile phones hardware can be accessed via various HTML5 API's. So it is not a stretch to craft a PWA that can use all the available sensors on a phone to capture the relevant info. Throw in some logic with JS and the most complex form workflows can be realized.

AI just makes this so much faster. This talk seeks to present these facts and show that while Qfield and Mergin are here to stay (especially for simple collection efforts) AI will most likely spur the creation of bespoke PWA's for more complex data collection workflows