Adding an artificial intelligence assistant to a business website sounds like a modern upgrade. With a few clicks or a short script, you can deploy a conversational partner that answers customer questions around the clock. Many agency leads and business owners consider this an easy way to improve customer support without hiring more staff.

The reality of running these tools on a live production site is more nuanced. While language models are powerful, adding them carelessly can frustrate visitors, slow down your pages, and provide incorrect information about your services. Before you paste an AI widget into your layout, it helps to understand when these features add genuine value and when they create new problems.

In my development projects, I often build custom AI features & integrations using tools like Claude and OpenAI.…