The world is being rewritten by AI from the way we build to how we consume technology, and even how we make decisions. What once lived in research labs is now part of our day. AI has broken out the tech bubble. Ask your uncle what a REST API is and he’ll probably shrug. Ask him about ChatGPT and he’ll say, “Oh yeah, I’ve used it!” That kind of shift says a lot.
It’s no surprise that many people believe AI will replace developers, designers, analysts, basically everyone in tech. “It writes code,” they say. “It builds interfaces. You just tell it what you want, and boom it’s done!” Sounds like magic, right? Just a prompt and the AI build up an app, connects your systems, creates APIs, maybe even deploys the whole thing.
Well…
In theory, and in test lab, AI seems unstoppable. But out in the real messy world where systems documentation is outdated, and nobody’s really sure how that legacy integration works, things don’t go so smoothly. Most companies still rely on a mix of modern cloud apps, on-prem systems, custom APIs, and half-forgotten scripts. Data is in silos. Interfaces were built for a world that didn’t imagine AI. And “digital transformation” often just means putting a sleek UI on top of a legacy monster.
AI doesn’t magically fix this. In fact, it exposes just how broken a lot of it still is. For AI to be useful, it needs access to data, processes, and systems. It needs clean inputs, reliable APIs, structured contracts, and consistent behavior. And all of that depends on one critical thing: integration, but close friends call me plumbing!
AI doesn’t kill the need for integration, it makes it essential.
Ironically, the smarter AI gets, the more it relies on the stuff most companies still overlook. Everyone’s chasing prompts and demos, but very few are investing in connecting the dots under the hood. That’s why so many AI projects look amazing in pitch decks but flop in production. It’s not because the models aren’t smart, it’s because they’re disconnected. They’re hallucinating. They don’t have access to what really matters.
And that’s where the integration layer comes in.
It’s not the most glamorous part of the stack. It doesn’t show up in demos. No one celebrates when an API call returns 200 OK or use the right HTTP verb. But the integration layer is what makes everything actually work. It’s the part that stitches systems together. The part that ensures data flows between the CRM, ERP, Databases, between the chatbot and the ticketing system, between the AI and the actual business.
The real MVPs in AI projects aren’t the data scientists, don’t get me wrong, they’re crucial. They build the models and make sense of the data. But without the people who know where that data lives, how to access it, clean it, move it, and make it flow, nothing works. The ones who build the connectors, write the adapters, handle timeouts and retries, and fix the edge cases nobody plans for. These are the folks who’ve been solving integration problems long before “generative AI” was even a buzzword.
And that work isn’t glamorous. But it’s critical. Because AI can’t generate value if it can’t access it.
Will AI eventually be able to build and manage its own integrations? Maybe. We might see self-generating APIs, schema inference, and pipelines that configure themselves. But today? The reality is far from that. The world is still fragmented. Systems are inconsistent. Standards are followed just enough to cause trouble. And legacy systems aren’t going away any time soon, Hello COBOL!
In that world, the integration layer isn’t just alive, it’s becoming more important than ever. It’s the foundation on which usable AI is built.
So let’s stop pretending AI will magically “just work” out of the box. Let’s stop treating integration as a phase-two problem, or something we’ll figure out after the prototype. Let’s stop thinking that a great prompt is more valuable than great plumbing.
Because if the integration layer isn’t solid, your AI is just a fancy front-end hallucinating answers on top of broken or missing data. And that’s not transformation, that’s theater.
The only thing that should die in the AI era is the myth that it can work without integration.
Conclusion
AI is changing the game but it doesn’t play alone. Behind every intelligent system that works in the real world, there’s a solid integration layer making it all possible. It may not be glamorous, but it’s essential. The companies that win with AI won’t just be the ones with the best prompts they’ll be the ones with the best plumbing.
About the Author
Gabriel Leme leads the Integration, AIOps, and FinOps business unit at CXP Brasil. With a strong background in systems development, software engineering, and technical leadership, he helps companies modernize through automation, observability, and intelligent infrastructure. He is a speaker at events like IBM TechXchange, a tech content creator, and an IBM Champion, passionate about turning complex technologies into real business outcomes.
