For over forty years I get paid to find the words that make a product sound irresistible. Biggest, smallest, fastest, new & improved. Also: light, diet, low-fat, sugar-free, natural, organic. And now: sustainable, carbon-neutral, and, currently trending, AI-powered. Every generation of marketers invents its own magic words because every generation of customers falls for different bait. There’s nothing sinister in that. It’s just the business.

What’s changed is that nobody’s treating those words as just marketing anymore. They’re treating them as evidence. And evidence, unlike copy, has to hold up in court.

Recycled, Reused, Re-Litigated

In June 2026 the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned ads from Adidas, Calvin Klein and Uniqlo for using the word “recycled” in ways they couldn’t back up. 

Adidas advertised a “recycled shoe range” it turned out didn’t exist. Uniqlo’s fleece was recycled in the parts you could see and not recycled in the parts you couldn’t. Calvin Klein got dinged for implying an entire collection was made from preferred materials when the real number ranged from 20% to 100%. 

Six months earlier the same regulator had done the exact same thing to Nike, Lacoste and Superdry. Six brands. Two rulings. One word. The lesson isn’t about fashion. It’s about the word “recycled” no longer surviving close contact with a lawyer.

The Robot Reads the Fine Print Now

Here’s the part that really changed the game. The ASA didn’t catch any of this from a customer complaint. It caught it with an AI system called Active Ad Monitoring, which scanned nearly 60 million ads in 2025 alone and now accounts for close to half the regulator’s total workload. That intelligence helped resolve more than 40,000 complaints covering over 25,000 ads, resulting in more than 22,000 amendments or withdrawals. 

The old model was: someone gets annoyed, someone complains, someone investigates. The new model is: the machine reads every ad on the internet before breakfast and flags the liars. For decades marketers worried about focus groups. Now we should be worrying about a bot with better reading comprehension than all compliance departments put together.

Every Brand Should Take Notice

Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Etihad and Virgin Atlantic have all had ads banned for implying that flying with them was somehow kinder to the planet than flying with anyone else. None of these airlines were faking their sustainability investments. Sustainable aviation fuel is real, offset programs are real. What wasn’t real was the insinuation that any of it added up to guilt-free air travel. Progress is not the same thing as permission to round up.

Healthcare Suffers the Same Scrutiny, with Sharper Teeth. In early 2026 the FDA sent Novo Nordisk two separate warning letters in the space of a month for misleading ads by Ozempic and Wegovy, their diabetes and chronic weight management drugs. One of them literally implied superiority over other GLP-1 drugs with no data to support it. Weeks later the agency issued warning letters to 30 telehealth companies for misleading marketing of compounded GLP-1 products, part of a six-month enforcement wave that produced more warning letters than the entire previous decade combined. Meanwhile in France, regulators fined Novo Nordisk close to €1.8 million and Eli Lilly over six figures for “disease awareness” campaigns that never named a drug but, according to the regulator, didn’t need to. Everyone in the room already knew which drug they meant.

Even the Category Name Is a Claim Now

Just to prove the trend has no borders and no mercy, India’s food safety regulator recently issued notices to Red Bull, Sting, Monster and several other brands for calling themselves “energy drinks” (a category that, as it turns out, doesn’t officially exist under Indian food law). Marketers get so comfortable with category language that we stop noticing it’s actually a claim. Apparently regulators noticed for us.

Patriotism, Audited

The FTC launched a “Made in the USA” enforcement sweep in April 2026, settling with sellers of flags, entertainment systems, and footwear for claiming products were American-made when they were partly stitched together in the Dominican Republic and Brazil. One company advertised boots as “handcrafted 100%” domestically while sourcing components from two other countries. “Made in,” “Built in,” and “Designed in” sound interchangeable in a brainstorm. They are not interchangeable to a federal regulator with a customs manifest.

The Cancel Button Is Also Copy

And it’s not just the ad anymore. The FTC’s $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon ($1 billion in penalties, $1.5 billion back to roughly 35 million affected customers) was about Prime enrollment and cancellation flows, not a single banner ad. The checkout screen, the “are you sure?” pop-up, the maze between “cancel” and “confirm cancel,” all of it is now marketing communication, and all of it is now litigable.

The AI Doesn’t Forget What You Deleted

Then there’s the part that actually raises the stakes. BCG found that shopping-related generative AI use grew 35% between February and November 2025. Capgemini found that a quarter of consumers already used generative AI shopping tools in 2025, with another 31% planning to. That matters because an AI assistant doesn’t just repeat your tagline back to you: it cross-references it. It notices when your sustainability page says one thing and your annual report says another. It remembers the claim you quietly walked back last year. Marketing used to compete for attention. It’s now competing for something much harder to fake: consistency across every document you’ve ever published.

Trust Is the New Adjective

Edelman’s latest Trust Barometer puts it plainly: 88% of consumers say trust is an important factor in deciding whether to buy from a brand. That’s not new information: trust has mattered since the first merchant sold the first not so fresh fish. What’s new is how fast it can now be tested, by a regulator, a journalist, a competitor or a chatbot, often within the same week the campaign launches.

What This Actually Means for the Work

The job hasn’t gotten smaller. It’s gotten more interesting. The old question was “how can we make this sound better?” The new question is “how can we make this true enough that nobody, not a regulator, not a rival, not an algorithm, can take it apart?” That’s a harder brief. It’s also, frankly, the brief we should have been writing to all along.

What Marketers Should Actually Do About It

• Treat every claim as something that will eventually be read by a regulator, a competitor, a journalist, and an AI model, because it will.
• Replace the adjective with the number. “Sustainable” is an opinion. “40% recycled polyester, independently certified” is a fact.
• Assume nothing about a fashionable word’s meaning. “Recycled,” “natural,” and “AI-powered” all mean whatever a regulator decides they mean this year.
• Remember that the checkout page, the cancellation flow, and the subscription terms are marketing copy too, and they get read in court.
• Build the proof before you write the headline, not after someone asks for it.
• Get legal and compliance into the room during the creative process, not after the campaign’s already shot.
• Write claims that will still be true in five years, not just until the next sales meeting.
• Stop asking how good your copy sounds. Start asking how fast someone else could prove it wrong.

Sources: European Commission, Green Claims / greenwashing study; UK Competition & Markets Authority; UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA/CAP), including the ASA and CAP Annual Report 2025 and Active Ad Monitoring briefing; U.S. Federal Trade Commission; U.S. Food & Drug Administration; France ANSM (Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament et des Produits de Santé); India FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India); Boston Consulting Group (BCG); Capgemini Research Institute; Edelman Trust Barometer

I just learned that Disney entered into a $1 billion strategic investment and commercial partnership with OpenAI, paired with a multi-year licensing agreement that allows OpenAI’s tools, including Sora, to generate content using Disney-owned characters within clearly defined contractual boundaries. That stopped me cold. Not because Disney is experimenting with AI—that part was inevitable—but because of how they’re doing it.

The agreement gives OpenAI sanctioned access to more than 200 Disney characters while retaining approval rights, usage constraints and governance over how those characters appear inside OpenAI’s systems. Mickey Mouse can now be summoned with a prompt—but only inside a framework Disney negotiated and controls. They’re opening the door while remaining squarely in the doorway.

Shutterstock followed a similar logic by licensing its stock photo and video library directly to OpenAI rather than fighting from the sidelines. All the while, companies like Universal Music Group have taken the opposite posture, aggressively blocking unauthorized AI voice models of its artists across platforms. Warner Bros appears to still be on the fence—publicly explored AI-assisted storytelling tools while stopping short of licensing core characters. 

The implication is bigger than Disney. It means we can now create Mickey Mouse stories. Donald Duck stories. Entire alternate universes of officially sanctioned fan fiction generated at machine speed. That raises an obvious question: will other brands and IP holders follow suit? Will studios license characters not just to platforms but to people? Will franchises decide it’s better to control the sandbox than pretend it doesn’t exist?

Push it a step further and the question gets more provocative. If Disney can license Mickey Mouse into AI systems, do actors license themselves? Does Robert De Niro authorize a digital version of his voice and face for certain roles, contexts or genres? Does Brad Pitt? Leonardo DiCaprio? Do performers become rights-managed identity assets, negotiated and governed like characters rather than flesh-and-blood talent?
For the time being, I guess that answer is “no”, since the 2023–2024 SAG-AFTRA strikes centered precisely on preventing unlicensed AI use of actor likenesses and voices. But the times they are a change’n.

If Mickey Mouse Needs Proof…

None of this is science fiction anymore. If Mickey Mouse—arguably the most legally protected, culturally embedded character on earth—now needs contractual guardrails to exist inside AI systems, then no brand asset is inherently self-authenticating anymore. Ownership alone no longer confers truth.

By the way, Getty Images reached the same conclusion from the opposite direction, suing AI firms for training on its image library without permission.

Disney isn’t resisting AI. It’s absorbing it, formalizing it and fencing it. It’s treating character generation not as a creative experiment but as a trust and provenance problem.

But if Mickey Mouse needs proof, what exactly are the rest of us relying on?

The Scale of the Trust Collapse

AI already fakes everything that once anchored trust. Faces are cloned. Voices are synthesized. Endorsements are fabricated. Reviews are generated by the thousands. Europol’s 2024 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment identifies AI-driven impersonation as one of the fastest-growing digital crime vectors globally. The FBI reported $16.6 billion in cybercrime losses for 2024, a 33% increase from 2023, with AI-assisted fraud cited as a major accelerant. Marketing didn’t break trust, but it is now operating inside the blast radius. 

Deepfakes Are Now an Operational Risk
Deepfakes are no longer edge cases. They are operational threats. We now regularly build them into our crisis and issues management plans for our clients. HSBC and other global banks now run AI impersonation simulations as part of executive risk training.
AI-generated videos and audio have already been used to impersonate executives, politicians and celebrities with enough realism to move markets and drain accounts. Meta confirmed in 2024 that it removed thousands of AI-generated celebrity scam ads across Instagram and Facebook using fabricated likenesses. For brands, the risk isn’t hypothetical embarrassment. It’s real reputational exposure at machine speed.

When Identity Becomes the Gatekeeper

This is where identity and provenance stop being abstract concepts and start behaving like infrastructure. Blockchain-based identity systems introduce something marketing has never had at scale: tamper-proof verification. Forbes reported that decentralized identity pilots are being deployed specifically to combat AI-driven misinformation and fraud. Verification shifts trust from claims to math. LVMH’s Aura blockchain was built for this exact reason: to authenticate luxury goods at the source. 

World ID applies this same logic to people, solving the problem of proving a real, unique human exists online without revealing who they are or creating a new surveillance layer. That’s the future we face—not knowing what’s human vs robot generated. Even proving that we are human, may be a challenge.

Bots Are Polluting the Metrics

Bots are already distorting the metrics marketing leadership relies on. An Imperva 2024 report found that 49 percent of all internet traffic is now bot-driven, many powered by generative AI. That means impressions, engagement and even conversions are increasingly polluted by non-human activity. Proof-of-human systems don’t just improve trust. They clean the data marketers make decisions on. X and LinkedIn have both acknowledged ongoing bot mitigation challenges despite AI-based detection. For marketers, that means we are paying to reach audiences that aren’t real.

Proof of Personhood Moves Into Strategy

Proof-of-personhood is moving out of theory and into strategy. MIT Technology Review has identified it as a critical missing layer in an AI-dominated internet. When machines can generate content indistinguishable from human output, the differentiator becomes the ability to verify that a real person was involved at all. Storytelling doesn’t disappear. It gains a provenance layer. OpenAI itself has publicly warned that proof-of-human may be required to protect future AI systems.

Brands Are Quietly Rebuilding Trust

Brands are already adapting, often quietly. Vogue Business reported in 2024 that more than 40 luxury and fashion brands are piloting blockchain-based authentication for products and experiences. These initiatives are not about collectibles. They are about provenance. A digital record that proves origin, ownership and legitimacy in a way screenshots and certificates never could. Nike’s early NFT experiments foreshadowed this shift toward authenticated digital ownership.

Verification Without Surveillance

Privacy is non-negotiable. Verification systems that require full data surrender simply recreate the surveillance economy under a new name. Approaches that rely on cryptographic techniques like zero-knowledge proofs confirm uniqueness without storing personal data. That allows brands, creators and audiences to participate without turning identity into collateral damage. Apple has taken a similar stance with on-device AI processing rather than cloud-based identity exposure.

Your Brand Voice Is Already Being Cloned

Brand voice is no longer safe either. WARC reported in 2024 that over 60 percent of marketers have already encountered AI-generated misuse of their brand voice or identity. Copy that looks right, sounds right and feels right can now be produced instantly by systems trained on scraped data. Intent is invisible. Origin is not. The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over unauthorized training on its content.

Marketing Meets Cybersecurity

Identity architecture is converging with enterprise security. Gartner predicts that over 60 percent of enterprises will adopt zero-trust frameworks by 2026, driven largely by AI-enabled impersonation threats. Marketing and cybersecurity are heading toward the same conclusion from opposite directions: continuous verification beats assumed trust. Microsoft has embedded zero-trust identity principles across Azure and enterprise marketing stacks.

Why Disney Drew the Line

Disney’s OpenAI deal makes the point explicit. The company didn’t just license characters. It retained strict approval rights and usage controls over how those characters are generated and deployed. Reuters noted that Disney prioritized verification and governance over volume. Mickey Mouse can exist inside AI systems, but only with an attestation layer that confirms legitimacy.

In practice, that means Mickey Mouse can only be generated inside licensed AI systems, for approved uses and within predefined boundaries, with misuse blocked before it happens rather than litigated after. Disney isn’t enforcing its brand in court—it’s embedding its rules directly into the machines that create the content.

The Only Thing AI Can’t Fake
That is the line that matters. AI can generate brilliance, scale creativity and manufacture authority. What it cannot do on its own is prove origin. Deloitte’s 2024 Trust in Technology study found that 73 percent of consumers say verified authenticity matters more than brand messaging. The market is already voting.

What Brands Must Decide Now
Brands that continue to chase reach without verification will end up with inflated dashboards and hollow credibility. The brands that endure will be the ones that treat identity, provenance and proof as core assets rather than technical details. When AI can fake everything, control shifts to whoever can prove what’s real.

Technology becomes most human when we stop noticing it. Cars, cameras, and computers once demanded skill. Now, we just expect things to work—tap, swipe, say the word and life rearranges itself around our wishes. Algorithms, agents and ambient systems are already shaping what people buy long before they realize they’re being sold to.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that marketing follows the same path. From interruptive to ambient. From the billboard to the background. The hard truth? Nobody ever wanted to be marketed to. What we’ve always wanted is a frictionless existence—products and experiences that appear exactly when needed and fade when not.

And it’s already happening. Amazon’s anticipatory shipping predicts what you’ll order before you click…putting some items minutes away versus hours or day. Spotify curates soundtracks that shift with your mood. L’Oréal’s AI mirrors analyze your skin and recommend products instantly—no ad, no pitch, just presence. Marketing may never die.  But it may just melt into the machinery.

Invisible Influence: How Marketing Disappears

The AI in marketing industry is already worth $47 billion this year and growing 36 percent annually, yet most companies still treat it as a content factory. 93 percent of marketers using AI rely on it for copy and images, while only a few are using it to engineer discovery itself. The real opportunity might just be to make the brand’s presence felt without its voice being heard. It’s a layered approach.

The Ambient Layer – Be everywhere, quietly.
Marketing lives in the seams of everyday life—your car dashboard suggesting a café, a watch nudging you toward a run, a playlist that understands your mood before you do. Spotify’s “Daylist” and LEGO’s in-store AR screens prove that helpful beats loud every time.

The Agent Layer – Market to the machine.
Digital assistants are the new buyers. Amazon’s algorithms, Google’s AI Overviews, and Apple’s Siri suggestions decide what appears first. As I’ve written before, the marketer’s next job will be to teach the algorithm your brand’s story in its own language—structured data, consistent signals, ethical relevance.

The Predictive Layer – Anticipate instead of advertise.
Nike’s AI sizing tool doesn’t sell shoes; it removes hesitation. HP’s site does the same—its Adobe Sensei–powered personalization studies each visitor’s behavior and quietly reshapes pages, offers and products in real time, lifting conversions by double digits without shouting a single banner. Half of global marketers say their biggest challenge is failing to use AI predictively. They’re waiting for perfect tools while faster brands quietly engineer foresight.

The Ethical Layer – Don’t be creepy.
As invisible influence grows, so does responsibility. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) warns that cheaper, faster ad production could flood the digital world with noise. Dove’s Real Beauty AI flipped the script, using filters to call out artificial perfection rather than perpetuate it. Invisible marketing only works when people still trust what they don’t see.

The Emotional Layer – Make the invisible human.
When the machine handles the message, humanity becomes your advantage. Airbnb’s Belong Anywhere ethos isn’t just advertising—it’s coded emotion. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses blend tech and intimacy, proof that warmth still cuts through automation. With 73 percent of global ad spend now digital, those who master tone, restraint and empathy will rise above the noise.

What Marketers Should Do Now

Most marketers know something is shifting, but too many are treating it like another channel to optimize instead of an evolution to lead. The move to invisible influence demands a new mindset—not just more data, but more design thinking. This is less about “doing AI” and more about being chosen by the systems that now mediate choice itself. CMOs must start re-engineering how their brands are seen—or rather, how they’re not seen—before the next wave of automation decides for them.

1. Design for discovery, not display. Your new audience is the algorithm. Make your brand data-readable, not just audience-ready. If your content looks good but your data looks sloppy, you’ve built a billboard in the desert.
2. Structure everything. Product data, metadata and reviews are your new billboards. Make sure your feeds, schemas and naming conventions tell a clear story. The cleaner your data, the closer you are to being the algorithm’s “right answer.”
3. Measure trust, not traffic. Invisible marketing runs on credibility, not clicks. Measure the signals of reliability—accuracy, user satisfaction, repeat use—not just vanity metrics.
4. Practice elegant restraint. The brand that’s useful in silence outlasts the one that screams. The next creative frontier isn’t more—it’s less, delivered perfectly.
5. Train for algorithmic empathy. Know how machines decide—and make sure they choose you. Your teams must understand ranking systems, semantic context and how AI “thinks.” That’s tomorrow’s media planning.

The takeaway: this isn’t about abandoning creativity; it’s about evolving it. The art is still human—but the audience is digital infrastructure. Learn to speak its language, and it will speak your brand fluently on your behalf.

The Bigger Picture

Marketers love disruption stories, but this one isn’t on the horizon—it’s already here. The global AI market has blown past $750 billion, with 85 percent of marketers planning to expand AI use within two years. Yet 44 percent still say they’re “waiting for the technology to mature.” They’re waiting while Google rewrites search behavior, Amazon pre-emptively ships goods and Spotify curates daily emotion.

That hesitation is as reckless as ignoring electricity because you’re still perfecting candlelight.

And here’s the kicker: 71 percent of brands experimenting with immersive or ambient campaigns are already seeing measurable ROI. They’ve discovered the paradox of modern marketing—the less you say, the more you’re heard.

So, stop counting impressions and start engineering impressions that don’t require counting. Because in this new world, the brand that wins isn’t the one that shouts the loudest—it’s the one the system remembers first.

The next frontier of marketing isn’t about visibility. It’s about velocity, intuition and trust coded into every interaction. When the machine starts to choose on our behalf, the only question left will be: Did you teach it to choose you?

Because in a future where marketing may not be seen, the best of it will still be felt.

Sources:

SurveyMonkey AI Marketing Report 2025
SEO.com AI Market Outlook 2025
CoSchedule AI Marketing Statistics 2025
Reuters Global Ad Spend Report 2025
Winsome Marketing Ambient Computing Trends 2025
Brandingmag Gravitational Pull Case Studies
Yord Studio Immersive Campaigns 2025
DailyWild Amazon Anticipatory Shipping Study
Sixth City Marketing AI Adoption Survey 2025
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) 2025 Trends Report

I was attending the Athar Festival of Creativity in Riyadh last week — a conference ablaze with bright young marketers collecting praise, global-brand experts swapping war stories and enough coffee to fuel a small nuclear reactor. I watched some great, often inspiring sessions by the region’s best creative thinkers and witnessed touching moments as nascent marketers accepted accolades for work that felt, frankly, precious. The thought-provoking two days were capped off by a gala awards show, where I applauded to some outstanding creative campaigns (even as half of them were won by one dominating Saudi agency).  

I met and spoke to great experts — some I’ve known, others new and impressive. One standout was Jo Malone CBE, the eponymous founder of Jo Malone London and later Jo Loves, whose journey from kitchen-bath-oil maker to fragrance empire illustrates how human intuition, story and sensory memory built brand magic.

Of course, the subject of AI loomed large, as it does at nearly every event I attend these days. I even sat through two back-to-back sessions that completely contradicted each other. The first, “Artificial Intelligence (AI) ‘How-To’: from Theory to Practical Applications” (an ironically uncreative name for a session at a creative festival), featured panelists in near-religious agreement that AI would not replace us or usurp creativity because imagination, emotion and lived experience are uniquely human. Immediately following that was Mo Gawdat, former Google X executive, who apologetically and calmly declared we’re all about to be replaced — not just the interns but the entire C-Suite. He warned that it is arrogant to think the human brain cannot be replicated by silicon and advised us to be the last one to be replaced and hope the world evolves before it happens.

That whiplash struck me. Between “don’t worry” and “the robots are coming,” I revisited a lingering thought — are we all in denial? Because if you believe the comforting camp, creativity is safe, yet the evidence suggests the machines aren’t just learning to imitate it — they’re beginning to scale it.

Take OpenAI’s projects that generate film sequences indistinguishable from those of human creatives or Runway’s Gen-2 which storyboards, shoots and edits narratives in hours. The creative process — once sacred — is increasingly just another dataset. Meanwhile Coca-Cola’s “Create Real Magic” campaign invited consumers to co-create adverts via GPT-4 and DALL·E, outsourcing imagination itself and proving it worked. Heineken Silver’s launch used generative AI to spoof an “AI beer” campaign, a meta-joke that still sold beer and proved irony is no longer a human monopoly.

And yet Jo Malone’s story reminds us why we cling to human exceptionalism. Her personal battle with illness reshaped her brand through emotional memory, not algorithmic modeling. You can’t prompt that. At least not yet.

The paradox is that AI doesn’t need to feel to simulate feeling. It only needs to be convincing, and audiences today have never been less discerning about authenticity. Mo Gawdat’s grim prediction isn’t nihilism, it’s realism. He isn’t saying art dies; he’s saying the artist changes species.

Here’s one more thing to consider if you work for an agency. Throughout my career I’ve seen numerous cycles where companies have dismissed their agencies or reduced assignments to bring this capability in-house. This has happened long before AI was on the scene – mostly unsuccessfully. Companies have always struggled with the idea of outsourcing creativity to our “band of misfits”. So, for better or worse, AI isn’t the only threat to the survival of agencies — the clients now have the resources, and the tools, to replace us.

The uncomfortable truth is that AI doesn’t have to be creative; it just has to outperform it. If productivity, speed and ROI remain the gods of marketing, the robots are already winning on all three fronts. Which leaves us — marketers, storytellers and strategists — deciding whether to double down on our humanity or finally admit we’re negotiating from nostalgia.

The Great Comfort Blanket — “AI Can’t Feel, So It Can’t Create”

We love this one. We repeat it like a mantra: only human intuition, lived experience and emotional memory drive creativity. Jo Malone once said, “Creativity is the soul of a brand.” Her brand became globally iconic through intuition and sensory storytelling, not data-point modeling. Nike’s “You Can’t Stop Us” campaign, built on pandemic resilience and human triumph, proved the power of empathy in marketing. Yet generative tools like Sora and Runway can already produce emotional narratives indistinguishable from those made by people. According to McKinsey, 43% of marketing departments now use AI for ideation, testing or production, up from just 8% two years ago, and the marketing-AI industry itself is expected to more than double to $107 billion by 2028. So maybe the question isn’t whether AI can feel — it’s whether we’ll even care if it can’t.

The Other Side of the Mirror — “AI Isn’t Coming, It’s Already Here”

AI isn’t knocking on the door of creativity, it’s already moved in and rearranged the furniture. Coca-Cola’s “Create Real Magic” campaign handed GPT-4 and DALL·E to consumers and launched globally. Heineken Silver’s “AI beer” spoof used the technology it mocked, went viral and outsold expectations. The New Yorker quietly published AI-assisted cover art this year and most readers didn’t notice. Mo Gawdat warned at Athar, “It’s arrogance to believe silicon can’t replicate neurons. It already can — just faster, cheaper and with better lighting.” In 2024, McKinsey found that business use of generative AI jumped from 33% to 71% year over year and PwC now predicts that AI could add $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030. When the numbers move that fast, the argument that “AI isn’t ready” starts to sound quaint.

The Three Layers of Denial

Denial isn’t just emotional, it’s also operational. Every time a new technology threatens our way of working, the marketing world invents a new rationalization for why “this time” is different. AI is simply the latest catalyst, exposing the old habits we never grew out of.

Layer 1 – The Romantic Denial: “We are artists, not algorithms.” Agencies keep proclaiming the supremacy of human intuition while quietly replacing junior creatives with AI workflows.

Layer 2 – The Strategic Denial: “AI is just a tool.” Large agencies use AI to reallocate projects and talent across continents in seconds, doing the work of dozens of managers under the banner of “efficiency” versus “replacement”.

Layer 3 – The Existential Denial: “AI will never understand experience.” Synthesia’s avatars now deliver CEO keynotes in 120 languages while the executives they replace wrestle with their webcams. 

LinkedIn reports that postings requiring “AI proficiency” are up 450% since 2023 while “copywriter” listings have dropped 28%. Nothing screams denial louder than “we’re human, therefore safe.”

The layers blend together until they form a kind of corporate coping mechanism — a collective reassurance that as long as we’re the ones calling AI a “tool,” we’re still the ones in charge.

Wisdom vs Pattern Recognition — The Thin Line That’s Getting Thinner

Experience and intuition once separated human decision-making from data, but AI now trains on centuries of accumulated human behavior. We built this thing, after all. 

Netflix’s recommendation engine no longer predicts what we’ll watch — it shapes what gets made. GrammarlyGO and Jasper now generate thought-leadership articles that mirror brand voice so closely that authorship itself is a technicality. Filmmaker Ridley Scott, director of Alien and Blade Runner, once joked AI might make “a thousand versions of Alien but it’ll never feel fear,” yet modern systems are already mapping emotional tone through data scraped from us. Historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, put it more starkly: once algorithms know us better than we know ourselves, creativity becomes a branch of prediction. It’s not that machines are learning to feel; it’s that they no longer need to.

The Pros and Cons — A Reality Check

The benefits are obvious: democratized creativity, unprecedented speed and the ability to personalize in real time. What took agencies weeks can now happen overnight and even small brands can produce content that looks global. But the downside is, as I have written numerous times, sameness. When everyone uses the same models, everything starts to sound, look and feel the same. Entry-level creative jobs are disappearing, removing the ladder for the next generation, and the industry risks what I call “the uncanny blandness problem” — work that’s flawless, but forgettable.

And there’s another looming problem. As the experienced marketers age out, what happens to the so-called human touch when all that experience is gone? I can accept that we’re all becoming editors instead of writers thanks to generative AI — but to be a good editor, you had to first be a good writer. When that collective experience disappears, who’s really running the show? I’ll answer that for you. It’s AI. We’ll all be working for the machines.

The Path Forward 

For marketers early in their careers, tool fluency isn’t optional. Learn GPT-4, DALL·E, Runway and Midjourney until you move faster than your machine. Then study behavioral science, culture and narrative structure because, so far, AI can do pattern, not meaning. Build a portfolio that shows how human insight turns automation into originality.

For mid-level marketers, stop competing with AI on production. Your value lies in direction, orchestration and curation. Be the quality controller, not the typist. Learn to edit AI output into surprise. The system can optimize; for now, only you can provoke.

For senior marketing leaders, hybridize. Design workflows where human instinct meets machine precision, define points where humans intervene and reintroduce chaos where it matters. Rethink KPIs to measure surprise and emotional impact instead of just reach. Protect creative pipelines by promoting mentorship and reskilling mid-career talent into orchestration roles. Scenario-plan now: if 30% of your team can be automated, what remains distinctively human in your brand?

Closing Thought

Maybe Mo Gawdat is right. Maybe we will all be replaced. And maybe that will be in six months (Mo is predicting AGI – Artificial General Intelligence – AI that can understand, learn, and reason across any task with human-level intelligence or better, by 2026). But creativity has never been about tools. It’s about ideas that make your palms sweat, that start arguments, that change behavior, that feel alive. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst. And if the algorithm finally does replace us, let’s make it work for the privilege, and let’s make sure it has excellent taste.

Sources: Mo Gawdat, former Google X executive, Business Insider, 2025, Jo Malone CBE, profile in Entrepreneur Middle East, 2019, McKinsey & Company, State of AI reports, 2024–2025, PwC Global AI Study, 2024, LinkedIn Workforce Data, 2023–2024, Digital Marketing Institute, 2025, Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus, 2017

I’ve been in the attention business my entire career. My job is to make people look—at ads, at ideas, at things they didn’t know they wanted until someone made them impossible to ignore.

But the game is changing. Soon we won’t be fighting for people’s attention. We’ll be fighting for their AI’s approval.

Picture this: you spend months building the perfect campaign only for your audience’s personal AI to intercept it—scan it, summarize it and decide it’s “not worth showing right now.” It’s like designing a roadside billboard that only self-driving cars will ever see. AI is becoming the gatekeeper to human attention, filtering what deserves to reach us and what doesn’t.

The Great Time Heist

For years marketing has treated attention like a resource to exploit. “Engagement” was just a polite word for addiction.

Infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications—they became engineered traps. The Center for Humane Technology estimates that the average person loses 3.5 hours a day to these “engagement loops.” That’s more than a full day every week spent being manipulated by algorithms that mistake compulsion for connection.

Consumer backlash isn’t coming because of privacy or data—it’s coming because we stole people’s time. We built the attention economy. AI is about to take it back.

The Algorithm Flips Allegiance

AI used to work for marketers. Now it’s switching sides.

Google’s AI Overviews automatically summarize search results for users—skipping links, headlines and your brand’s carefully optimized content. In its first weeks users discovered bizarre responses. When someone asked, “Why won’t my cheese stick to pizza?” the AI suggested adding glue “to help the cheese stick better.” Another query about mineral intake led it to advise, “Eat one rock per day for fiber.”

It was absurd, but the bigger problem wasn’t accuracy—it was authority. These AI answers appeared above every brand, every source, every expert. The model didn’t wait for the brand to clarify or for journalists to fact-check. It declared truth instantly and confidently and millions believed it before anyone could correct it.

AI no longer works for just brands. It works for everyone.

AI as Time Guardian

Consumers’ personal AIs will soon defend their minutes the way antivirus software protects files. They’ll screen calls, summarize meetings, delete spam and automatically decline anything they decide isn’t worth attention.

Apple Intelligence already does this on iPhones and Macs, grouping notifications by importance and summarizing emails so users don’t have to read them all. Microsoft’s Copilot does the same inside companies, hiding “low-priority” updates from employees until it decides they’re relevant. 

Advertising is the life blood of the major search and social platforms.  But we are not far away form a time when AI will sweep those away to find, filter and deliver only messages it believes are relevant to its master.

McKinsey projects that by 2030, 70% of digital engagement will be AI-mediated. In other words, humans will no longer directly choose most of what they see online—their AIs will. Getting noticed won’t depend on audience size. It’ll depend on algorithmic permission.

Marketing Enters the Age of Permission

Persuasion is no longer enough. You need eligibility.

If your content isn’t considered relevant, transparent or useful, it may never even reach the person you created it for. Microsoft’s enterprise Copilot already deprioritizes messages it labels “low-value.” The same logic will soon apply to everything—from social posts to paid ads.That means marketers must start writing for machines as much as for people. Your copy has to be clear, contextual and aligned with signals AIs read as trustworthy. Otherwise, it gets filtered out before the human ever sees it. The AI isn’t your audience—it’s your gatekeeper.

The New KPI—Time Well Spent

The brands that win won’t be the ones that dominate people’s attention but the ones that give it back.

Duolingo redesigned its app in 2024 to make lessons shorter and simpler, removing several engagement “nudges” that used to keep users scrolling. Retention jumped 14%. Amazon’s UX team now tracks “clicks saved” as a measure of satisfaction, not just clicks made. And Accenture’s 2024 Digital Trust Report found that 79% of consumers are more loyal to brands that respect their time and attention.

The new bragging right isn’t “time spent.” It’s “time returned.”

People May Distrust AI—Yet Listen to It Anyway

Humans don’t fully trust AI but they still obey it. Pew Research found that 62% of users question AI-generated answers yet 81% act on them anyway.

When Google’s glue-pizza fiasco went viral people mocked it—but they kept using the feature hours later. Why? Because even when AI gets it wrong it sounds right. Its tone carries confidence and finality.

I’ve said it before: we may not believe AI but we believe it first. And in an age of instant information, first impressions win.

The Human Element Strikes Back

AI can filter information but not intention. That’s where humans still win.

Campaigns that sound human—messy, flawed, real—cut through the algorithmic haze. Patagonia’s annual environmental reports aren’t flashy but they’re brutally honest, which is why they’re shared far beyond the brand’s customers. IKEA’s “Buy Back Friday” encouraged people to return furniture instead of buying new. Heineken’s “The Closer” literally told people to log off and stop working.

These messages succeed because they sound like people talking to people. Edelman’s 2024 Trust Barometer found that 78% of consumers are more loyal to brands that “demonstrate humanity.” The more AI automates communication, the more people crave something unmistakably human.

I’ve spent a lifetime helping brands get noticed. Now the goal is to be allowed in the room.

The marketers who survive won’t just compete for attention—they’ll compete for permission. When AI shields people from noise, and time becomes the rarest currency, earning even a second of genuine engagement will become the ultimate victory.

Sources: Center for Humane Technology (2024), Google AI Overviews coverage: The Verge and BBC (2024), McKinsey & Company, AI & Consumer Engagement Study (2025), Apple Intelligence launch, WWDC (2024), Microsoft Copilot Report (2024), Duolingo Impact Report (2024), Amazon UX Research via Wall Street Journal (2024), Accenture Digital Trust Report (2024), Pew Research Center (2025), Edelman Trust Barometer (2024)

I have spent years refining my approach to travel planning, not because I enjoy the process (well maybe just a little), but because I hate inefficiency. I know exactly where I want to sit on a plane (right-side window for long-haul, left-side aisle for short hops, if you’re curious) and I often plan packing lists weeks in advance. To be fair, a lot of my travel has been too far flung places often for weeks, sometimes for months at a time. So you can understand why I fuss. At one point, I was flying between Boston and Moscow every two weeks, then between Moscow and Havana every month. I developed an instinct for optimizing layovers, outsmarting airline algorithms and finding interesting hotel options. I wasn’t just booking flights; I was engineering the smoothest possible experience.

Planning my recent South American itinerary with AI was a revelation. Flights, hotels, restaurants, and optimal routes—curated to my exact preferences, with no late-night deep dives into Kayak’s search filters. It felt like having an equally obsessive travel agent, minus the attitude and commission fees. AI didn’t just save time—it improved my decisions. It found better flight combinations far faster than I would have, flagged off-peak dates and alternative routes that cut my costs, and structured my itinerary—all in minutes instead of hours or days.

This kind of optimization isn’t just a convenience—it’s a fundamental shift in how travel works. AI isn’t just making individual trips more efficient; it’s changing how the entire tourism industry operates. It’s reshaping how destinations market themselves, how hotels price their rooms, how airlines optimize their flights, and how travelers make decisions. And the ripple effects go beyond travel itself. As AI changes where, when, and how people move through the world, it’s also shifting how they shop, where they eat, and even what luxury goods they buy along the way.

How AI is Overturning the Travel and Hospitality Industry

For the past two decades, online travel agencies like Expedia, Booking.com, and Google Travel have built their businesses on the idea that travelers want more choices. Their entire model is built on search—giving users endless flight and hotel options and leaving them to sift through the results. But AI is quietly dismantling this system. Instead of requiring travelers to scroll through pages of flights and accommodations, AI travel assistants can now build entire itineraries in seconds, eliminating the need for manual search altogether.

The shift is already happening. Platforms like GuideGeek provide AI-generated travel plans via WhatsApp, bypassing traditional online travel agencies entirely. Google’s AI-driven search is beginning to merge flight, hotel and activity planning into one seamless experience. Hopper’s AI pricing model already predicts flight prices with 95 percent accuracy, saving travelers up to 10 percent by recommending the best time to book. Meanwhile, AI-driven pricing engines for hotels and airlines are adjusting rates in real-time, ensuring travelers see the most optimized price at the exact moment they’re ready to book. Travelers expect this level of AI involvement—68 percent now rely on AI-driven price tracking and automatic rebooking, and 62 percent say they would trust an AI-generated itinerary over their own research. I’m not quite at that high level of trust just yet. AI still has a lot of kinks to work out, in my opinion.

But price optimization is just the beginning. AI is also reshaping how destinations compete for visitors. For years, tourism boards have relied on great PR, influencer campaigns, slick advertising, and SEO to attract travelers. Now, destinations must figure out how to get AI to recommend them.

VisitScotland is exploring AI and data analytics to manage visitor distribution, aiming to alleviate overcrowding in popular destinations like Edinburgh by promoting lesser-known areas. Similarly, Amsterdam, as part of a broader smart city initiative, is implementing AI-powered crowd monitoring systems to manage visitor flow in high-traffic locations, preventing congestion and enhancing the tourist experience. The AI-driven tourism and hospitality market is projected to reach $6.4 billion by 2031, growing at a rate of nearly 23 percent annually, as cities and tourism boards adapt to AI-powered travel recommendations.

And this isn’t just affecting airlines and hotels. AI’s influence over travel decisions is fundamentally changing how and where people shop, eat, and experience destinations.

AI’s Impact on Travel is Reshaping Many Industries

AI’s role in travel doesn’t end once the itinerary is booked—it extends into every industry that interacts with travelers along the way. Shopping, dining, and entertainment are all shifting as AI-driven travel recommendations change where people go and what they buy once they get there.

Retail is rapidly evolving as AI reshapes how travelers shop. At Singapore’s Changi Airport, AI enhances the shopping experience through personalized recommendations and digital merchandising. Luxury brands like Gucci and Farfetch use AI to curate tailored shopping experiences, leveraging digital insights to recommend high-end purchases based on past spending patterns. Farfetch employs AI-driven real-time recommendations to match customers with products aligned with their style and preferences. Stitch Fix integrates AI into its styling services, using data-driven insights to personalize fashion selections for travelers. As AI continues to influence consumer choices, its role in shaping retail and luxury purchasing decisions during travel is expanding rapidly.

Restaurants are being reshaped by AI-driven recommendations as well. Instead of searching Yelp or asking hotel concierges for restaurant suggestions, travelers are increasingly relying on AI-powered dining apps that integrate menu preferences, dietary restrictions, and previous dining habits. A tourist who enjoys fine dining in New York soon may be automatically be recommended a similar Michelin-starred experience in Tokyo, without ever needing to research it themselves. AI is also helping restaurants predict demand, ensuring that staffing and inventory levels adjust in real time based on anticipated customer patterns which take into account seasonality and tourism.

Even entertainment is shifting. AI-driven recommendations are influencing which concerts, shows, and cultural experiences travelers prioritize. Theme parks and major attractions are using AI to optimize visitor flow, preventing overcrowding and ensuring better guest experiences. The same way AI is directing travelers to less-visited destinations to combat over-tourism, it’s also shaping nightlife and event recommendations to distribute crowds more efficiently.

What Brands Need to Do Now

If AI is dictating how travelers move through the world, then every business that relies on tourism—from hotels to retailers to restaurants—needs to make sure they’re getting recommended. The fight for visibility is no longer happening in Google search results; it’s happening inside AI algorithms…and “Travelgorithms”.

Brands need to rethink how they approach digital marketing. Traditional SEO won’t cut it when AI assistants are answering travel queries directly instead of providing lists of links. Companies need to integrate with AI platforms, ensuring they appear in AI-generated recommendations. Hotels need to be working with AI-powered pricing tools to stay competitive. Restaurants and retailers must ensure their data—location, reviews, menu offerings, inventory—is structured in a way that AI can easily process and use for recommendations, which likely will rely more on comments and reviews than website hype.

Partnerships will also become crucial. Hotels, airlines, and entertainment providers that collaborate on bundled AI-driven experiences will have a major advantage. AI isn’t just optimizing one part of the travel experience—it’s connecting all of them. The brands that thrive will be the ones that understand how AI links travel decisions to purchasing behavior and position themselves accordingly.

The Algorithm Has Taken Over—Now What?

AI isn’t just making travel easier—it’s controlling the entire experience, from how we book flights to what we buy when we arrive. Every industry that relies on tourism and hospitality—from luxury retail to dining and entertainment—is being reshaped by AI’s ability to redirect consumer demand.

For businesses, the challenge isn’t just understanding AI—it’s figuring out how to influence AI-driven decision-making. Travel brands, retailers, and service providers who fail to adapt will find themselves increasingly invisible in a world where AI, not human choice, dictates consumer behavior. The power isn’t in the advertising anymore—it’s in the algorithm that decides which options are presented to the consumer in the first place.

The shift isn’t about convenience. It’s about control. AI isn’t just responding to demand—it’s shaping it.

• Phocuswright
• Skift
• Travel Weekly
• Mize Tech
• PRNewswire

I hate DJs. Not because they’re untalented or uninspiring. I can appreciate the artistry of spinning a great set. But let’s face it: DJs don’t create; they curate. They’re masters of creating a vibe. They take someone else’s music, remix it, and layer in a beat drop that makes us forget it’s just a mash-up of existing work. It’s entertaining in the club, and it may be great to dance to—but they are just repackaging someone else’s work.

Artificial Intelligence, in today’s content landscape, is that DJ. It takes existing information, stitches it together, and delivers something that appears shiny and new. It’s impressive. it’s just not very original.

Content creation has become so accessible that anyone with a ChatGPT account can churn out an article or social post in minutes. The result? A crowded space where everyone sounds eerily similar. But here’s the hard truth: the lower the barrier to entry, the harder the climb to stand out. Brands and creators need to do more than remix. They need to compose.

I don’t want to sound like I’m fighting the machines—an old dog unwilling to learn new tricks. In fact, I continue to be an early adopter and have fully embraced AI as a tool to expedite my content creation. I’m in the game. I just don’t think that AI should be used as a crutch for creators in a sad race to sameness.

Beyond the Algorithm: Why Originality Still Matters

It’s right there on the package: “artificial”. AI is a remix artist. It processes what already exists—facts, figures, opinions, headlines—and spits out something that sounds insightful but lacks one crucial ingredient: originality. Sure, it can appear polished and professional, but if your brand leans on AI too heavily, you risk blending into the mass of generically “good” content floating around. And in a saturated market, “good” is a death sentence.

We all know that AI is only as smart as the data it’s trained on. It doesn’t innovate; it regurgitates. Brands relying entirely on AI will find themselves locked in a rehashing arms race, competing to see who can remix yesterday’s trends the fastest. But audiences? They want the cutting-edge. They want the first drop of a new song, not the fifteenth remix.

The fact is: many content creators today are rank amateurs. But because the bar has been set so low, they think they are geniuses. They often behave like students rushing to turn in a term paper. Instead of tapping their imagination, they tap in a prompt to AI. And if they haven’t already developed real writing skills, thanks to AI, it’s possible they never will.

The Competitive Edge of Original Research

Original data is your golden ticket to staying ahead in a world where AI commoditizes content. Why? Because it’s rare. Most people (and let’s be honest, many brands) are lazy. It’s easier to rehash what’s already out there than to invest in primary research. But that’s precisely why gathering and sharing fresh data gives you an edge.

Want to lead your industry conversation? Publish an in-depth survey that answers your audience’s burning questions. Conduct interviews with industry experts. Dig into your own customer data for insights no one else has. While everyone else is remixing yesterday’s headlines, you’re creating tomorrow’s talking points.

A simple survey or a few well-placed interviews can yield insights that AI, no matter how advanced, simply cannot produce. And it’s easier than ever to conduct, tabulate and generate reports based on original research. In fact, that’s one of the best use cases for AI in the content arena.

AI tools like Typeform and SurveyMonkey can streamline the process of creating and distributing surveys, allowing users to quickly gather data from large audiences. For more advanced functionality, platforms like Qualtrics can design sophisticated surveys tailored to specific research goals. AI-powered transcription tools like Otter.ai or Descript can record and transcribe interviews in real time, turning conversations into easily searchable text. Once data is collected, tools like MonkeyLearn or Tableau use AI to analyze and visualize data trends, making it simple to identify key insights. Finally, AI writing assistants like ChatGPT or Grammarly can craft polished, professional reports, summarizing findings and presenting them in a clear, concise format.

These tools can handle the heavy lifting, quickly and affordably, leaving the meaningful analysis and storytelling to humans.

Life Experience as a Differentiator

Let’s talk about something else AI can’t do: live. It can’t watch a sunrise, endure heartbreak or belly-laugh at a great joke. It doesn’t bring the messy, beautiful texture of human experience to its writing.

This is where human content creators still have the upper hand. Your life experience isn’t just a lens for understanding the world—it’s a storytelling weapon. A statistic about customer loyalty is fine, but when paired with an anecdote about the time you personally and painstakingly chose one brand over another, it becomes memorable. Relatable. Real.

Brands that win will be the ones that infuse data with human stories. It’s the difference between a spreadsheet and a great novel. One gives you information. The other gives you meaning.

Avoiding the AI Dependency Trap

I know, I know. AI tools are seductive. They’re fast, efficient, and pretty good at basic, and not so basic, tasks like summarizing reports or generating drafts. But if your brand leans on AI for everything, you’ll quickly fall into the homogenization trap. AI can only remix what’s already out there, so the more you depend on it, the less distinctive your voice becomes.

Avoiding this dependency doesn’t mean ignoring AI—it means using it wisely. AI is an incredible assistant, but it’s a terrible boss. (Though that may be in our future. See “Who’s the Boss? AI Agents: Will They Work for Us, or Will We Work for Them?”) Use it to handle the grunt work (drafting outlines, compiling data), but let human insight, creativity, and originality steer the final product.

Practical Tips for Standing Out in an AI-Driven World

1. Invest in Original Research
   Don’t just talk about industry trends—create them. Poll your audience, interview experts, or analyze your customer data to generate insights no one else has.
2. Infuse Content with Personal Insight
   Your experience is your edge. Use it. Whether it’s an anecdote, a hard-learned lesson, or a fresh perspective, inject yourself into the narrative.
3. Leverage AI Strategically
   Let AI handle repetitive tasks like research or summarizing, but don’t let it define your content. Use it as a tool, not a crutch.
4. Focus on Depth Over Volume
   In the race to produce more, don’t sacrifice quality. One deeply-researched, original piece will do more for your brand than ten generic blog posts.
5. Build Emotional Resonance
   Data is important, but connection is everything. Craft stories that speak to your audience’s aspirations, fears, and challenges.

Winning with Originality

Take a look at brands like Patagonia and Oatly. I have no idea if they use AI tools in their content creation nor if its exclusively driven by human creativity. But I do know that both brands are known for their unique, authentic storytelling and often emphasize direct involvement in their content creation, which suggests that there is a firm human hand at the wheel.

Patagonia doesn’t just recycle environmental statistics; it tells compelling, deeply human stories about sustainability and activism. For example, their documentary series, like Public Trust, explores the fight to protect public lands through in-depth storytelling and firsthand interviews. Their website features long-form narratives from adventurers and activists who are on the ground fighting environmental battles. These aren’t just facts stitched together—they’re authentic stories shaped by years of field research, human connection, and direct involvement in the causes they support. This isn’t work that AI could pull from a database—it requires lived experiences, genuine relationships, and an intimate understanding of the issues.

Or consider a smaller player like Oatly, whose quirky, irreverent campaigns stand out in a sea of bland health-food messaging. Their “Wow No Cow!” slogan and offbeat content don’t rely on algorithmically generated trends—they’re deeply rooted in the brand’s identity as disruptors in the dairy industry. Oatly’s CEO even purportedly wrote the copy for some of the campaigns himself, and the brand famously created an entire department of disobedience to ensure their messaging always challenges norms. Whether it’s their straightforward ingredient transparency or their bold packaging copy, Oatly’s approach reflects intentional, human-driven creativity that pushes boundaries rather than playing it safe with preexisting formulas.

The common thread between these brands is clear: they rely on human insight, creativity, and lived values. Their work goes far beyond AI’s ability to remix; it’s grounded in authenticity and a commitment to original storytelling that machines can’t replicate.

The Business Case for Human-Driven Content

Now that everyone is in the content business, the easiest way to stand out is to stop doing what everyone else is doing. Original research and human insight make your brand not just another DJ but the songwriter everyone wants to hear.

Audiences value trust, credibility, and authenticity. And while AI can fake these qualities in the short term, true connection comes from something only humans can provide: a spark of originality and the courage to take creative risks.

In the end, DJs have their place. AI has its place. But if you want to lead, innovate, and make your audiences excited about your brand, you can’t just take the lazy route.

AI is a tool. Use it to streamline, enhance, and amplify your work—but don’t let it take over. The future of content belongs to those who combine research, insight, and humanity to create something truly original. And that’s a song worth listening to.

Let’s start with me: I’ve almost entirely shifted to ChatGPT for answering my questions. Google? I touch it less and less each day. My phone might still think it’s a big deal, but I’m moving on. News? Sure, I still lean on reliable content curators like CNN for headlines and Delish for interesting new side dishes recipes. But will I continue to do so in the future? Dunno.

According to Adobe’s 2024 Digital Trends Report, 73% of consumers are now comfortable relying on AI for product recommendations—up from just 45% two years ago. If AI can curate my news, recipes, and shopping lists better than human editors, what’s to stop me from leaving even trusted sources behind?

Even as I write this, Apple’s new AI tools are growing on me. Siri and Alexa, my digital “sister wives,” already run my home with eerie precision. (I swear sometimes I can hear them gossiping about my receding hairline.)

So, if I’m shifting how I find information and make decisions, how many millions of others are doing the same? And more importantly, how can brands adapt to this brave new world where AI assistants, not humans, are becoming the real decision-makers?

The Rise of AI as Your Next Customer

AI assistants are no longer just helpful tools; they’re gatekeepers to your brand. Today’s consumer might not be asking you directly which smartwatch to buy—they’re asking ChatGPT, Alexa, or Siri. And here’s the kicker: those AI assistants aren’t recommending products based on those catchy slogans my agency gets paid to create or even on our SEO prowess. They’re crunching data, weighing reviews, and factoring in their algorithms’ “opinions.”

According to a 2024 report by Gartner, over 50% of online product searches are now conducted through AI-driven assistants instead of traditional search engines. And it’s not just for shopping: Google recently reported a drop in “how-to” searches as more people turn to generative AI for step-by-step guides. The implications for marketing are seismic.

From Optimization to Persuasion: The New Rules of Engagement

Let’s say you’re selling gourmet dog food. In the past, your goal was to rank high on Google and craft a catchy YouTube clip. Now? You need to convince the AI that your product is worth recommending when someone asks, “What’s the best organic dog food for senior pets?”

1. Structure Your Data Like a Pro
   AI assistants live and die by structured data—metadata, schema markup, and robust product descriptions. If you don’t make your product easy for an AI to “read,” you might as well not exist. For example, Petco’s collaboration with Google ensures its inventory is optimized for assistant-driven shopping queries, putting it a step ahead of competitors.
2. Social Proof Matters More Than Ever
   AI assistants heavily rely on consumer reviews and ratings. Want to land in Alexa’s good graces? Earn glowing feedback. And not just on Amazon—AI is scanning aggregated review sites, social media sentiment, and even Reddit threads. That’s why brands like Warby Parker invest heavily in post-purchase engagement, encouraging customers to leave detailed, positive reviews.
3. Speak Their Language
   No, literally. Many brands are creating voice-activated AI campaigns to build relationships with AI assistants. Nestlé, for example, launched an Alexa skill that recommends recipes using Nestlé products, essentially turning Alexa into a sales rep in your kitchen.

What Happens When AI Predicts Your Needs?

Here’s where things get really interesting. In 2025, predictive shopping is expected to grow by 35% year-over-year, according to a recent McKinsey study. Imagine this: Alexa notices you’re running low on coffee pods and automatically reorders your preferred brand before you even think about it.

For brands, this means one thing: becoming the default choice.

Take Procter & Gamble’s Tide. By partnering with Amazon, Tide became the preferred detergent for Alexa’s auto-reordering feature. That’s a coveted position because once AI locks in on a recommendation, consumers rarely question it. It’s the ultimate “set-it-and-forget-it” strategy.

Ethical AI: Building Trust with Machines and Humans

But with great power comes great…well, ethical concerns. Who decides which brands AI assistants recommend? Pay-for-play models risk alienating consumers, and algorithmic biases could harm smaller or minority-owned businesses.

Consider the backlash Amazon faced when users discovered Alexa was nudging them toward Amazon Basics products over competitors. Consumers want transparency—if they think an AI assistant is “rigged,” trust evaporates. For marketers, this means being proactively transparent about how and why your product earns top AI recommendations.

Marketing to Machines—and People—Simultaneously

Here’s the paradox: while AI is becoming a dominant decision-maker, humans still value emotional connection. Brands that find ways to resonate with consumers and appeal to AI will win big.

Spotify uses AI to curate personalized playlists, but it doesn’t stop there. By encouraging users to name their playlists and share them on social media, Spotify taps into emotional engagement while optimizing for AI-driven discovery.

Walmart’s integration with Google Assistant lets customers add items to their carts via voice commands, simplifying the shopping process. But behind the scenes, Walmart ensures its product data is meticulously structured, so Google knows exactly what to recommend.

The Big Question: Are You Ready?

If you’re not thinking about how AI assistants interpret, rank, and recommend your brand, you’re already behind. The future of marketing isn’t just about capturing human attention—it’s about winning over the algorithms shaping their choices.

After all, if Alexa and Siri can be trusted with our biggest secrets (they know…they KNOW!), they can certainly decide what coffee, detergent, or new Brussel sprouts recipe ends up in my life.

Are you ready to sell to the machines? Because they’re already shopping for us.