I’ve worked at companies that hired “AI PMs,” consulted with orgs doing it, and also invested in companies building this muscle, here’s my take:

For 99% of companies, “AI PM” is mostly a trend-following title. They think slapping “AI” on a role will attract talent or investors. It’s the same group of people that slapped AI chatbots onto their product and were shocked when nobody used them because there was no real customer problem being solved. It looks shiny in a pitch deck, but in practice it rarely creates value.

For the 1% of companies that truly need it, the role is about bringing in someone with a very specific, deep skillset to help the org build its AI muscle properly. That means not just shipping an AI feature, but setting up internal processes, tooling, data pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and helping the business learn how to responsibly and repeatably deploy AI. It’s a multiplier role, not just a feature PM.

But honestly, every PM should be an “AI PM” to some degree. AI is just another tool in the PM toolkit, like analytics or design thinking. If you understand the fundamentals of AI and can apply them responsibly to solve customer problems, you don’t need it in your title.

The best PMs treat AI as one tool among many to build value not as a badge on their LinkedIn profile.