Why AI Has Cracked “Production Tasks” for PMs—But the Biggest Opportunity Is Still Upstream!

Lenny Rachitsky's recent AI productivity survey offers a clear snapshot of how product managers leverage AI tools today: most value is found in writing PRDs, creating prototypes, and streamlining communication. Strategic work, like research, discovery, and roadmap ideation—remains largely under-penetrated by AI, yet PMs are eager to see change.

Our conversations with PMs and product teams at B2B SaaS companies mirror this split. Direct feedback on Four/Four’s AI-powered platform highlights that automation and insight synthesis are already paying off for production tasks:

Automated proprietary PRDs, tickets, and prototypes as core value drivers:

Many teams use Four/Four to move instantly from extracted insights to finished PRDs and user stories, saving weeks of manual effort and bridging the gap between idea and delivery

Efficiency wins for communications and proposals:

AI-driven tools are deployed to prepare impactful proposal documents, follow-up emails, and discovery gap analyses, accelerating sales cycles and freeing up PMs to focus on strategic decisions

Faster, more consistent feature documentation:

Automated workflows help standardize and publish proposals, feature ideas, and ticket requests, slashing turnaround times and manual editing workloads

Yet, just like Ratchitsky’s findings, our customers consistently identify a bolder opportunity: harnessing AI to truly “think” for PMs, handling the human-intensive work of research, synthesis, and strategic planning.

Where Customers See Untapped Promise:

Demand for AI-driven user research and insights: Product operations and PMs name the manual extraction of insights from calls, demos, and unstructured feedback as the single largest bottleneck. They want user research to be “proactive, automated, and actionable”—surfacing hidden needs, relevant segments, and growth challenges directly from conversational data

Desire to move upstream: Voices from our base are clear: deeper AI use for discovery, market segmentation, and roadmap validation would be a game-changer. Many PMs want workflows that begin with automated synthesis of customer insights and end with validated PRDs and clear feature prioritization—rather than starting with a solution and working backwards

What’s Next for AI and PMs

Our firsthand evidence aligns with Lenny’s survey. PMs have turned AI into an engine for production and documentation, but the “upstream” work is still ripe for transformation. The pattern is clear, PMs want AI to enable fast, flexible user research, dynamic roadmap validation, and automated synthesis of actionable insights. The next wave of innovation for AI in product is in helping PMs truly “think,” not just produce.

Four/Four is investing heavily in this direction, building workflows and automation frameworks that help PMs and product teams bridge the gap between raw feedback and strategic, validated product decisions. As one leader put it: “Automating and streamlining the insights process has decreased opportunity costs, allowing us to focus on higher-impact initiatives rather than repetitive manual extraction.