AI could be a product owner
Not sure if anyone did it already, but I am pretty sure a generative AI could pass a standard CSPO test. So if you think a product manager's job is to create a backlog of stories, participate in Scrum rituals and accept whatever engineers produce - you might consider just using generative AI for that.
Even better, ChatGPT and alike could handle some rudimentary product discovery tasks. It could analyse your competitors, create a questionnaire for your customers and define a simple A/B test. It could write a standard press release, design basic marketing collateral and even automate some parts of the selling process.
If you need nothing more from a product manager - save yourself some money, get an intern and buy access to ChatGPT.
You could be a better product manager with AI
If you're still reading then you might think product management is not really about writing stories, creating roadmaps and holding meetings. Real product management is about creating value for customers and businesses. It sounds ambiguous and that's the point. For every organisation, in any given situation, value creation could look drastically different. Good PMs are extremely adaptable and can pick the best-suited methods to reach positive outcomes for their customers and employers.
And such kind of creativity is something generative AI can't do yet. It could help you do some parts of it (the most basic and boring ones) but it couldn't synthesise it to a coherent whole. And surely it cannot create products with a "soul" or a "special sauce" or "magic", meaning intrinsic value that's so hard to articulate but users feel it when it's there.
Despite the above, you as a product manager, should use generative AI to supercharge your productivity. You should try and outsource all the mundane, easy and trivial work to an AI and focus on the unique value only you can bring. What is this unique value? While the exact quality could differ from person to person, I'd bet it would be in the realm of soft skills - empathy, communication and experience.
Consider this simple example. Say an AI could do product discovery. It could ask your customers questions according to a script. But can it "feel the room" and prone into the topics to uncover something the client is not saying? Maybe it could create a roadmap that would formally look right but can it galvanise the team behind it with a good story? No, you will need to do it.
AI will force us to up our game and that's a good thing! No more hiding behind "busy work", no more "copy and paste" solutions, and no more templated responses. AI could do all that. So we need to find our unique strengths and double down on them. We need to use technology for better outcomes. Product management is about people so the best product managers are big on soft skills while leaving "hard" ones to technology.