Let’s be honest: AI isn’t going anywhere. The powerful LLM tools that Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and others have developed are here to stay. They are increasingly becoming integrated into our everyday lives, especially in the software development world.
And there is a reason for this: they are incredibly powerful. Things that used to take days can now be done in a fraction of the time. Build a website? Easy. AI can do it while you watch. Create a powerpoint deck? Process documents? Create images on the fly? No problem. AI can also be an incredibly useful tool throughout the development process. It can be used to create calculations that are tedious to type manually, to check code for errors, and catch simple mistakes. In fact, it is quite good at finding variables that are misspelled. More on that later.
If AI Can Build Software, Where Does That Leave FileMaker?
People are now turning to AI to develop and deploy custom business software. And that raises an interesting question for FileMaker. FileMaker has always existed in a niche that was “low-code”. It made it possible to create and deploy custom software that was tailored to your business without building everything from scratch. But what does that mean in the age of AI? Where everything is, to a certain extent, becoming low-code?
I think it actually makes FileMaker even more relevant. Because making it easier to build software doesn’t eliminate the need to manage and maintain that software once it exists. And that distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Building the Software is Only the Beginning
Sure, there are plenty of services that can help you deploy an application built with AI. But then what? What happens when something breaks? Who handles updates? Where are your backups? How are authentications and permissions managed? What happens when you need to make a change six months from now? And perhaps most importantly: who understands how all of the pieces fit together?
AI can certainly help answer those questions. But business software needs more than code. It needs an infrastructure around it that keeps it secure, accessible, backed up, and running reliably over time. That’s one of the places where FileMaker has an advantage. FileMaker gives you a complete deployment framework right out of the box. Authentication, desktop and mobile deployment, backups, security, and more are already built into the application. But the platform is only part of the equation.
At The Support Group, we’ve spent more than 40 years building, supporting, and improving FileMaker systems for businesses. We’ve seen applications evolve over years, sometimes even decades, as companies grow, processes change, employees come and go, and technology advances. That experience has taught us something that AI doesn’t change: good business software isn’t just about getting an application built; it’s about building something your business can continue to depend on today and as it inevitably evolves over time.
This Is Where Experience Still Matters
While AI can generate code remarkably quickly, it doesn’t necessarily understand your business. It doesn’t automatically know why your team follows a particular workflow, which processes are mission-critical, which exceptions happen every month, or what will become a problem when your business doubles in size. And that context matters.
Our job at TSG has never simply been to write FileMaker code. We work with our clients to understand how their businesses operate, where their systems are getting in the way, and how technology can make those processes better. Sometimes that means building a new FileMaker application; sometimes it means improving a system that has been running for 15 years. It also means helping clients understand where AI can genuinely improve their FileMaker systems but also where it can add complexity without enough value. AI simply gives us another powerful tool to work with. Our job is figuring out how to use that tool in a way that actually makes sense for your business.
And Then There’s Maintenance
Finally, what happens when something goes wrong or you want to make a quick change to your code? With FileMaker’s low-code framework, updating a layout, adding a field, changing a calculation, or creating a new report can be relatively simple. More importantly, you’re working within an established framework rather than trying to understand and modify a collection of AI-generated code that you may not fully understand.
And AI still gets things wrong. I’ve been working with AI on a variety of projects and have run into this more than just a couple times: it can hallucinate an incorrect answer, change something that shouldn’t be changed, or confidently “fix” something that wasn’t broken in the first place.
Remember those misspelled variables? We recently encountered an issue where a variable was misspelled on purpose. AI identified the apparent mistake and “fixed” it, which caused all sorts of problems. This is a small example, but it illustrates a much larger point: AI can recognize patterns, but it doesn’t always understand intent. An experienced FileMaker developer can look beyond the code itself. We can ask why something was built a certain way, understand how changing it might affect the rest of the system, and recognize when something that looks wrong is actually there for a reason. This kind of knowledge becomes more important as AI makes it easier for anyone to generate software.
It’s Not AI or FileMaker
The long and short of it? AI is going to make a lot of what we do in software development faster and easier. And that’s a good thing. But easier software development doesn’t make frameworks like FileMaker obsolete. In fact, AI creates new opportunities for businesses already using FileMaker. Many organizations have FileMaker applications that contain years of valuable data, workflows, and business logic. You don’t necessarily need to replace those systems to take advantage of AI. AI can be integrated into FileMaker to help users find information faster, automate repetitive processes, interact with data in new ways, and connect FileMaker with other systems.
AI can help you build faster, troubleshoot problems, write calculations, generate ideas, automate tedious work, and add new capabilities to existing solutions. FileMaker gives you an established platform for building, deploying, managing, and maintaining the business application. And The Support Group brings the experience to help businesses figure out how those pieces should work together. The real opportunity isn’t choosing between AI and FileMaker; it’s using the strengths of both to build better business software and having the right technology partner to help you do it. If you’re interested in learning more about how TSG can help you find opportunities to leverage AI, reach out today!
