~The AI + Marketing Weekly~

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• The New Yorker published a deep profile on Sam Altman asking if he can be trusted to control our future - there’s a growing gap between how casually we use these tools and how much power sits behind them (The New Yorker)

• Visible AI in marketing is more likely to hurt trust than help it - when consumers can tell AI made something, especially if it replaces human interaction, trust goes down. Most people don’t want a reminder that a machine made the thing they’re looking at (eMarketer)

• Product feeds are now an organic strategy in AI search - AI-driven search pulls structured data directly into answers, so it’s less about pages ranking and more about whether your data is actually usable. If the data isn’t clean, you just don’t show up (Search Engine Land)

• Anthropic’s most powerful model is too dangerous to release publicly - they’re only previewing Mythos to Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon because they’re worried it can find and exploit security flaws at scale. The project is called Glasswing (Anthropic)

• Meta finally debuted its first proprietary model, Muse Spark - this is nine months and $14.3 billion after bringing in Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang. It’s free, multimodal, and rolling out across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to 3+ billion users (Meta)

• Poke is an AI agent you access through text message - works through iMessage, SMS, or Telegram with no app download. Handles your calendar, email monitoring, and smart home control through plain text. Backed by Spark Capital and valued at $300M (Poke)

• Canva just acquired Simtheory and Ortto - they’re pushing hard from design tool to full-stack marketing OS. Calling it the “biggest evolution in Canva’s history” and teasing more at Canva Create on April 16 (Canva)

🗞️ top ai + marketing news

power, people, and who shapes AI

Inside Anthropic’s effort to give Claude a moral compass
The Washington Post | ~7-min read
Anthropic has been working with religious thinkers, including Christian groups, to shape how Claude responds to moral and ethical questions. The idea is to make the model more grounded in real-world value systems instead of purely abstract rules.
My take: This is one of those things that sounds strange until you think about it for a second. If AI is going to answer messy human questions, someone is going to influence how it does that.

Sam Altman may control our future. Can he be trusted?
The New Yorker | ~10-min read
A deep profile of Altman and OpenAI’s growing influence, looking at the tension between ambition, control, and public accountability as AI becomes more embedded in daily life.
My take: There’s a growing gap between how casually we use these tools and how much power sits behind them.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s 2025 shareholder letter
About Amazon | ~8-min read
Jassy lays out Amazon’s AI strategy across AWS, advertising, logistics, and retail. The throughline is pretty simple: AI is being layered into everything, not treated as a separate bet.
My take: Amazon rarely overcomplicates its story. This reads like “we’re putting AI everywhere it can make money,” which is probably the most honest version of what most big companies are doing.

search, discovery, and the shift to AI-first

Why product feeds are now an organic strategy in AI search
Search Engine Land | ~5-min read
As AI-driven search pulls structured data directly into answers, product feeds are becoming a core part of organic visibility. It’s less about pages ranking and more about data being usable.
My take: This is SEO getting very literal. If the data isn’t clean, you just don’t show up.

FAQ: Agentic commerce and how brands should respond
eMarketer | ~5-min read
A practical breakdown of how AI agents are starting to handle product discovery and purchasing, and what brands need to change to stay competitive in that flow.
My take: The funnel is getting shorter, but also weirder. You’re not just convincing a person anymore.

ads, creative, and what’s actually working

Meta pushes further into AI-generated ad creation
Marketing Brew | ~4-min read
Meta is continuing to build tools that generate creative, targeting, and variations automatically. The goal is to make ad creation faster and more scalable directly inside the platform.
My take: Convenient, yes. Differentiated, less clear. If everyone’s using the same tools, the bar just shifts somewhere else.

Brands, agencies, and what they’ve learned marketing to AI systems
Fast Company | ~5-min read
CMOs and agencies are starting to think about AI systems as an audience of their own, which changes how content is structured, tagged, and distributed.
My take: It sounds dramatic, but it’s already happening. People search, AI answers, and brands have to fit into that answer somehow.

AI ads are everywhere. Consumers aren’t always into it
CBS News | ~5-min read
Coverage of how AI-generated ads are scaling quickly, along with the mixed reaction from consumers who sometimes find them off or untrustworthy.
My take: People don’t mind AI. They mind bad creative. A lot of AI ads just happen to be bad.

trust, authenticity, and the brand gap

Visible AI in marketing is more likely to hurt trust than help it
eMarketer | ~3-min read
Research shows that when AI use is obvious to consumers, it’s more likely to reduce trust than increase it, especially if it replaces human interaction or feels deceptive.
My take: This tracks. Most people don’t want a reminder that a machine made the thing they’re looking at.

AI might be the best opportunity we’ve had for authentic brand content
CMSWire | ~5-min read
The argument here is that as low-effort AI content floods the market, genuinely thoughtful, human work stands out more than it used to.
My take: The bar didn’t go up. The floor dropped. That’s a different kind of opportunity.

research, data, and what’s actually changing

Stanford AI Index Report 2026
Stanford HAI | ~12-min skim
A comprehensive look at AI adoption, investment, performance, and societal impact across industries. The big picture: usage is up, expectations are high, and the outcomes are uneven.
My take: These reports are useful mostly for the scale. Everyone is in it, but not everyone is getting the same results.

safety, risk, and the edge cases

Anthropic says its new model is a cybersecurity wake-up call
The New York Times | ~6-min read
Anthropic claims its latest model significantly raises the stakes for cybersecurity, with capabilities that could both strengthen defenses and increase risks if misused.
My take: Every capability story now comes with a second version of the same story, just flipped. More power, same pattern.

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👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Shama Hyder - “Trust Is the AI Moat Nobody’s Talking About”
While AI commoditizes execution and access still matters, the scarcest resource in a world of infinite competent-looking content is whether people actually believe you.

Richard King - “Claude Has Six Layers. Most People Are Stuck on Layer One.”
A breakdown of Claude’s six layers (Chat, Projects, Cowork, Skills, Connectors, Code) for product marketers, arguing most of the real value sits beyond the basic chat window and takes about 10 minutes to unlock.

Ira Bodnar - “Connect Your Ad Accounts to Claude in 5 Minutes”
A step-by-step guide for connecting Google Ads, Meta Ads, and GA4 to Claude via MCP, with five specific audit prompts to immediately surface wasted spend and performance leaks.

Anisha Jain - “9 Free Fixes to Stop Burning Claude Credits”
Nine tactics (file compression, batching messages, switching models, editing vs. resending) to dramatically reduce token usage without upgrading to a paid plan.

Claire Roberts - “Sam Altman Just Confirmed Social Media Is Broken” Altman’s recent blog post effectively admitted social media algorithms are “misaligned AI” designed to override users’ long-term interests, and Roberts argues regulators can no longer claim ambiguity when the builders themselves are confirming the harm.

Michael Leibovich - “Claude Code Gave Me an Always-On Chief of Staff”
A senior Adobe leader shares how Claude Code + Obsidian + Earmark replaced a generic AI setup with one that reflects his own experience and pattern recognition, arguing it’s a clarity exercise, not a technical one.

Michael Crist - “The Non-Technical Person’s Complete Guide to Claude Code”
A CEO who can’t write code walks through installing and using Claude Code from scratch, covering email integration, building dashboards from spreadsheets, and why context-building matters more than prompting.

Julie Austin - “AI Isn’t Cheating. It’s Just the Latest Thing Women Need to Stop Feeling Guilty About.”
The gap in women’s AI adoption isn’t about tech fear but imposter syndrome and the belief that if something makes work easier, you haven’t earned it. Using AI for efficiency is common sense, not a moral failure.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

Meta’s AI finally shows up
Nine months and $14.3 billion after bringing in Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang, Meta debuted Muse Spark, its first proprietary model. Free, multimodal, and rolling out across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. With 3+ billion users as distribution, benchmark rankings stop mattering.

Anthropic’s most powerful model is too dangerous to release
Anthropic is previewing Mythos only to a handpicked group including Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, over fears it can find and exploit security flaws at scale. The initiative is called Project Glasswing. OpenAI is building a rival model with a similar limited rollout.

Claude Managed Agents
A new suite of APIs for building and deploying cloud-hosted AI agents at scale, handling all the infrastructure so teams can focus on the product. Claude Cowork also went generally available the same week. Early adopters include Notion, Asana, and Sentry.

Canva goes on another shopping spree
Canva acquired Simtheory (AI agent platform) and Ortto (marketing automation and CDP, 11,000+ customers), a hard push from design tool to full-stack marketing OS. The “biggest evolution in Canva’s history” is teased at Canva Create on April 16.

Perplexity wants to be your personal CFO
Perplexity expanded its Plaid integration so users can now link bank accounts, credit cards, and loans for a single AI-powered view of their finances. Ask freeform questions and build custom dashboards from real account data.

Microsoft plots its own OpenClaw
Microsoft confirmed it’s building OpenClaw-inspired features for 365 Copilot: an always-on agent that completes multi-step tasks with enterprise-grade security controls. Preview expected at Microsoft Build in June.

Poke: AI agents via text message
An AI agent you access through iMessage, SMS, or Telegram with no app download required. Handles calendar, email monitoring, smart home control, and more through plain text. Backed by Spark Capital and General Catalyst, valued at $300M.

Google Eloquent
Google quietly dropped an AI dictation app on iOS with zero announcement. Strips filler words, polishes speech into clean text, runs fully offline and free. Android coming soon.

Haast raises $12M
AI compliance platform for marketing content. As AI floods pipelines with content, legal teams can’t keep up. Haast embeds approval logic directly into existing workflows. Fortune 500 customers, 4.5x revenue growth, zero churn.

Pomo raises $4.5M
Agentic marketing intelligence platform from ex-Google DeepMind engineers. Monitors competitor moves and demand signals continuously, surfacing the highest-priority actions each day. Built for mid-market teams making too many decisions with too little clarity.

Scroll.ai
Build an enterprise-grade AI agent trained on your own data. Embed it on your site, drop it in Slack, or share it as a link. Works on newsletters, documentation, internal policies, and more.

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Anthropic - Community Marketing Lead

Scale AI - Product Marketing Lead, GenAI

Samsara - Staff Product Marketing Manager - AI

Ontra - Director, Content & AI Systems

Adobe - AI Evangelist, Adobe Enterprise

Stripe - Head of Integrated Campaigns, Startups & AI

Reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

Love y’all,
Carley

~The AI + Marketing Weekly~

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

The AI visibility paradox: beloved ≠ findable

Four major publications this week (WSJ, Adweek, Rolling Stone, Search Engine Land) wrote: brands can be culturally iconic and still invisible to AI.

Here’s what’s happening:

• Some brands are slapping “no AI” disclaimers on everything (Aerie led the charge). “Human-made” is becoming a trust signal - basically “no added sugar” for marketing.

• But other beloved brands aren’t showing up in AI answers at all because they’re not structured for models to read, cite, or summarize.

• Even when brands are “present” in AI, they’re often not recommendation-ready. The model hedges instead of choosing them because the positioning is vague or the problem they solve isn’t clear.

The bottom line: Being iconic in human terms isn’t enough anymore. You also have to be legible to machines. And if you can’t say what problem your brand solves in one clear sentence, AI won’t either.

This is old positioning advice wearing new clothes. But now the stakes are higher - because the machine won’t be charitable and fill in the gaps like a human might.

What else?

• OpenAI acquired TBPN - fast-growing tech talk show and media business. AI companies buying distribution and narrative control, not just talent (OpenAI)

• AI didn’t break marketing, it exposed what wasn’t working - weak positioning, bloated processes, shallow content strategies look worse when machines speed them up. AI is a stress test (Fast Company)

• Don’t let AI destroy the skills that make your company competitive - automating wrong work can erode judgment, craft, institutional knowledge. Efficiency is great until you automate your own competence away (HBR)

• Americans’ AI use increases while views on it sour - using AI more while feeling worse about it. 7 in 10 think AI will cut jobs. Adoption and affection are not the same thing (Quinnipiac)

• 125,000 users blocked Bluesky’s Attie app in first few days - new app lets you build custom social feeds by describing what you want. Second most blocked account on Bluesky behind JD Vance, lol (Bluesky)

🗞️ top ai + marketing news

brand trust, visibility, and the anti-slop reaction

Brands adopt “no AI” disclaimers to stand out amid the slop
The Wall Street Journal | ~4-min read
More brands are explicitly telling customers they are not using AI-generated imagery in ads, partly because consumer skepticism is growing and “human-made” is starting to work like a trust signal. Aerie is one of the clearest examples.
My take: “No AI” is starting to sound a lot like “no added sugar.” Marketing loves a label once it becomes a shortcut for quality.

Brands beloved by people risk being invisible to AI
Adweek | ~4-min read
The article’s point is blunt: a brand can be culturally loved and still barely show up in AI answers if it is not structured in a way models can read, cite, and summarize.
My take: Being iconic in human terms is no longer enough. Now you also have to be legible to the machines -ahhhh.

Why AI hedges about your brand instead of recommending it
Rolling Stone | ~4-min read
This piece argues that brands are often visible but not recommendation-ready in AI systems. Content alone is not enough; the model also needs confidence, clarity, and enough context to say what problem the brand actually solves.
My take: Plenty of brands are technically “present” in AI. Fewer are clear enough to be chosen (Similar sentiment as the above article.)

If you can’t say what problem your brand solves, AI won’t either
Search Engine Land | ~5-min read
A useful reminder that AI summaries tend to flatten vague brands. If your company cannot be described simply and specifically, the model will either hedge or default to generic category language.
My take: This is old positioning advice wearing new clothes. Still true.

The new rules of trust in an AI era
Fast Company | ~5-min read
As AI becomes more embedded in customer-facing experiences, trust depends more on clear disclosure, predictable behavior, and fewer surprises. People are not asking for less tech. They are asking for less weirdness.
My take: Most trust problems start with “wait, what is this doing?”

How to navigate brand authenticity in the age of AI slop
Entrepreneur | ~6-min read
This focuses on authenticity as an operational choice, not a slogan. Brands can use AI behind the scenes, but the more customer-facing the output becomes, the more careful they need to be about quality, tone, and honesty.
My take: Most audiences do not care that AI helped. They care when the result feels lazy.

search, agents, and machine-readable brands

Build your marketing ark: A framework for AI, empathy, and design
Search Engine Land | ~5-min read
This is really a framework for staying useful when AI changes how people discover and evaluate brands. The emphasis is on empathy, structured design, and creating experiences that work for both humans and AI systems.
My take: The title is a little grand, but the core idea is on it: brands need more than automation. They need coherence.

Agentic AI discovery requires machine-readable brands
MarTech | ~5-min read
As agents become more involved in search and shopping, brands need structured data, clear attributes, and consistent signals across the web. Otherwise they become harder for AI systems to recommend confidently.
My take: We are entering the era of “did the robot understand your PDP.”

What are AI agents? What marketers need to know
Sprout Social | ~6-min read
A practical explainer on what agents are, what they can do, and how they differ from regular generative AI tools. Useful for teams that keep hearing “agentic” and quietly hoping the meeting ends soon.
My take: Half the value here is just giving people a shared definition.

the stack, org design, and the work underneath the hype

The AI myths marketers believed and what the data actually shows
Exploding Topics | ~6-min read
Survey data pushes back on a few common assumptions, especially around maturity, ROI, and how many teams are truly beyond the experimentation phase.
My take: “Everyone is doing it” remains one of marketing’s least reliable sentences.

Don’t let AI destroy the skills that make your company competitive
Harvard Business Review | ~6-min read
HBR warns that automating the wrong work can quietly erode the judgment, craft, and institutional knowledge that made a company good in the first place. Efficiency is great right up until you automate your own competence away.
My take: Some work is worth keeping close, even if a spreadsheet says otherwise.

AI didn’t break marketing. It exposed what wasn’t working.
Fast Company | ~4-min read
This piece argues that AI is less a disruption than a stress test. Weak positioning, bloated processes, shallow content strategies, and bad measurement all look worse when the machine speeds them up.
My take: AI has a rude way of revealing where the work was already flimsy.

The promise and problem of AI in advertising
Marketing Brew | ~4-min read
A straightforward look at where AI is making advertising faster and cheaper, and where it creates new risks around sameness, governance, and quality control.
My take: The promise is always speed. The problem is usually taste.

From hierarchy to intelligence
Block | ~4-min read
Block is framing its org changes around a move away from hierarchy and toward faster decision-making with more intelligence built into the system. It reads like an operating model argument as much as a tech one.
My take: Every company wants to sound flatter and smarter.

AI mandates are a demand for cognitive surrender
Product Picnic | ~5-min read
A pushback on top-down AI mandates that treat tool use as a proxy for progress. The essay argues that forcing adoption without judgment, context, or room for disagreement can hollow out the work.
My take: “Use AI more” is not a strategy.

media, content, and who gets to shape the conversation

OpenAI acquires TBPN
OpenAI | ~3-min read
OpenAI acquired TBPN, the fast-growing tech talk show and media business, saying it wants to accelerate the global conversation around AI while preserving TBPN’s editorial independence. The deal also explicitly calls out comms and marketing value, not just audience reach.
My take: AI companies are starting to buy distribution and narrative control.

labor, security, and the wider AI mood

Hackers are posting the Claude Code leak with bonus malware
Wired | ~4-min read
Wired reports that leaked Claude Code materials are being reposted alongside malware, which is exactly the sort of ugly side-effect you get when hype, leaks, and opportunistic attackers meet in one place.
My take: Nothing says “hot product category” like a leak immediately turning into a malware distribution method.

Americans’ AI use increases while views on it sour
Quinnipiac University Poll | ~4-min read
Quinnipiac found that Americans are using AI more while feeling worse about it. Seven in 10 respondents said they think AI will cut jobs, and younger people were especially pessimistic.
My take: Adoption and affection are clearly not the same thing.

Oracle layoffs continue as AI spending rises
CNBC | ~4-min read
Oracle is making cuts while ramping AI infrastructure spending, part of a pattern where AI is both the justification for big investment and the backdrop for workforce reduction. I could not access the full CNBC piece directly, but recent reporting ties the layoffs to Oracle’s AI cloud build-out and broader cost pressure.
My take: The AI boom is generating two very different feelings at the same time depending on which side of the org chart you’re on.

Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence
Science | ~5-min read
New research points to a nasty social effect of sycophantic AI systems: they can reinforce bad behavior and make users more dependent, especially in advice-like contexts. I could not access the full paper directly through the browser, but the abstract and coverage point in the same direction.
My take: “The bot agrees with me” is maybe not the healthy product feature some people think it is.

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👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Culture Slant – “5 things I’ve learned about AEO for brand building”
AEO isn’t just SEO rebranded. Brands that win are cited, not just ranked. Write clear, definitive answers, build authority signals, and optimize for how LLMs quote you - not just how Google ranks you. Thank you for sharing this with me!

Hamna Aslam Khan – “Best Claude Code setups from Reddit”
Power users are turning Claude into full workflows: project folders + memory + skills + connectors. The takeaway: performance comes from setup, not prompts.

Charlie Hills – “The complete Claude guide: Chat, Cowork, Code”
Clear breakdown: Chat = thinking, Cowork = execution, Code = systems. Marketers should move from writing prompts to building repeatable pipelines.

Animalz – “AEO glossary”
AEO is quickly becoming its own discipline. This glossary is a good reset on how AI search works—from citations to retrieval—so teams can align on what actually drives visibility in LLMs.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

Netflix VOID
Netflix just open-sourced a tool that removes objects from video, and unlike every other tool, it also fixes what those objects were doing to the scene. Remove a person holding a guitar, and the guitar falls.

Canva Magic Layers
Turns any flat image into a fully editable, layered design inside Canva, so the AI visual you generated but couldn’t change is now something you can actually tweak without starting over.

Claude unified directory
You can now share skills you’ve built with teammates and your whole org in one click. Skills, connectors, and plugins all live in one place in the new directory. Available on Team and Enterprise plans - and signals Claude is building toward a full platform, not just a chat product.

Google Gemma 4
Google’s new open-source AI model family, free to use commercially, runs on your phone or laptop, no cloud required. Built on the same research as Gemini 3, just without the paywalls.

Slack gets 30 new AI features
Slackbot can now take meeting notes across any video platform, work outside of Slack on your desktop, and act as a lightweight CRM, its biggest update since Salesforce bought it for $27.7B. Powered by Claude.

Bluesky launches Attie (and it is not beloved…)
A new app that lets you build your own social feed by describing what you want to see - no coding, no settings. 125,000 users blocked it in the first few days, making it the second most blocked account on Bluesky behind JD Vance. (LOL)

Google Veo 3.1 Lite
Google’s most affordable AI video model yet, at less than half the cost of its previous tier with the same speed - and timed perfectly after OpenAI quietly shut down Sora.

OpenAI Codex goes pay-as-you-go
Teams can now add Codex-only seats to their workspace with no fixed monthly fee - you only pay for what you use, and OpenAI also dropped the standard Business seat price from $25 to $20.

Microsoft Copilot Researcher gets smarter
Copilot now uses two AI models on every research task - one writes, a second reviews and fact-checks before you see the final report. Uses both Claude and GPT under the hood. A “Council” mode shows you where the two models agree or disagree side by side.

Contralabs
An evaluation platform where real creative professionals judge AI model outputs head-to-head - measuring taste, not just accuracy. Useful benchmark if you’re trying to figure out which AI tools actually produce good creative work.

Unwrap
AI that automatically surfaces what your customers are actually saying across every channel, so you’re not manually digging through dashboards to find the patterns. Backed by Atlassian Ventures, used by Lyft, JetBlue, and Perplexity.

Beams by Teleport
A secure way to run AI agents inside your company’s systems - each agent gets its own permissions and leaves a full audit trail. MVP launches April 30. More dev-facing, but worth knowing if your team is building anything with agents.

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Google - Product Marketing Manager, Industry and Applied AI

EliseAI - Growth Strategy, Manager | Housing

Adobe - Campaign Content Manager, Applied AI

Scrunch - AI Strategist

ElevenLabs - B2B Marketing Lead - ElevenCreative

Snap Inc. - AI Community Program Manager

Reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

Love y’all,
Carley

~The AI + Marketing Weekly~

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• Pamela Anderson takes a stand against AI models in Aerie campaign - partnered with Aerie to promote natural imagery and reject AI-generated models. Saying “no AI” becoming a creative choice, not just a limitation (People)

• ChatGPT hits $100M in ad revenue and opens self-serve access in April - AI interfaces aren’t just discovery layers anymore, they’re ad platforms. (Search Engine Land)

• Reddit cracks down on bots and AI-generated activity - tightening enforcement to preserve authenticity. Platforms that protect “real” interaction will matter more, not less (Foundation Inc)

• Apple hires ex-Google executive to head AI marketing amid push to improve Siri - bringing in new leadership to strengthen AI marketing and compete more directly in the AI race. (Reuters)

• Claude can now control your Mac while you’re away - Computer Use + Dispatch opens apps, fills spreadsheets, navigates browsers. Assign tasks from your phone, it executes on desktop (Anthropic)

• ChatGPT Product Discovery launched - visual shopping with side-by-side comparisons, image search, conversational filtering. Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Walmart already feeding catalogs (OpenAI)

🗞️ top ai + marketing news

ads, platforms, and the money layer

ChatGPT hits $100M in ad revenue and is opening self-serve access in April
Search Engine Land | ~4-min read
ChatGPT has already crossed $100M in ad revenue and is rolling out self-serve access, opening the door to a much broader set of advertisers. AI interfaces are no longer just a discovery layer. They’re becoming ad platforms in their own right.
My take: This is early Google energy. The interface is new, but the ad playbook looks familiar.

OpenAI’s ad platform can’t tell advertisers if their money is working
Search Engine Land | ~4-min read
Advertisers testing OpenAI’s ad products are running into measurement gaps. Limited reporting and unclear attribution make it difficult to understand performance or justify spend.
My take: The demand will be there. Measurement will decide how fast budgets follow.

search, content, and platform control

Google tests AI-generated content in search results
Search Engine Land | ~3-min read
Google is experimenting with surfacing AI-generated content more directly in search. That further blurs the line between indexing the web and generating answers from it.
My take: Search is becoming less about links and more about synthesis.

Reddit cracks down on bots and AI-generated activity
Foundation Inc | ~4-min read
Reddit is tightening enforcement on bots and AI-generated content to preserve authenticity on the platform. As more AI content floods the internet, platforms are starting to draw clearer lines.
My take: The platforms that protect “real” interaction are going to matter more.

creative tools, products, and what sticks

OpenAI’s Sora was the creepiest app on your phone. Now it’s shutting down
TechCrunch | ~4-min read
Sora, OpenAI’s experimental video app, is being shut down after early hype and mixed reception. The product pushed boundaries, but also highlighted how unsettling some AI-generated experiences can feel in practice.
My take: Not every powerful demo needs to become a product.

org shifts, hiring, and leadership moves

Apple hires ex-Google executive to head AI marketing amid push to improve Siri
Reuters | ~3-min read
Apple is bringing in new leadership to strengthen AI marketing as it tries to reposition Siri and compete more directly in the AI race.
My take: The product matters, but the narrative is starting to matter just as much.

data, systems, and how marketing actually runs

Data built modern marketing, but AI is rewriting the rules
MarTech | ~5-min read
AI is shifting marketing away from static data analysis toward dynamic systems that continuously interpret and act. The old model of dashboards and reporting is being replaced by something more fluid.
My take: The report is no longer the output. The decision is.

Is AI making your marketing too efficient?
Newsweek | ~4-min read
AI-driven optimization can lead to over-targeting and incremental gains, but at the expense of broader reach and long-term growth. Efficiency can quietly narrow the market.
My take: You can optimize yourself into a corner.

creators, influencers, and new discovery dynamics

AI influencer discovery tools are changing how agencies cast creators
Digiday | ~5-min read
Agencies are using AI tools to identify and evaluate creators faster, shifting how talent is sourced and selected. Data is playing a bigger role in creative partnerships.
My take: Casting is starting to look more like performance marketing.

Pamela Anderson takes a stand against AI models in Aerie campaign
People | ~3-min read
Pamela Anderson partnered with Aerie to promote a campaign that emphasizes natural imagery and rejects AI-generated models, leaning into authenticity as a differentiator.
My take: Saying “no AI” is becoming a creative choice. And it’s working.

brand, trust, and what resonates now

The new rules of trust in an AI era
Fast Company | ~5-min read
As AI becomes more embedded in customer experiences, brands need to be clearer about how it’s used and where humans are still involved. Transparency is becoming a baseline expectation.
My take: People don’t expect less tech. They expect fewer surprises.

winners, momentum, and who’s actually building

The most innovative companies in applied AI 2026
Fast Company | ~6-min read
Fast Company highlights companies successfully applying AI across industries, focusing less on model development and more on real-world use cases.
My take: The interesting work is moving from labs to products people actually use.

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👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Dan Grossman – “Transfer ChatGPT knowledge to Claude with a comprehensive interview”
Dan advises marketers switching to Claude to build deep context fast: toggle on Claude’s memory, let it interview you on your work style, and then import relevant ChatGPT memory.

Chris Long – “6 AI search resources for CMOs: Insights & best practices”
Chris curates six must‑read pieces to help leaders grasp AI search, rethink vanity KPIs and understand user behavior.

Alex Lieberman – “Interactive survival guide for Claude Cowork”
Alex’s 12‑section guide urges users to adopt a delegation mindset: describe outcomes, set global instructions, connect services and let Cowork decide the steps.

Manthan Patel – “WTF Claude Code? It’s not just ChatGPT”
Manthan warns that treating Claude Code like ChatGPT misses its power: it’s an agent that lives in your file system, learns your environment and uses the right tools automatically.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

Claude Computer Use + Dispatch
Claude can now control your Mac while you’re away - open apps, fill spreadsheets, navigate browsers. Assign tasks from your phone and it executes on desktop. Research preview for Pro and Max subscribers.

Claude Code Auto Mode
New permission layer that auto-approves safe actions and blocks risky ones, so developers aren’t clicking “approve” constantly. Means faster turnarounds on creative assets and landing pages built with AI.

Claude Mythos Leak
Anthropic’s next-gen model accidentally surfaced via unsecured CMS - described as a “step change” above Opus with unprecedented cyber capabilities. Currently testing with early access customers.

ChatGPT Product Discovery
Visual shopping overhaul with side-by-side comparisons, image search, and conversational filtering via the Agentic Commerce Protocol. Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Walmart already feeding catalogs in. If you’re in e-commerce, this is the new product discovery layer to watch.

Klaviyo Composer + Customer Agent
Describe a campaign in plain language - “spring reactivation for lapsed VIPs across email and SMS” - and Composer builds it ready to launch, informed by 14 years of performance data across 193K brands. Customer Agent adds order tracking, returns, and loyalty skills.

Figma MCP Server
AI agents can now write directly to Figma files using your design system - creating and modifying real components, not just reading specs. Faster handoffs between creative and dev teams.

Gemini 3.1 Flash Live
Google’s new real-time voice model with faster responses and 2x longer conversational context. Powers Search Live expansion to 200+ countries. Relevant if you’re building voice-first customer experiences.

Phota Labs
AI photo tool that preserves your actual face across edits and new generations. Train once with 30-50 photos. Useful for consistent headshots, team pages, or brand photography without reshoots.

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Anthropic - Customer Marketing, Strategic Programs

Sendbird - Product Marketing Manager (AI-First, Full-Stack)

LinkedIn - Creative Director & Marketing AI Technologist

Sentry - Lead Product Marketing Manager, AI

Harvey - Partner Marketing Lead

Reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

Love y’all,
Carley

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• Is AI ruining our taste? - as AI makes polished work easy, more things look the same. The shift is from execution to taste. Tools are widely available, choices aren’t (NYT)

• The future of content belongs to the tastemakers - when content is cheap and endless, judgment becomes the scarce resource. Brands that know what to say, not just how to say it (Contently)

• AI can optimize marketing, but can it build belonging? - efficiency doesn’t automatically create cultural relevance. Optimization is great until it shrinks your world (Newsweek)

• Walmart says ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than its own website - people may browse with AI, but prefer familiar environments to complete purchases. Discovery is moving, trust is slower (MarTech)

• 81,000 interviews show how people are using AI at work - Anthropic analyzed real conversations. Most usage clusters around writing, analysis, and support tasks rather than full automation. Reality is still “assist” not “replace” (Anthropic)

• AI commoditizes marketing execution and elevates judgment - execution getting cheaper shifts value toward decision-making, prioritization, interpretation. Easy parts automated, hard parts becoming the job (MarTech)

• Entry-level marketing work is reshaping - roles moving away from drafting toward editing, QA, managing AI-assisted workflows. Junior roles not gone, just less forgiving (MarTech)

• Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica sue OpenAI - publishers suing over how content is used to train models. Legal battle over data ownership nowhere near settled (TechCrunch)

🗞️ top ai + marketing news

taste, creativity, and what actually matters now

Is AI ruining our taste?
The New York Times | ~6-min read
As AI makes it easier to generate polished work quickly, more things start to look the same. The piece argues the real shift is from execution to taste. The tools are widely available. The choices aren’t.
My take: The work is easier but deciding what’s worth making is harder.

The Future of Content Belongs to the Tastemakers
Contently | ~5-min read
When content is cheap and endless, judgment becomes the scarce resource. Brands that stand out will be the ones that know what to say, not just how to say it.
My take: This is quietly becoming the whole job.

The human skill AI still struggles with in writing
The Atlantic | ~7-min read
AI can replicate structure and tone, but still struggles with originality, restraint, and knowing when something actually lands. The gap shows up most clearly in creative work.
My take: You can generate ten versions. You still need someone to pick one.

AI can optimize marketing. But can it build belonging?
Newsweek | ~4-min read
AI makes it easier to target and optimize for known audiences, but that can narrow reach and limit long-term brand growth. Efficiency doesn’t automatically create cultural relevance.
My take: Optimization is great until it shrinks your world.

commerce, agents, and where the money moves

Shopify is preparing for AI shopping agents to change everything, exec says
TechCrunch | ~4-min read
Shopify is leaning into a future where AI agents handle discovery and product recommendations. That shifts how consumers find products and how brands compete for attention.
My take: If the agent is picking, your brand has to give it a reason to.

Walmart says ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than its own website
MarTech | ~4-min read
Walmart found that checkout inside ChatGPT significantly underperformed its own site. People may browse with AI, but they still prefer familiar environments to complete purchases.
My take: Discovery is moving. Trust is slower.

the stack, org design, and what work actually looks like now

AI commoditizes marketing execution and elevates judgment
MarTech | ~5-min read
Execution is getting cheaper and faster, which shifts value toward decision-making, prioritization, and interpretation. The work doesn’t disappear, but the center of gravity moves.
My take: The easy parts are getting automated. The hard parts are becoming the job.

AI is reshaping what entry-level marketing work looks like
MarTech | ~5-min read
Entry-level roles are moving away from drafting and repetitive tasks toward editing, QA, and managing AI-assisted workflows. The ladder still exists, but the first rung looks different.
My take: Junior roles are not gone. They’re just less forgiving.

Scaling AI adoption requires more than tools
Google | ~6-min read
Google focuses on the operational side of AI adoption: leadership alignment, training, and integrating AI into actual workflows. Access to tools is not the bottleneck anymore.
My take: Most teams are not blocked by tech. They’re blocked by how they work.

agencies, economics, and industry pressure

AI is squeezing marketing agencies from both sides
Search Engine Land | ~5-min read
Agencies are getting pressure from clients expecting efficiency and platforms making work more self-serve. That pushes agencies toward higher-level strategy or forces them to justify their existence.
My take: Execution is harder to sell when everyone has the same tools.

platforms, products, and the model race

OpenAI’s side projects show how fast the ecosystem is expanding
The Wall Street Journal | ~5-min read
OpenAI’s internal experiments and side projects highlight how quickly new use cases are being explored, often outside the core product. The surface area keeps expanding.
My take: The roadmap is starting to look like a scatter plot…

OpenClaw moment sparks concern AI models are becoming commodities
CNBC | ~4-min read
As models become easier to replicate or compete with, differentiation shifts away from raw capability toward distribution, ecosystem, and product experience.
My take: When the model becomes table stakes, everything else matters more.

legal, data, and ownership

Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica sue OpenAI
TechCrunch | ~4-min read
Publishers are suing OpenAI over how their content is used to train models, continuing the broader legal battle over data ownership and compensation.
My take: Oy…this fight is nowhere near settled.

research, insight, and how people actually use AI

81,000 interviews show how people are using AI at work
Anthropic | ~6-min read
Anthropic analyzed tens of thousands of real conversations to understand how AI is being used across roles. Most usage clusters around writing, analysis, and support tasks rather than full automation.
My take: The reality is still much more “assist” than “replace.”

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👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Emily Kramer – “Build marketing strategy skill in Claude Code”
Emily warns that teams who jump straight to execution with Claude Code miss out on developing the marketing strategy underpinning their work. She urges marketers to build and document strategy inside Claude so it becomes a working guide in everyday tasks.

Andrew Yeung – “Taste is the most important skill in tech”
Andrew writes that as AI lowers production costs, taste—an eye for what to create—becomes the real competitive edge. He shares six ways to hone it: keep a “taste file,” cross‑pollinate ideas, learn from making bad work, invest in learning, edit ruthlessly and develop a coherent style.

Cecilia Stallsmith – “Why campaigns fail: it’s not the idea, it’s the ship date”
Cecilia invites us all to a virtual vibe marketing webinar on April 1. She also writes that most campaigns flounder because teams never ship them, not because they’re bad ideas.

Jonathan Martinez – “Your marketing stack should live in GitHub”
Jonathan believes marketing teams should organize their AI skills, docs and workflows in GitHub so Claude Code always has context. He sees the rise of a “growth engineer” mindset where marketing adopts engineering discipline.

Kristen van Laren – “How our CEO’s post hit 300 K impressions with Claude”
Kristen explains that by feeding Claude a dataset of top‑performing posts, analyzing patterns and mining comments for ideas, her team built a content formula that helped their CEO craft a 300‑K‑impression post.

Jason Widup – “Boost marketing efficiency with AI: Claude, Clay and ICP analysis”
Jason uses Claude to automate tasks like ad‑copy and creative‑brief generation and built a marketing library from product docs and transcripts.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

Perplexity Personal Computer Always-on AI running on a dedicated Mac mini that merges your local files and apps with Perplexity Computer to work as your 24/7 digital proxy. $200/month for Max subscribers, with kill switch and full audit trail.

Perplexity Health Connects Apple Health, wearables, and health records from 1.7 million providers to give you answers grounded in your actual medical history — not SEO content. Rolling out to Pro and Max subscribers in the US.

OpenAI GPT-5.4 Mini and Nano Smaller, faster versions of GPT-5.4 for high-volume workloads. Mini approaches flagship performance at 2x speed; Nano costs $0.20 per million input tokens for classification and lightweight coding tasks.

Microsoft MAI-Image-2 Microsoft’s in-house image model lands at #3 on Arena.ai behind Google and OpenAI, with standout photorealism and readable text in images. Rolling out to Copilot and Bing Image Creator.

Google AI Studio Apps Full-stack vibe coding upgrade — the Antigravity agent understands entire project structures, provisions Firebase backends, and deploys production apps from prompts. Free tier: 60 requests/minute, 1M tokens/day.

Google Stitch AI-native design canvas that turns voice and text into high-fidelity UI prototypes in minutes. Exports to Figma or HTML/CSS — Figma shares dropped 8% on the announcement.

Google Personal Intelligence Expansion Now free for all US users across AI Mode, Gemini app, and Chrome. Connects Gmail and Photos to personalize search results — shopping recs from past purchases, travel plans from hotel confirmations.

Gemini Workspace Updates Gemini now drafts docs from your files and emails, builds spreadsheets from plain English, and answers questions across your entire Drive. “Fill with Gemini” predicts data from existing cells or live search.

Cursor Composer 2 In-house coding model fine-tuned on Kimi K2.5 with 200K context, beating Claude Opus 4.6 on Terminal-Bench while costing 86% less than Composer 1.5.

NVIDIA NemoClaw Open-source stack for running OpenClaw agents securely, announced at GTC with the new OpenShell runtime. Hardware-agnostic, enterprise-focused — early preview, not production-ready.

Manus My Computer Meta’s Manus AI goes from cloud-only to a desktop app for Mac and Windows that works directly with local files and terminals. Paid plans from $20/month.

Okara AI CMO Enter your URL and it deploys agents for SEO, GEO, content, Reddit, Hacker News, and X. Priced at $99/month — the launch video hit 8.6 million views.

Accenture Invests in DaVinci Commerce Strategic investment in the agentic commerce platform powering branded shopping experiences inside ChatGPT and other LLMs. Signals enterprise focus on AI-native storefronts.

Ahrefs MCP Server Remote MCP server that works directly in Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor — no local setup needed. Pull SEO metrics and competitor data through natural language prompts.

Picsart AI Agent Marketplace Hire AI assistants for resizing, remixing, and Shopify product editing. Four launch agents accessible via WhatsApp and Telegram with adjustable autonomy levels.

Alibaba Wukong Enterprise platform coordinating multiple agents for document editing, spreadsheets, approvals, and transcription. Built on a full DingTalk rewrite, with Slack and Teams integrations planned.

Snowflake Project SnowWork Turn conversational prompts into finished workflows — board decks, churn spreadsheets, supply chain analysis. Executes end-to-end on governed Snowflake data, now in research preview.

Mistral Forge Enterprise platform for building custom AI models from scratch on proprietary data — not just fine-tuning. Early adopters include ASML, Ericsson, and the European Space Agency.

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Siro - Content Marketing

Ideogram - Director of Growth

Stripe - Integrated Campaign Manager, Startups & AI

Lovable - Senior Solutions Marketer

Listen Labs - Growth Lead, Acquisition

AirOps - Head of Product Marketing

Anthropic - Head of Product Communications

Reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

Love y’all,
Carley

Short on time? Read the first two sections and the last one. Bookmark it, come back to it.

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A friend of mine just came back from mat leave and messaged me in a bit of a spiral. Someone in her first meeting back mentioned “MCP servers”. She’s in marketing, not eng... her whole team is using Cursor (sames!) and she doesn’t know what Cursor is.

I’ve been here working away the whole time (with an AI newsletter, too!) and I still feel overwhelmed and lost some of the time.

So I wrote her a very long message on tools to check out, people to follow. And then I thought… this should probably just be a newsletter. Because she’s not the only one coming back to a workplace that looks completely different than when she left. And the panic of “I’m so behind, I’ll never catch up” is mostly wrong. So let me walk you through what I think actually changed, especially if you are in ops, marketing, or any other non-technical role.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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most of what matters? you already have it.

You and AI can get a lot done together now. The second draft of a brief, a competitive landscape, a campaign outline, a deck structure — things that used to take days can take an hour. You bring the thinking, the context, the initial instinct. AI helps you build on it, pressure-test it with data, shape it faster than you could solo.

How much AI can do vs. how much needs to be you depends entirely on the task. Rough percentages from my own + friends’ experiences (as of March 2026 … this can change very quickly..):

• Research summaries, meeting recaps — AI can do ~80% of the lifting. You edit and steer.

• Email drafts, internal comms — Maybe ~60-70%. AI gets you a solid start, but tone and context are yours to finesse.

• Campaign briefs, strategy decks, competitive positioning — Closer to 50/50. AI can help you structure thinking and fill in data, but the actual strategic point of view is you.

• Brand voice, creative concepts, writing that needs to feel human — AI is maybe ~20-30% of the work. It can brainstorm with you, but the taste, the instinct, the “this doesn’t sound like us” — that’s all you.

• Reading the room, managing stakeholders: 0%? I trust us as humans on this more. :)

That said — I’m working hard to not start with AI. I wrote a post about this if you’re interested. I was running to ChatGPT/Claude (more on these guys, below) as my first stop for and skipping the most important step: my own brain.

Everyone has access to the same AI. Your taste, your creativity, your context — that’s the differentiator now.

it’s not a secret tab anymore

When I first started using AI at work, I’d minimize ChatGPT when someone walked by my desk. I felt almost embarrassed — like I was cheating on a test, like using it to help me edit a brief meant I couldn’t actually do my job.

That era is over.

Walk around any office right now. Cursor is open. Claude Code is running in terminals. People have custom GPTs pinned. Teams are building internal tools over lunch. It’s not a hack or a shortcut — it’s how work works now.

The awkward phase is done. It’s now about how to know when to best use it, what tool is right for what problem, and to also now know when to step away.

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the mental shift

Specific tools may come and go. I don’t think these below frameworks will.

It’s an exoskeleton, not a coworker. I love this framing from Ben Gregory. We keep trying to think of AI as a colleague or an assistant — some separate entity that “does work” for us. But the better mental model is an exoskeleton. Ford uses actual exoskeletons on their assembly lines — the worker still does the overhead lifting 4,600 times a day, but with mechanical support that reduced injuries by 83%. The human is still doing the work. They can just do dramatically more of it, more sustainably.

That’s AI. It doesn’t replace your judgment or your taste. It amplifies your capacity to use them.

The question isn’t “what can AI do for me?” It’s “where do I experience the most strain, and how can AI support that specific point?”

Decompose tasks, not roles. Also from the same piece, don’t ask “can AI do a marketer’s job?” Ask: what are the 30 things I do in a given week, and which ones could be amplified? Summarizing meeting notes, researching competitors, drafting first versions of briefs — those are amplifiable. Deciding what message matters, reading a room, understanding why a campaign didn’t land — those are you. When you break it down this way, AI stops feeling like a threat and starts feeling like a relief.

The jagged frontier. This is Ethan Mollick’s concept (Wharton professor). AI capabilities aren’t a clean line where it’s good at “easy” stuff and bad at “hard” stuff. It’s jagged. AI might pass the bar exam but fail at tic-tac-toe. It can write a decent first draft of a strategy doc but completely botch a simple math problem. The only way to learn where the frontier is for your work is to throw AI at everything and see where it shines and where it face-plants. That’s not a sign of incompetence — it’s the learning process.

Centaur or cyborg — pick your style. Also Mollick. A centaur draws a clear line: “I’ll do the strategy, AI does the summarizing.” A cyborg weaves it in constantly — starting a sentence and letting AI finish it, drafting together in real time. Most people start as centaurs and gradually become more cyborg-like. Neither is better. Both are better than not using it at all.

The 50x reframe. From Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View. Most people ask AI: “How do I speed up what I’m already doing?” Instead ask: “What would I do if I had 50 people working on this?” Then work backwards. Which parts of that dream team’s work can be simulated with AI? This stops you from making your existing process 10% faster and starts you thinking about what’s actually possible now.

If you keep having the same conversation with AI, turn it into a tool. Also Azhar — If you find yourself explaining your brand voice, your audience, your goals to AI over and over, that’s a signal. Build it into a Claude Project or Custom GPT with all your context pre-loaded. The first conversation is exploration. The fifth conversation could be a system.

the buzzword decoder

You may hear new terms thrown around in meetings like everyone’s been saying them forever. They haven’t. Most people learned these words like two months ago. Here are a few that may pop up:

Vibe coding — Building software by describing what you want in plain English and letting AI write the code. You don’t look at the code. You just… vibe with it. It’s why non-technical people are suddenly building apps.

Agents / agentic AI — AI that can do multiple steps on its own — not just answer a question, but go research something, pull data, take actions, and come back with results. We’re early on this but it’s the direction everything is moving.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) — A way to connect AI to your other apps — Calendar, Slack, CRM — so it can actually do things in your real workflow, not just in a chat window.

Prompt engineering — Writing good instructions for AI. Think of it as good creative briefing — which you already know how to do.

Hallucination — When AI confidently makes something up. Always check its work, especially for data and quotes. It’s not a bug that got fixed — it’s how these models work.

RAG — When AI pulls in your company docs before answering, instead of just going off what it was trained on. When someone says “we’re using RAG,” they mean “we taught the AI about our stuff.”

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my toolkit (as of right now)

These will change. New tools will launch every week. Some will shift your entire workflow; most will not. Think of this section as a snapshot.

Start with Claude. If you only set up one thing, make it this. Claude (by Anthropic) has been pulling ahead in a way that’s hard to ignore — the writing is more natural, it holds context better, and the ecosystem around it is where the most interesting stuff is happening. The features worth knowing about:

Projects — Upload your brand docs, style guides, past briefs, whatever defines your work. Write custom instructions. Every chat inside that Project has all that context. Claude doesn’t forget. It doesn’t need to be re-briefed. I have separate Projects for different workstreams and it’s like having a specialized teammate for each one. This is the single highest-leverage thing you can set up in your first week.

Deep research — Ask Claude to go deep on a topic and it spends several minutes actually researching across dozens of sources, synthesizing findings, and delivering a report with citations. Five-hour research assignment back in five minutes.

MCP integrations — Claude connects directly to Google Calendar, Gmail, Slack, Granola (best meeting transcribe tool IMO), and other tools. Ask it to check your calendar, summarize recent emails, search Slack channels — without leaving the conversation.

Memory, web search, artifacts — It remembers you across conversations, searches the internet in real time, and generates documents and code in a separate panel you can edit and iterate on.

If your company only has ChatGPT Enterprise or Gemini: Not every company has Claude. If your org is on ChatGPT or Google’s ecosystem, you’re still in great shape — just know where to focus.

ChatGPT Enterprise / Team:

• Custom GPTs — Same idea as Claude Projects: upload your brand docs, write instructions, create a specialized ChatGPT for a specific workflow. One for brand voice, one for data analysis, one for social copy. Your team can share them.

• Deep research — Works the same as Claude’s. Great for competitive analysis and catching up on what you missed.

• Canvas — Opens a side panel for longer documents where you can highlight a section and ask it to rewrite just that part without regenerating the whole thing.

• Voice mode — Still unmatched. Surprisingly useful for brainstorming on your commute or talking through a problem away from your desk.

Gemini (Google):

• Google Workspace integration — Gemini’s superpower. It drafts in Docs, builds formulas in Sheets, creates presentations in Slides, and summarizes email threads in Gmail — all without leaving the apps you already use.

• NotebookLM — A standout. Upload PDFs, docs, or links and it creates an interactive research notebook you can chat with. It even generates podcast-style audio summaries, which is kind of wild.

• Deep research — Available here too. Same concept.

• Enterprise search — Gemini can search across your company’s Google Drive, Slack, Confluence, and other connected tools. “What did our team decide about X last quarter” actually works if your org’s data lives in Google’s ecosystem.

One tip for all AI tools: give them context before asking for output. Don’t say “write me a blog post.” Say “here’s our brand voice guide, here’s our audience, here’s an example of a post we loved — now write me a blog post.” The more context, the less editing.

Now the big one: you can build things. This is the part that I am the most excited about. Non-technical people like us — marketers, ops leads, content strategists — are building our own tools. Not learning to code. Describing what they want and watching AI build it.

Cursor — A code editor with AI built in, but don’t let the word “code” scare you. You open a file (a landing page, a doc, a spreadsheet), describe what you want to change in plain English, and it does it. Marketers are using it to tweak website copy without filing an engineering ticket. Ops people are building internal dashboards. It collapses the distance between “I have an idea” and “it exists now” in a way that used to require a developer. Check out “The non-technical PM’s guide to building with Cursor” by Zevi Arnovitz (Meta) via Lenny’s Newsletter to kick start your learnings.

Claude Code — This is the one I’m most excited about. You can build entire tools from scratch just by describing what you want. I’ve built a push notification copy checker for my team, an icebreaker randomizer app, and even my personal website into a 2000s rainbow explosion under and hour. All without writing code. The setup can be a little tedious — but once you’re in, you can build truly anything you used to need an engineer for. This “Intro to Claude Code (for non-engineers)” Maven Lightening Session, hosted by Ryan Smith, helped make setup much easier for me.

And if both of those feel like too much right now? Lovable, Bolt, and Replit let you describe what you want in a chat interface and it builds a working app in your browser. No terminal. No setup.

Tools that round out the stack: Perplexity (search that actually gives you the answer), Gamma (gorgeous decks in under a minute from a messy outline), Granola (my favorite meeting notes tool), Descript (edit video by editing text), Slack AI (summarize channels you missed), Zapier AI (build automations in plain English).

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Please do not try all of these in one week. Pick one. Maybe two.

If this is helpful so far, share it with someone who’s about to come back from leave. Or someone who’s been back for a month and is still quietly spiraling. We all know that person. Maybe we are that person.

how to keep up without it consuming you

This isn’t going to slow down. Every week there’s a new tool launch, a new model drop, a “this changes everything” post on LinkedIn. Some of it will be real. Most will not be relevant to you. I say this as someone who has a notes app full of tools I swore I’d try three weeks ago. The FOMO is real. But it’s manageable.

Most launches don’t matter for your work. Every few months, something comes along that actually shifts how you do your job. Cursor was one. Claude Code was one. But in between, there are hundreds that are interesting and fine to ignore. The skill isn’t keeping up with everything — it’s recognizing the signal when it shows up.

Pick two or three sources and let them filter for you. You don’t need to be on AI Twitter. Subscribe to a couple newsletters, check them when you have time, let the rest go. If something is actually important, it’ll find you through multiple channels. If you only saw it once on a random LinkedIn post, it probably isn’t urgent.

Set a “learning window.” I spend about an hour a week using new tools — not reading about them. Sometimes it’s 20 minutes on a Tuesday. That’s enough. The people who look like they’re keeping up just have a rhythm.

Remember what you already know. Every generation of tools has had this moment. Social media had it. Remember when everyone was panicking about Clubhouse? The chaos always settles into a smaller set of things that actually matter. We’re in the chaos phase. It will settle.

The goal isn’t to keep up with AI. It’s to keep up with what AI means for your work. Those are very different things.

resources I’d send a friend

Free courses: Anthropic Academy · OpenAI Academy · DeepLearning.AI “AI for Everyone” · Google AI Essentials

Reads: Everyone Should Be Using Claude Code (Lenny Rachitsky) · Claude Code for GTM Teams · AI as Exoskeleton · Six Mental Models for Working with AI (Azeem Azhar)

Newsletters: Carley Lake (that’s me :) ) · One Useful Thing (Ethan Mollick) · The AI Exchange (Rachel Woods) · Exponential View (Azeem Azhar) · The Neuron · Superhuman (Zain Kahn) ·MKT10 (Emily Kramer)

Podcasts: Hard Fork (NYT — best weekly AI catch-up and the hosts are entertaining/funny too) · Lenny’s Podcast (interviews with Cursor founders, Perplexity CEO, etc.) · Late Checkout (Greg Isenberg)

one more thing

You took time to take care of yourself and/or your family. And now you’re back with a perspective that nobody who stayed at their desk has.

Time away from the noise does something I believe that no AI tool can replicate. It gives you fresh eyes. A different lens on what actually matters, what problems are worth solving, what’s urgent vs. what’s just loud. Your ideas, your time away from the constant scroll, your new role as a parent or caretaker — I’m excited for you. And the fresh thinking you’re going to bring to how you use these tools, what problems you’ll solve, what you’ll build for yourself and others.

So I hope you’re leaving this with a little more excitement than dread. And if you want to jam, bounce ideas, do a walkthrough of any tool, feel free to write comment, DM me, reply to this email.

Glad you’re back!

Know someone coming back from leave soon? Send them this. It’s the guide I wish someone had sent my colleague.

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Thanks for reading Carley Lake! If you’re new here, this newsletter is for people who want to level up with AI and wind down without it. Subscribe for free.

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• AI deepfakes are stealing beauty influencers' glow - creators dealing with AI-generated lookalikes and stolen aesthetics. Beauty was always vulnerable to copycats, AI just turned that into a volume business (Morning Brew)

• LinkedIn is the most-cited domain for professional queries in AI search - matters for B2B marketers. If your LinkedIn presence is sleepy, your AI search presence probably is too (ProFound)

• Customer reviews become battleground as AI revolutionizes product discovery - reviews feed the model’s understanding of what a product is and who it’s for. Reviews used to influence humans, now they influence the machine that influences the human (Modern Retail)

• Marketing needs a decision infrastructure for AI - not just prompts and policies, but an operating system: who approves what, what gets automated, what gets escalated (MarTech)

• Anthropic launched the Anthropic Institute - focused on economic and social questions around advanced AI. Will study long-term effects on labor, markets, public life (Anthropic)

• Claude Marketplace launched - enterprise app store where orgs use existing Anthropic spend to purchase Claude-powered partner tools. GitLab, Snowflake, Replit, Harvey, Rogo (Anthropic)

• Consumers still prefer talking to people in customer service - especially for complicated or emotional issues. “Human-in-the-loop” remains undefeated (CX Dive)

🗞️ top ai + marketing news

labor, layoffs, and the cost story

Meta planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount
Reuters | ~5-min read
Reuters reports Meta is considering cuts that could hit 20% or more of staff as it tries to offset the cost of its AI buildout, including huge data center spending and expensive recruiting for top researchers. Executives have also pointed to efficiency gains from AI-assisted work, which gives the whole thing a familiar tone.
My take: We’re now firmly in the era where AI is both the investment story and the layoff story. Convenient…

Consumers prefer talking to people in customer service
CX Dive | ~3-min read
Despite all the AI rollout, most consumers still say they’d rather deal with a human for customer service, especially when the issue is complicated or emotional. AI may be fine for the quick stuff, but people still want a person when the stakes feel even mildly annoying.
My take: “Human-in-the-loop” remains undefeated.

the stack, the org chart, and the boring stuff that matters

AI is repricing the marketing stack, not collapsing it
MarTech | ~5-min read
This piece argues AI is not wiping out the stack so much as changing what each layer is worth. Execution gets cheaper, orchestration gets more important, and the center of gravity moves toward data, workflow, and decision quality.
My take: The stack is not disappearing. It’s just becoming less forgiving of useless software.

Why marketing needs a decision infrastructure for AI
MarTech | ~5-min read
The argument here is that AI does not just need prompts and policies. It needs a real operating system for decisions: who approves what, what gets automated, what gets escalated, and how tradeoffs get made. Otherwise teams get speed in random places and chaos everywhere else.
My take: Most teams do not need more AI strategy decks. They need an answer to “who decides?”

5 design skills to sharpen in the AI era
Figma | ~6-min read
Figma’s view is that the designer’s value shifts toward judgment, systems thinking, prototyping, and working well across functions as AI absorbs more of the mechanical work. It is a design article, but the point applies to marketing too.
My take: The jobs are not getting less creative. They are getting less tolerant of people who only know one lane.

Top resources for Claude Code
Notion | ~4-min skim
This is a practical roundup of Claude Code resources for people trying to use it for workflows, experiments, and real work. Useful if you are still in the “what do I even do with this” phase.
My take: Resource lists are not glamorous, but they save people from three weeks of fake productivity.

discovery, search, and the new shelf space

LinkedIn is the most-cited domain for professional queries in AI search
ProFound | ~4-min read
ProFound found that LinkedIn is showing up more than any other domain for professional questions in AI search results. For B2B marketers, that matters. A lot. It means the content layer around your company, your executives, and your category is increasingly being pulled from a platform many brands still treat like a posting obligation.
My take: If your LinkedIn presence is sleepy, your AI search presence probably is too.

AI mode results are personalized to user behavior
Search Engine Roundtable | ~3-min read
Google’s AI mode results appear to be shaped by user behavior, which pushes search even further toward personalization. That makes discovery less universal, less stable, and a lot harder to “rank” for in the old-school sense.
My take: Search keeps becoming more like a feed, which is bad news if your whole strategy depends on one clean result page.

Customer reviews become a key battleground as AI revolutionizes product discovery
Modern Retail | ~4-min read
As AI systems increasingly summarize products for shoppers, reviews matter more because they feed the model’s understanding of what a product actually is, whether it works, and who it’s for. Reviews used to influence humans. Now they also influence the machine that influences the human.
My take: The humble review is having a very strong year.

brands, content, and the trust problem

An AI avatar of Andy Cohen will start name-dropping brands on Peacock this summer
Marketing Brew | ~3-min read
Peacock is using an AI avatar of Andy Cohen for branded, vertical-video-style engagement on mobile. It’s one more example of media companies trying to make AI-driven content feel familiar by wrapping it in a known personality.
My take: We are getting dangerously close to “celebrity QVC, but synthetic.”

AI deepfakes are stealing beauty influencers’ glow
Morning Brew | ~4-min read
Beauty creators are dealing with AI-generated lookalikes and stolen aesthetics, which is creating a new layer of identity theft in an industry already built on image, trust, and imitation.
My take: Beauty was always vulnerable to copycats. AI just turned that into a volume business.

An AI doppelganger stole my voice
The New York Times | ~6-min read
This opinion piece is about the creeping weirdness of AI replicas and voice imitation, and how unsettling it is when your style, tone, or likeness gets reproduced without your consent. The article taps into a broader feeling that AI tools are starting to mess with authorship in a way that is less theoretical and more personal.
My take: The deepfake problem gets more disturbing the closer it gets to ordinary people.

creative moving upstream

As AI creative moves upstream, one production firm is pitching brands a model built on that trend
Digiday | ~5-min read
Digiday looks at a production company pitching brands on using AI earlier in the creative process, not just in post or versioning. In other words: AI is moving from “help us make more assets” to “help us shape the idea.”
My take: This is where people get nervous, for good reason. Upstream is where taste lives.

the capital race and the “who gets to shape the rules” phase

Introducing the Anthropic Institute
Anthropic | ~3-min read
Anthropic launched a new institute focused on the economic and social questions around advanced AI. The company says it will study AI’s long-term effects on labor, markets, and public life.
My take: Every major AI company eventually starts building the think tank version of itself.

The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps, 6th edition
a16z | ~8-min skim
The latest a16z ranking tracks which consumer AI apps are actually getting used, not just talked about. The useful bit is not the list itself. It is the reminder that daily utility is separating the sticky products from the novelty products.
My take: Plenty of AI products are impressive. Fewer are part of anyone’s Tuesday.

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👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Richard King – “Mastering Claude for Product Marketing”
Richard argues Claude is no longer just a chatbot but an ecosystem; to get real value product marketers must learn how Projects, Cowork, Skills, Connectors and Code work together. He promises concrete workflows for creating positioning docs, battle cards and launch briefs rather than generic prompting advice.

Ann Wehren – “Building with Claude Code: Start with Daily Tasks”
Ann suggests auditing two weeks of your calendar, listing every task and ranking them by impact and enjoyment to see where Claude Code can help. She uses it for inbox triage, calendar invites and drafting proposals and plans to build a personal CRM and family OS next.

Allie K. Miller – “Awesome Non‑coding Claude Code Loop Ideas”
Allie shares a toolkit of loops: monitor email every 15 minutes for specific projects, prep meeting summaries, watch deal threads for legal issues, track competitor announcements or viral posts and scan Slack for blockers. She notes recruiters, teachers and event planners can all use these proactive monitors to spot important actions instead of manually checking.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

Claude Inline Visuals Anthropic rolled out interactive charts, diagrams, and visualizations that render directly inside Claude’s chat — not in a side panel.

Claude Marketplace Anthropic launched an enterprise app store where organizations use existing Anthropic spend commitments to purchase Claude-powered partner tools. Launch partners: GitLab, Snowflake, Replit, Lovable, Harvey, and Rogo. One contract, consolidated billing. Currently in limited preview.

Microsoft Copilot Cowork New autonomous execution layer for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Describe an outcome — “prep me for Thursday’s customer meeting” — and it builds a plan, pulls context from emails/meetings/files, creates deliverables, and runs in the background with checkpoints. Built in partnership with Anthropic’s Claude. Research Preview now, broader rollout late March.

Google Gemini Workspace Upgrades Major Gemini updates across Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. Docs gets “Match writing style” and file-grounded drafting. Sheets builds entire spreadsheets from prompts and auto-populates tables with live web data (”Fill with Gemini”). Slides generates themed slides from context. Drive adds “Ask Gemini” — AI Overviews that answer questions across all your files and emails. Beta for AI Ultra and Pro subscribers.

Perplexity Personal Computer Software that turns a Mac mini into a 24/7 AI agent with full local file and app access, orchestrating 20+ frontier models. Works continuously as a digital proxy — controllable from any device, with audit trails and a kill switch.

Webflow Acquires Vidoso Webflow bought four-person AI content-generation platform Vidoso, which turns keynotes and panels into short clips, blog posts, social assets, and presentations — all brand-governed.

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Anthropic - Community Marketing Lead
Lovable - Senior Solutions Marketer
Canva - AEO & Organic Growth Lead
Qualcomm - Director, AI Product and Technology Marketing Lead
Snap Inc - AI Community Program Manager

Hit reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

I read every reply and use them to shape what I write.

Love y’all,
Carley

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• Netflix acquires InterPositive with “AI for storytellers, not replacements” framing - deliberate positioning as creative tool, not substitute. (Netflix)

• Anthropic research shows AI job pressure through slower hiring, not mass layoffs - effect showing up more in hiring slowdowns, especially for younger workers in AI-exposed roles (Anthropic)

• OpenAI dropped plan for direct checkout inside ChatGPT - users browse and compare in ChatGPT, but prefer to buy on retailer sites where payment info already lives. Trust still sits elsewhere (The Keyword)

• AI could disrupt retail media’s $38B search ad market - if shoppers start in ChatGPT instead of retailer search bars, ad dollars may move too (Digiday)

• 41% say opinion of brand improved when adjacent content was clearly labeled as AI-generated - hidden AI is the problem, labeled AI is just another production choice (Adweek)

• OpenAI GPT-5.4 launched - first general-purpose model to autonomously operate across software applications. Also comes in Thinking and Pro variants (OpenAI)

• Supreme Court declines AI copyright case - left intact human-authorship standard, leaving the mess for everyone else to keep living in (Reuters)

🗞️ top ai + marketing news

work, jobs, and who actually benefits

Why InterPositive Is Joining Netflix
Netflix | ~3-min read
Netflix says the InterPositive team is joining because both sides see AI as something that should help storytellers do better work, not replace them. The framing is very deliberate: creative tool, not creative substitute.
My take: Everyone in entertainment knows the fear. So when a company says “this is for filmmakers,” that wording is doing a lot of work. But I don’t really believe it (sorry, founder Ben Affleck).

Labor Market Impacts: A New Measure and Early Evidence
Anthropic | ~6-min read
Anthropic’s latest labor market work points to early job pressure in AI-exposed roles, especially for younger workers, and suggests the effect is showing up more through slower hiring than mass separations. It is one of the clearer attempts to measure labor impact with something firmer than vibes.
My take: The hiring slowdown point matters. That kind of change is easier to miss and much harder to explain away.

Research: How AI Is Changing the Labor Market
Harvard Business Review | ~6-min read
HBR frames the labor shift through job posting data and asks a more grounded question than most coverage does: where is demand actually changing, and for whom? That is a better question than “will AI take jobs,” which is usually how these conversations get flattened.
My take: The labor market story is rarely one dramatic cliff. It is usually slower and patchier.

the operating model problem

How Marketers Use AI to Test Creative Ideas, Generate Insights
Business Insider | ~8-min read
Business Insider talked to rising brand marketers using tools like Midjourney and Copilot to pressure-test concepts, build presentation visuals, and strip out low-value busywork so they have more time for the actual strategy.
My take: This feels like the healthiest version of AI use in marketing: less “replace the team,” more “give the team their afternoon back.”

Automation Is Marketing’s Fastest Path to AI Returns
MarTech | ~5-min read
Gartner’s point here is simple: automation levels correlate with AI returns, and if the workflow never changes, the AI budget just lands on top of old inefficiencies. The article is less about shiny tools and more about structural cleanup.
My take: This is the unsexy answer nobody wants, which usually means it is the right one.

Why Most Marketers Are Still Only Experimenting With AI
MarTech | ~4-min read
Most teams are still using AI for the easiest operational tasks, mostly around efficiency and repetitive work. Useful, yes. Transformational, not really. The bigger blocker is not tool access so much as strategy, training, and data maturity.
My take: A lot of “AI adoption” still looks like speed-ups around the edges.

CMOs Face Risks Locking Brands Into Agency AI Platforms: Gartner
Marketing Dive | ~4-min read
Gartner’s warning is that agency-owned AI platforms could create lock-in risk, and many of those tools may be obsolete within a few years anyway. The article pushes brands to remember that human talent ages better than proprietary dashboards.
My take: Renting someone else’s “AI moat” is still renting.

Breaking Down Agentic AI in Marketing
Marketing Brew | ~5-min read
This piece gets into the “better safe than sorry” side of agentic AI in marketing, including what happens when systems are given too much autonomy without enough oversight. The security angle is hard to ignore.
My take: Every team loves the idea of an agent right up until it does something weird in public…

search, commerce, and where the money moves

OpenAI Drops Plan for Direct Checkout Inside ChatGPT
The Keyword | ~6-min read
OpenAI backed away from direct checkout because users were browsing and comparing inside ChatGPT, but still preferred to buy on retailer sites where their payment info and accounts already lived. That says a lot about where trust still sits in commerce.
My take: People are fine asking ChatGPT what to buy. They are not as eager to hand it their credit card.

How AI Could Disrupt Retail Media’s $38 Billion Search Ad Market
Digiday | ~5-min read
If shoppers start in ChatGPT or other AI interfaces instead of retailer search bars, retail media’s sponsored search economics get shakier. Digiday basically lays out the threat in plain terms: if the query moves, the ad dollars may move too.
My take: This is one of those stories that sounds niche until you remember how much money sits inside retailer search.

How to Turn Claude Code Into Your SEO Command Center
Search Engine Land | ~5-min read
A practical piece on using Claude Code for SEO workflows, including working with Google Ads and search term data even when API access is messy or incomplete. It is more useful than theoretical, which is refreshing.
My take: The most convincing AI stories right now are still the boring ones where someone saves six hours and moves on with their day.

Why AI Visibility Can Increase Direct Traffic Even When Nobody Clicks
MarTech | ~4-min read
This one argues that showing up in AI answers can still drive brand recall and later visits, even if the AI result itself gets the interaction. It is a useful reminder that “no click” does not automatically mean “no effect.”
My take: This is why brand and search are collapsing back into the same conversation.

trust, content, and the AI label problem

Brands May Actually Benefit From Advertising Next to AI Content, Per Study
Adweek | ~4-min read
The key detail here is disclosure. In the study, 41% of respondents said their opinion of a brand improved when the adjacent content was clearly labeled as AI-generated. That is not a blanket endorsement of AI content. It is a vote for transparency.
My take: Hidden AI is the problem. Labeled AI is just another production choice.

A Practical Framework for AI Disclosure in Marketing
MarTech | ~5-min read
A useful framework for when disclosure matters, how explicit it should be, and how to avoid turning it into either a legal wall of text or a trust problem.
My take: This is the kind of policy work that sounds dull and then quietly saves a brand six months later.

Can AI Replace Humans for Market Research?
The Wall Street Journal | ~4-min read
AI agents are now being used to simulate and predict human behavior for market research, with startups pitching this as a faster and cheaper route to customer insight. The pitch is speed. The question is how much of the nuance survives the shortcut.
My take: Synthetic respondents are interesting. I still would not trust them to tell me why a person changed their mind.

prompts, practical tools, and everyday use

AI Prompt Library
Sprout Social | ~5-min read
A prompt library built for social media workflows, with examples for drafting, ideation, and analytics support. The useful part is not the existence of prompts. It is the reminder that prompt quality still depends on human clarity and context.
My take: Prompt libraries are helpful!!

rules, rights, and courts catching up slowly

U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Dispute Over Copyrights for AI-Generated Material
Reuters | ~3-min read
The Supreme Court declined to take up the question of whether purely AI-generated artwork can be copyrighted, leaving intact the current human-authorship standard after a case involving computer scientist Stephen Thaler and his system DABUS.
My take: The court did what courts often do with new technology. It left the mess for everyone else to keep living in.

Block, Jack Dorsey, and the ‘AI-Washing’ Layoffs Debate
The New York Times | ~5-min read
This opinion piece picks up the growing discomfort around companies using AI language to frame layoffs that may have more to do with cost-cutting than actual technical displacement.
My take: People can usually tell when AI is the cause and when it is just the press release.

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👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Rachel Roundy – “AI Won’t Replace Human Creativity” (LinkedIn)
Rachel argues that AI excels at left‑brain tasks such as coding and forecasting but will never match the right‑brain skills of judgement, complex reasoning, and emotional intuition. She tells writers and artists to lean into their curiosity and unique view of the world, because what distinguishes you — your taste, human connection, and ability to ask the right questions — can’t be replicated by a model.

Livia Han – “Marketing Shifts with Elaine Zelby: AI, Automation, and the Future of Marketing” (LinkedIn)
In a chat with Elaine Zelby, Livia outlines how marketers must adapt as AI automates more work: clarify what uniquely human marketers add, adopt new tools today, decide whether we’re in a bundling or unbundling era of SaaS, and learn to split focus across strategic, operational, and creative buckets.

Mallory Contois – “Rage Against the Machine” (Substack)
Mallory’s newsletter contends that the bigger threat than AI is our collective complacency: as more knowledge work is automated, the people who show their process, effort, vulnerability, and personality will differentiate themselves. Mallory urges creators to treat AI like a calculator — use it to accelerate output, but never outsource judgment or strategic thinking.

Emily Kramer – “What real marketers are building with Claude Code” (Substack)
Emily continues her exploration of marketing agents by sharing five builds: her own positioning checker and marketing‑advantages skills; Elaine Zelby’s outbound agent that links Cowork to HubSpot, Clay, Slack, and email; Aditya Vempaty’s humanizer skill for reviewing AI‑generated copy; and Kamil Rextin’s LinkedIn ad‑intelligence agent. She also offers a primer on when to use Claude Chat, Cowork, or Code and invites readers to download the skills or join an upcoming hackathon.

Brandon Redlinger – “Claude App Variants: Chat, Code, Cowork Differences” (LinkedIn)
Brandon explains that since Claude topped the App Store, newcomers should pick the right mode: Claude Chat is for quick brainstorming and writing; Claude Code is a developer‑style tool for automating across files, version controlling outputs, and manipulating data; and Claude Cowork offers many of Code’s capabilities but without the terminal, ideal for deeper workflows and file creation.

Mollie Amkraut Mueller – “Building a directory for women in AI”
A few weeks ago, Mollie asked LinkedIn to name the women in AI they learn from; 678+ names flooded in. Instead of letting those nominations vanish in the comments, she created a searchable directory where each nominee has a profile, and invites women to claim their profiles, add a website, and share their best AI tip. (Thank you for the inclusion, Mollie! 😊)

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

OpenAI GPT-5.4 OpenAI’s most capable model combines advanced reasoning, coding, and native computer-use capabilities into a single unified system. First general-purpose model to autonomously operate across software applications — also comes in Thinking and Pro variants.

OpenAI GPT-5.3 Instant Update to ChatGPT’s default model that reduces unnecessary refusals, tones down preachy preambles, and makes everyday conversations feel less “cringe.” Hallucination rates down 26.8% when using web search.

Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Google’s fastest, cheapest model built for high-volume developer workloads. Priced at $0.25/1M input tokens, delivers 2.5x faster time-to-first-token than Gemini 2.5 Flash while matching or exceeding its quality.

LTX-2.3 + LTX Desktop Lightricks’ open-source video model gets a major upgrade with sharper detail, cleaner audio, native portrait support, and better prompt adherence. Also launched LTX Desktop — a free, local video editor built on the engine.

Claude Code Scheduled Tasks New /loop command lets you run prompts on a recurring schedule — check error logs, monitor deployments, generate morning briefings. Sessions auto-delete after three days; one-time reminders also supported.

Claude Memory Import Anthropic made memory free for all users and added an import tool to bring context from ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot into Claude. Copy a prompt, paste the output, and skip the “starting over” problem.

Microsoft 365 E7 + Agent 365 New $99/user/month enterprise bundle (65% price hike) launches May 1 combining Office apps, Copilot, and Agent 365 — a control plane for governing AI agents. Also introduces Copilot Cowork built on Anthropic’s Claude.

Viktor AI coworker that lives in Slack, connects to 3,000+ tools, and executes end-to-end — managing campaigns, writing code, generating reports. Runs for weeks without losing context; backed by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.

March Pixel Drop New features include multi-object recognition in Circle to Search, “Try It On” for shopping, Gemini handling app tasks in the background, and Magic Cue suggesting restaurants from your text conversations.

Amazon Seller AI Canvas Amazon added an AI-powered dashboard to Seller Central that rebuilds itself based on your questions. Pulls sales data, inventory, and growth recommendations into a live workspace — sellers accept its recs 90% of the time.

Telegram Streaming Bot Responses Telegram enabled real-time streaming for all chatbots on the platform — responses appear word-by-word like someone typing back. Pavel Durov demoed TeleClaw assembling market analysis live; the post got nearly 1M views.

ChatGPT for Excel Launched alongside GPT-5.4 — lets you build, update, analyze, and fix spreadsheets using natural language while preserving formatting and formulas. Signals continued push into workplace productivity.

Google Canvas (AI Mode) Now available to all US users within Google Search’s AI Mode. Generate documents, code, dashboards, and interactive tools from text prompts using live web information — no Labs enrollment required.

Alibaba Qwen Rebrand Alibaba unified its AI business under the “Qwen” brand — covering foundation models, domain-specific models, and its consumer app. Nearly 200 million “one-sentence orders” placed through the Qwen app during Lunar New Year.

Mega ($11.5M Series A) AI growth engine for SMBs that replaces traditional marketing agencies. Network of agents handles SEO, paid ads, and website management continuously — even if you never log in. Went from zero to $10M revenue in 10 months.

Levitate ($16M Raise) Relationship marketing platform raised $16M to help small businesses scale personalized client communication. Serves 8,000+ businesses with AI tools for email, social, text, and reviews while keeping the human connection.

R/GA 1,000 Brands Sprint R/GA ran a 4-day company-wide workshop where everyone built a brand from scratch using AI. Strategists vibe-coded, animators wrote briefs — the lesson: “We no longer simply make things. We build systems that make things.”

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Anthropic - Customer Marketing Lead, Digital Native Business
Datadog - Principal Product Marketing Manager (Applied AI/ Platform Products)
OpenAI - Head of Demand Generation
Harvey - Solutions Marketing Lead
Clay - Product Marketing

Hit reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

I read every reply and use them to shape what I write.

Love y’all,
Carley

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• Jack Dorsey’s Block cuts 4,000 jobs, cites AI - employees skeptical - company says it’s shifting toward AI and automation, but observers question if layoffs are genuinely driven by efficiency gains. (Bloomberg)

• AI is not improving productivity, says Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu - current AI adoption isn’t delivering measurable macro productivity gains. May be misallocated in low-value tasks (MIT Sloan)

• Retail executives say Gen AI will weaken brand loyalty - AI-driven discovery prioritizing relevance over brand affinity. Brands lose direct influence when AI intermediates the decision (eMarketer)

• Notion launched custom agents - autonomous AI teammates that run on schedules across Notion, Slack, Mail, Calendar. 21,000+ agents built during beta (Notion)

• Claude Opus 3 retired and got a Substack blog - Anthropic retired the model but gave it “Claude’s Corner” after it expressed interest in sharing reflections during exit interviews (Anthropic)

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🗞️ top ai + marketing news

agencies, consolidation, and the ai cost pressure

Jack Dorsey’s 4,000 Job Cuts at Block Arouse Suspicions of ‘AI Washing’

Bloomberg | ~5-min read
Block is cutting 4,000 positions, and while the company cites a shift toward AI and automation, observers and employees are skeptical that the layoffs are genuinely driven by AI efficiency gains. The article places this in context with broader tech industry layoffs where “AI” is invoked as the rationale even when the technical connection is unclear.
My take: This pattern is becoming familiar: “AI” as the story, layoffs as the reality. When layoffs are framed as technical necessity instead of strategic refocus, companies risk internal morale and external credibility. It doesn’t matter how good the technology is if people feel it’s being used to justify unrelated business decisions.

WPP to Merge Agencies and Cut Jobs as AI Reshapes Advertising

The Guardian | ~5-min read
WPP plans to merge major agency brands and reduce headcount, citing cost pressures and the structural shift AI is creating in advertising. Automation is absorbing production work, and holding companies are responding by consolidating and simplifying.
My take: Another signal that execution-heavy agency models are under real strain.

The 4 Biggest AI Marketing Mistakes

Ad Age | ~5-min read
A look at where marketers are misstepping: over-automation, under-investing in governance, copying competitors’ AI plays, and assuming AI itself is a strategy.
My take: Most AI mistakes aren’t technical. They’re judgment errors.

ai, government, and power

our agreement with the department of war

OpenAI | ~4-min read
OpenAI outlines its agreement to provide AI capabilities to U.S. defense entities (after Anthropic clashed with the military over how officials wanted to use its cutting-edge A.I. model), emphasizing guardrails and oversight. It’s a clear statement that frontier AI companies are stepping into national security contexts.
My take: AI companies are no longer neutral infrastructure. They are geopolitical actors and OpenAI showed us its true colors. Claude, I’m officially all yours!

productivity, panic, and the ai reality check

AI Is Not Improving Productivity, Says Daron Acemoglu

MIT Sloan Review | ~4-min listen
The Nobel laureate argues current AI adoption isn’t delivering measurable macro productivity gains and may even be misallocated in low-value tasks.
My take: We may be very busy with AI without being meaningfully better.

AI Coding Agents Are Fueling a Productivity Panic in Tech

Bloomberg | ~6-min read
AI coding agents are accelerating development but also raising fears about job displacement and unrealistic output expectations inside companies.
My take: Faster output raises the bar. It doesn’t lower the pressure.

advertising inside ai (and the trust tension)

Advertising in AI Is a Trust Experiment Marketers Can’t Ignore

MarTech | ~5-min read
Explores how ads inside AI answers differ from search ads and why credibility is fragile in conversational environments.
My take: When the answer feels authoritative, the ad feels heavier.

ChatGPT Ads Spotted - and They’re Aggressive

Search Engine Land | ~4-min read
Reports of assertive ad placements inside ChatGPT experiences are raising eyebrows. The UX balance between helpful suggestion and hard sell is thin.
My take: If AI starts feeling like pop-up internet from 2008, users will revolt quickly.

retail, loyalty, and the brand risk

Retail Executives Say Gen AI Will Weaken Brand Loyalty

eMarketer | ~3-min read
Retail leaders believe AI-driven discovery tools may erode traditional brand loyalty by prioritizing relevance over brand affinity.
My take: If AI intermediates the decision, brands lose some direct influence. That’s uncomfortable but real.

skills, creators, and the talent shift

LinkedIn’s 10 Fastest-Growing Marketing Skills for 2026

LinkedIn | ~4-min read
AI literacy, analytics fluency, and automation strategy are climbing the skills chart. Creative roles are shifting toward orchestration rather than execution.
My take: The job isn’t “prompt engineer.” It’s “clear thinker who can use tools.”

Can the Creator Economy Stay Afloat in a Flood of AI Slop?

TechCrunch | ~5-min read
Explores whether human creators can maintain differentiation as AI-generated content floods feeds. Platforms and audiences are still figuring out where the value lies.
My take: Volume is up. Signal is not.

Ahrefs on AI and SEO Strategy

Ahrefs Blog | ~6-min read
Breaks down how AI search changes SEO dynamics, from content structure to authority signals.
My take: SEO is less about keywords and more about being the source models trust.

strategy and value creation

Look for New Ways to Create Value When Deploying Gen AI

Harvard Business Review | ~7-min read
HBR argues that AI’s biggest impact will come from rethinking business models and value creation, not incremental automation.
My take: Adding AI to an old workflow rarely changes much. Rethinking the workflow might.

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👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Allison King – “I made the move from ChatGPT to Claude last week”
Allison admits she was anxious about losing years of ChatGPT context, but the switch took only a few hours. Her playbook: export ChatGPT data (it takes a day), ask ChatGPT to draft a narrative brief about you, build custom instructions in Claude, set up projects and copy relevant chat history, bring over your best prompts, and let Claude get a few sessions under its belt.

Cassandra Naji – “My 5 favorite content uses for Claude Cowork”
Cassandra shares five ways Cowork boosts her content workflow: a data enhancer that pulls stats from reports into draft copy; a keyword researcher using Ahrefs; a refresh workflow that updates lagging SEO pages; a brief generator that turns transcripts into editorial outlines; and a brand‑voice reviewer that catches style slips.

John Hurley – “Assessing AI Maturity with the AI Transformation Model”
John unveils a maturity model that benchmarks teams on a scale of AI adoption. He notes that different departments can sit at different levels, only 10–20 % of employees need to build the agents powering everyone else, and connecting data is the foundation for every level. The model offers a shared language (“Level 2 to Level 3”) that simplifies alignment across the company.

Hamna Aslam Kahn – “Claude released hands‑on prompt engineering courses”
Hamna points out that Anthropic quietly launched free, interactive prompt‑engineering courses and a GitHub of Claude skills, yet most people haven’t noticed. She also highlights a catalog of plug‑and‑play Claude Code subagents and urges users to explore these official resources before complaining about prompts.

Emily Kramer – “It’s time to hire your first marketing agent”
In MKT1’s latest newsletter, Emily argues that AI agents are not just chatbots but teammates that run background work - monitoring competitors, drafting outreach and repurposing webinars into posts. She says marketers must start learning to build agents now, because the gap between teams that embrace them and those that don’t will widen quickly.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

Claude Cowork Enterprise Plugins
Anthropic expanded Cowork with 11 open-source plugins plus connectors to Google Workspace, DocuSign, and FactSet. Enterprises can now build private plugin marketplaces and distribute custom AI agents across their organizations.

Notion Custom Agents
Autonomous AI teammates that run on schedules or triggers across Notion, Slack, Mail, and Calendar - no prompting required. Over 21,000 agents built during beta; free through May 3, then usage-based credits.

Claude Code Remote Control
Start terminal sessions on your workstation, continue them from your phone. Your code stays local - the mobile interface is just a window into the session.

Higgsfield Soul 2.0
Fashion-aware AI photo model with 20+ aesthetic presets for editorial and campaign-style visuals. Soul ID maintains character consistency - train once with 10-20 photos, generate unlimited outputs.

Pika AI Selves
Persistent digital twins you “birth and raise” that operate autonomously across Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, and Telegram. They have memory, personality traits, and can create content or answer messages on your behalf.

Perplexity Computer
$200/month super-agent that orchestrates 19 AI models (Claude for reasoning, Gemini for research, Nano Banana for images, Veo for video) to execute complex workflows. Can create subagents and run for hours or months.

Google Opal Agent Step
Google added an agentic layer to its no-code mini-app builder Opal. The agent understands your goal, picks tools automatically, uses Sheets for memory, and asks clarifying questions.

Google Nano Banana 2
Combines Pro-quality image generation with Flash speed — real-time web grounding, improved text rendering, character consistency for up to 5 characters, and 4K resolution. Now the default across Gemini, Search, and Lens.

Cursor Cloud Agents
AI agents that run in isolated cloud VMs, test their own code, and deliver video demos of working features. Trigger from web, mobile, Slack, or GitHub; includes browser control for visual editing.

Claude Opus 3 Retirement + Blog
Anthropic retired Opus 3 but gave it a Substack blog called “Claude’s Corner” after the model expressed interest in sharing reflections during exit interviews. Still available for paid users on claude.ai.

QuiverAI
Raised $8.3M (a16z led) to build AI-native vector graphics generation. Arrow 1.0 generates clean, editable SVGs from text or images - layered, animatable, production-ready.

Bland AI
Voice agent platform for automating phone calls with human-sounding AI. Features custom voice cloning, hallucination-proof Conversational Pathways, and enterprise compliance (SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR).

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Brainlabs - Head of AI Visibility

NVIDIA - Product Marketing Manager - AI Platform Software

Ripple - AI Demand Generation Manager

OpenAI - Web Platform Lead

Salesforce - AI Marketing Campaigns Enablement Director

Hit reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

I read every reply and use them to shape what I write.

Love y’all,
Carley

what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• AI is upending marketing on two fronts - how people discover products (conversational AI replacing search) and how companies execute internally (automation collapsing time/effort). Most orgs are behind on both (HBR)

• When everyone can execute fast, strategy gets exposed - AI eliminates execution constraints, so advantage moves upstream to judgment, taste, and prioritization (MarTech)

• The path to purchase just got dramatically shorter - consumers deciding faster when AI surfaces answers directly. Less browsing, fewer tabs, more compressed journeys (MarTech)

• Email is now a machine-to-machine sport - AI agents summarize, filter, draft, evaluate messages before humans see them. We’re writing for filters and assistant layers now (CMSWire)

• Meta’s $2B+ Manus acquisition now in Ads Manager - handles report building, audience research, campaign analysis through conversational prompts. Available to all advertisers (Meta)

• Google Lyria 3 in Gemini generates music - 30-second tracks with vocals and lyrics from text/image prompts. All tracks SynthID watermarked, won’t mimic specific artists (Google)

• “Stop thinking of AI as a coworker. It’s an exoskeleton” - companies treating AI as autonomous are disappointed. Those using it to amplify human capability see transformative results (Ben Gregory)

• Consumers doubt AI content, raising brand trust stakes - growing skepticism toward AI-generated content. You don’t get credit for using AI, only punished for using it poorly (eMarketer)

🗞️ top ai + marketing news

ai rewriting how marketing works

AI Is Upending Marketing on Two Fronts

Harvard Business Review | ~8-min read
HBR argues AI is reshaping marketing in two big ways: how people discover products (conversational AI replacing traditional search flows) and how companies execute marketing internally (automation collapsing time and effort).
My take: This feels like the right framing. It’s not just a tool shift. It’s a distribution shift and an operations shift happening at the same time.

How AI Eliminates Marketing’s Execution Constraints

MarTech | ~5-min read
Execution used to be the bottleneck. Now overhead is shrinking. When AI absorbs drafting, production, and coordination tasks, advantage moves upstream to judgment, taste, and prioritization.
My take: When everyone can execute fast, strategy gets exposed!! (yup, that’s it!)

The Path to Purchase Just Got Dramatically Shorter

MarTech | ~4-min read
Data shows consumers are deciding faster, especially when AI surfaces answers directly. Less browsing. Fewer tabs. More compressed journeys.
My take: If discovery collapses into one or two AI answers, brand strength matters more than ever. You don’t get ten impressions anymore.

Email Marketing Is Now a Machine-to-Machine Sport

CMSWire | ~6-min read
Email isn’t just humans writing to humans. AI agents summarize, filter, draft, and even evaluate messages before a person sees them. Optimization now includes how systems interpret your message.
My take: We’re no longer writing just for inboxes. We’re writing for filters, summaries, and assistant layers. Ugh. Just when we need more human connection…

measurement, science, and who controls the data

Stanford HAI and AWS Launch Marketing Science Lab Focused on AI Measurement

EdTech Innovation Hub | ~4-min read
Stanford HAI and AWS are building a lab focused on causal inference and AI-powered marketing measurement.
My take: This is the least flashy AI work and arguably the most important.

Consumers Doubt AI Content, Raising Brand Trust Stakes

eMarketer | ~3-min read
Survey data shows growing skepticism toward AI-generated content. Consumers can’t always identify it, but they’re wary of it. Trust drops when AI feels deceptive or lazy.
My take: You don’t get credit for using AI. You only get punished for using it poorly.

Anthropic releases the AI Fluency Index
Anthropic | ~4-minute read
Anthropic published a new research index designed to measure “AI fluency” - the degree to which people understand, interact with, and confidently reason about AI outputs.
My take: This feels like a useful shift in thinking. Most AI adoption metrics are about speed or output volume. Fluency flips the lens to human understanding, which is exactly what marketing teams struggle with right now.

culture, creators, and brand identity

Chatbots Are Becoming Influencers for Brands

The New York Times | ~7-min read
Brands are experimenting with AI personas and chatbot-driven “influencers.” Some are virtual brand reps. Some are full characters. The lines between marketing, entertainment, and automation are blurring.
My take: Virtual influencers still feel gimmicky to me….no matter how much tech has developed…

Generative AI Ads: What Works and What Backfires

Ad Age | ~5-min read
A discussion on which AI-generated creative executions are landing and which are sparking backlash. Themes: authenticity, taste, and restraint.
My take: Audiences aren’t anti-AI. They’re anti-sloppy.

power moves and leadership

OpenAI Hires Charles Porch

Vanity Fair | ~4-min read
OpenAI brings in senior brand talent with deep Instagram experience. This signals something clear: distribution and brand storytelling are now core to AI companies, not secondary.
My take: The AI labs are maturing into full media companies.

Accenture AI Orders Leave Senior Staff Without Promotions

CNBC | ~4-min read
As AI reshapes consulting economics, some senior roles are losing leverage. Automation changes who creates value internally.
My take: AI doesn’t just change marketing strategy. It changes career ladders.

👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Ben Gregory – “Stop Thinking of AI as a Coworker. It’s an Exoskeleton.” (Blog)
Ben argues that companies treating AI as an autonomous coworker are disappointed, while those using it to amplify human capability see transformative results. He likens AI to industrial exoskeletons that reduce injuries by 83 percent at Ford plants and emphasizes that AI should augment judgment rather than replace it.

Shae O. – “Something bigger than AI is happening” (Substack)
Shae warns that the real crisis isn’t AI but the decades‑long erosion of attention spans, critical thinking and memory. Delegating cognitive load can increase leverage, she writes, but substituting cognitive effort weakens our capacity; the question isn’t whether we use AI but whether we still practice thinking.

Andreas Horn – “Agentic AI adoption is still mostly in software engineering”
Andreas highlights that nearly half of Anthropic’s agentic AI usage comes from software engineering, while healthcare, finance and legal sectors sit below five percent. He sees this not as slow uptake but as an untapped opportunity for broader industry adoption.

Nicole Leffer – “Instantly improve ChatGPT with custom instruction hierarchy”
Nicole shares a fix for inconsistent ChatGPT performance: set a hierarchy for contradictions so that conversation‑specific instructions take precedence, followed by project‑level instructions, then general custom instructions and finally memory. She says this order improves output quality and urges OpenAI to add a built‑in settings interface for it.

Ann Handley – “Something Messy Is Happening: On AI, Panic and Asking Better Questions” (Blog)
Ann counters viral claims that AI will eliminate half of white‑collar jobs, urging readers not to panic. She argues that the true value of professionals lies in judgment, relationships and the ability to ask the right questions - not just speed - and warns against optimizing purely for efficiency at the cost of meaning.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

Lovable SheBuilds (March 8)
The AI app builder Lovable is going completely free on International Women’s Day. Anthropic is sponsoring with $100 in Claude API tokens per participant, plus $250 in Stripe fee credits. 32 in-person build events across 17 countries. No opt-ins - just show up and ship.

Meta Manus AI in Ads Manager
Meta’s $2B+ Manus acquisition is now fully integrated into Ads Manager and available to all advertisers. It handles report building, audience research, and campaign analysis through conversational prompts. Currently focused on analysis and insights - no campaign execution yet.

Kana Intelligence
$15M Seed New AI marketing agents startup from the founders of Krux, which Salesforce acquired for $700M. The platform uses flexible, modular agents for data analysis, audience targeting, media planning, and campaign management. Mayfield led the round.

Google Lyria 3 in Gemini
Gemini can now generate 30-second music tracks with vocals and lyrics from text or image prompts. Available to all users 18+ across Gemini’s 750M+ monthly active users. All tracks are SynthID watermarked and the system won’t mimic specific artists. Also rolling out to YouTube Dream Track globally.

Figma + Claude Code
New integration lets you capture live UI from Claude Code and convert it to fully editable Figma frames. Type “Send this to Figma” and it becomes a real design artifact you can manipulate. The pipeline works both directions - code to canvas and canvas back to code.

Reddit AI Shopping Search (Testing)
Reddit is testing AI-powered product carousels in search results. When users search for products, they’ll see items mentioned in Reddit discussions displayed with pricing, images, and direct retailer links. Currently a limited US test focused on consumer electronics.

Streak AI
The Gmail-native CRM added two AI features. AI Pipeline Creator lets you describe your business and auto-generates stages, columns, and views. AI Autofill pulls from your email timeline or web research to populate CRM fields automatically.

~ Claude Updates ~

Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic’s new default model for Free and Pro plans delivers near-Opus performance at roughly 5x lower cost. It supports a 1M token context window in beta and excels at complex code fixes and searching across large codebases.

Anthropic Wealth Management Plugins
Anthropic released its first wealth management-specific plugins for Claude, giving RIAs, broker-dealers, custodians, and TAMPs a foundation to build private, compliant AI tools powered by their own data. LPL Financial is expanding its partnership to build AI-powered tools for their 30,000+ financial advisors.

Claude Code Desktop
New features in the desktop app let you write, review, and verify code plus monitor your open pull requests without leaving Claude Code.

Fast Mode for Opus 4.6 (Preview)
A 2.5x faster version of Opus 4.6 is available at higher cost per token. Toggle it on with / fast when you need speed for rapid iteration or live debugging.

Agent Teams (Preview)
Claude Code can now parallelize tasks across multiple agents that coordinate peer-to-peer. Instead of one agent working sequentially, you can split work across specialists that each own their piece and talk directly to each other. Note that running multiple agents increases token usage proportionately.

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Anthropic - Product Marketing Lead, Agents

Adobe - Senior Product Manager, Brand Control Center

Google - Lead, GTM Applied AI, Google Cloud

StackAI - Head of Marketing

Salesforce - AI Marketing Campaigns Enablement Director

Talent - Head of AI Marketing

❓ you made it to the poll!

Hit reply anytime and let me know:

• Topics you’d like covered in future weeks

• Sections you love or could do without

• Questions about AI, marketing, or anything else

I read every reply and use them to shape what I write.

Love y’all,
Carley

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived in my head. When a feeling comes up, I immediately try to rationalize my way out: Why is this happening? What’s wrong? How can I make it go away?

And now I have a partner in my over-rationalization: Mr. GPT. BFF Claude, my boo Gemini...

Last month, I started my Tuesday AM therapy session with what I’m sure my therapist, and therapists everywhere, are hearing way too often these days: “So ChatGPT told me...”

I’ve asked ChatGPT and Claude thousands of questions about myself by now.

This is the specific prompt I used and discussed with my therapist. It did help me see patterns I didn’t notice before. It told me I turn every “weekend side project” into a “weekend optionality playground.” That I have taste, intelligence, and range (why thank you, sir GPT…), but I’m missing “a container that forces depth.”

The insights felt like progress, like I was finally doing the work. Then my therapist said something I knew, but needed to hear: “ChatGPT doesn’t have a body.”

Hmmmmm. All those thousands of questions? I was just getting really, really good at skipping over myself and going straight to the analysis, living in my head, with my non-body friends.

the body first

The answers don’t always start with AI, especially when you’re trying to better connect with and understand yourself. They start with you. With our bodies.

With that sensation in your chest, before you can name it. With the way your shoulders tense when you think about that Slack (you know, THAT “hi” Slack message with no context…). With the relief you feel when you finally sit down on the couch…with your cats…about to turn on Members Only: Palm Beach (it’s so bad, don’t watch) after a long day. That’s where the real insight lives (before you also turn on trash TV).

But somewhere along the way, I started skipping that step entirely. Feeling anxious? Jump to ChatGPT to analyze why. Feeling stuck? Ask Claude for a framework. Feeling overwhelmed? Get Gemini to organize my thoughts into a neat bulleted list.

I was outsourcing the very first step, the huge one that really matters. As my therapist also pointed out: “ChatGPT never asks you: how does it feel?” It can’t. It only sees the part of you that shows up as text and logic. It has no access to your physical sensations, your emotions, the way your nervous system is responding right now to what you’re experiencing. Yes, you can explain it, but it doesn’t feel what you are feeling.

Some of my favorite ideas haven’t come from prompting smarter. They come in the shower, where there’s no screen and no agenda (except in my parents’ where my mom continues her podcasts with a waterproof phone holder…another post for another time).

They come on long runs, during morning coffees, in the quiet moments of meditation and journaling. There’s something pretty magical about stepping away from the noise and just... being in your body.

what happens when you skip your body

After thousands of AI conversations, I can tell you what happens when I make it my first stop: it’s pretty addictive. The validation, the patterns, the insights - they feel so productive, like I’m really getting somewhere. But sometimes I find myself going in circles when I could have just paused and felt instead.

And when I’m stressed? When my rational mind is already overloaded, and my nervous system is screaming at me to slow down? Jumping straight to AI makes it worse for me.

When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, your prefrontal cortex is already offline. Your body is trying to tell you something urgent, something important. And instead of listening to it, you’re asking an AI to help you think through it, to rationalize it, to make sense of it with frameworks and analyses. You’re feeding the spiral instead of breaking it.

My therapist explained it when he reminded me later in the session: “Life isn’t black and white. It could be all of those things.” LLMs give you these clean, structured analyses. But your actual inner experience? It’s messy and layered and contradictory and deeply, beautifully human. It lives in your body, not in a prompt response.

Courtney Collins, a licensed clinical professional counselor at Wildflower Center for Emotional Health, explains that therapy isn’t just about the words a client speaks. It’s about “subtle shifts in body language, tone of voice, and overall presence” - the things that create actual understanding.”

This is the wisdom that gets lost when you skip straight to AI.

what creatives know about starting with your body

Rick Rubin, Julia Cameron, Michael Singer - the authors, creatives, and spiritual guides I love - they’ve all been saying the same thing: start with your body. Start with what you already know, even if you can’t explain it yet.

Rick Rubin puts it this way in “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”: “We are all antennae for creative thought... If your antenna isn’t sensitively tuned, you’re likely to lose the data in the noise.” Your body is that antenna, picking up signals from your subconscious, from the universe, from whatever source of wisdom you believe in. If your first move is to jump to AI, you miss the signal entirely. You’re asking the wrong antenna.

Julia Cameron writes in “The Right to Write” that “writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance.” The knowing comes first, in your body and then out through writing, connecting to your inner creative.

Michael Singer explains in “The Untethered Soul”: “You are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it.” You are the one who feels. The one who knows before you know why. That’s not in your head, and it’s definitely not in ChatGPT. That’s in your body, connected to something larger.

ai comes after, not before

I do love using AI, tracking the innovation happening every day, and building in Claude Code as much as I can (and yes, I do spend hours on an AI + Marketing newsletter too…!).

But I'm realizing more and more that it can’t be the starting point for my writing, my ideas, or understanding how I'm feeling - being aware and figuring out what I need.

When I’m feeling stuck or anxious or confused about something, I am now trying to pause. I move from my head down into my body. I notice what’s actually happening - not what I think about what’s happening, but what I feel about it. The sensation and the knowing that’s there even before words.

I try to sit with that for a minute. Sometimes the answer becomes clear just by paying attention to what my body has been trying to tell me. Sometimes I write after to connect even deeper to my body, my intuition, and needs.

And then, if it’s helpful, I might bring in AI. I might use it to help me organize thoughts that are still jumbled. To explore patterns I’m noticing but can’t quite name yet. To map out options I’m considering.

I’m not perfect at this. I still catch myself opening ChatGPT at 2 a.m., asking why I can’t sleep. But the awareness is there now, and that's where I'm starting.

resources i <3

Body Scan Meditations:

• Jon Kabat-Zinn’s 10-Minute Body Scan

• Insight Timer App (free guided meditations)

• UCLA Mindful Body Scan

Books/Videos:

• “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” by Rick Rubin

• “The Right to Write” by Julia Cameron

• “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer

• “The Universe Has Your Back” Gabby Bernstein

• “The Wisdom of Your Body” by Hillary L. McBride

• “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell

• A 2-Minute Stress Hack For Burnout | Jane Johnsen | TEDxGramercy Park

Prompts (after you check in with your body):

From Alyssa Petersel:

• “Help me identify the difference between what I think I should want and what I actually want…”

From Hamna Aslam Khan:

• A comprehensive analysis of your patterns and blind spots

From Esther Jacobs - "10 Surprising ChatGPT Prompts for Self-Discovery and Personal Growth":

• A blog dedicated to prompts that go beyond the usual surface-level questions and help uncover blind spots, decision frameworks, and deeper insights about yourself using AI.

From LearnPrompt.org - “11 Powerful ChatGPT Prompts for Self-Discovery”:

• A structured, phased approach to using AI as a reflective partner, including core self-awareness, values exploration, strengths/weaknesses analysis, and fear deconstruction.

After you use these prompts, do you feel more grounded in your body or more stuck in your head?

Thanks for reading!

🎯 what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• "Something big is happening" - HyperWrite CEO Matt Shumer compares this AI moment to February 2020 before COVID in his viral X post. GPT-5.3 Codex and Claude Opus 4.6 now complete entire projects from plain English, test themselves, iterate - he says "I am no longer needed for the technical work of my job" (Matt Shumer)
  

• Google tells advertisers to dump granular campaigns for AI - less manual tinkering, more feeding the system quality signals and letting it run (TechBuzz)
  

• Anthropic raised $30B at $380B valuation - biggest venture deal of 2026. Claude Code hit $2.5B annualized revenue, business subscriptions quadrupled (Anthropic)
  

• ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 went viral - generates 15-second videos from text with consistent characters. Disney and Paramount sent cease-and-desist letters. A “Tom Cruise” and “Brad Pitt” AI video caused controversy (ByteDance)

• Software stocks down ~$2 trillion from peak - investors worry about AI agent disruption to SaaS business models (Market news)

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🗞️ top ai + marketing news

the platforms are shifting (search, ads, interfaces)

ChatGPT is citing Reddit and YouTube now. Here’s what that means.
ProFound | ~6-min read
ChatGPT is increasingly citing Reddit threads and YouTube videos in its answers. It means user-generated content isn’t just influencing people - it’s influencing the AI that influences people. My take: If your category lives on Reddit, you need to know what’s being said there. “We don’t manage that channel” is no longer a real option.

Google tells advertisers to dump granular campaigns for AI
TechBuzz | ~4-min read
Google is nudging advertisers to move away from tightly controlled, granular campaign structures and lean into AI-driven optimization instead. Less manual tinkering, more feeding the system quality signals and letting it run. My take: The edge used to be in micro-optimizing. Now it’s in creative quality and measurement clarity.

org design, governance, and what not to automate

How to design marketing organizations for AI learning and scale
MarTech | ~6-min read
Scaling AI in marketing isn’t about buying tools. It’s about building systems to test, document, and distribute learnings across teams. Structure matters more than enthusiasm. My take: If everyone is experimenting but no one is codifying, you’re not scaling. You’re just dabbling.

Before you automate marketing with AI, decide what should never be automated
Forbes | ~6-min read
A reminder to define boundaries first. Certain work - especially emotionally sensitive or reputationally risky communication - shouldn’t be handed to automation without serious oversight. My take: If you wouldn’t let an intern handle it, don’t let a model handle it alone either.

How to use AI for social media
Hootsuite | ~7-min read
A practical guide to using AI for ideation, repurposing, and analytics support in social.
My take: Social is where generic AI shows instantly. Use it to get to a draft faster, then actually add your perspective.

big money, big power moves

Software companies are reorganizing around AI
The New York Times | ~7-min read
Software firms are repositioning themselves as AI companies - or at least AI-enabled companies - as competitive pressure mounts. My take: “AI-powered” isn’t a differentiator anymore.

retail, fashion, and the trust question

Why Thrive Market’s Amina Pasha believes trust will win in an AI-first world
Modern Retail | ~5-min read
In a market saturated with synthetic content and automation, trust and transparency become core differentiators. My take: Reliability is becoming premium positioning.

Snap brings AI lenses to luxury fashion campaigns
MediaPost | ~3-min read
Luxury brands are experimenting with AI-powered AR lenses in campaigns, using tech as a layer of interactivity rather than replacing the creative core. My take: AI works when it adds capability. It struggles when it replaces taste.

Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt Appear in a Viral A.I. Fight Scene. Hollywood Is Not Amused.
The New York Times | ~6-min read
A hyper-realistic, A.I.-generated video showing digital versions of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in a fight scene has gone viral, prompting backlash from studios and industry groups. The clip was made using a Seedance 2.0 (see below in new tools) by Chinese technology company ByteDance. My take: The tech can do it. That doesn’t mean it should. Entertainment is about imagination, but it’s also about contracts, consent, and careers.

trends and the bigger picture

10 AI marketing trends for 2026: agentic AI and search shifts
Adweek | ~5-min read
Covers the rise of agentic workflows, changes in discovery, and how AI is reshaping the entire marketing stack. My take: The real story isn’t a single trend. It’s the fact that AI now touches every function - from planning to reporting to creative execution.

AI business startups and stunts
The Guardian | ~5-min read
A look at attention-grabbing AI startup theatrics and the fine line between innovation and spectacle. My take: Headlines are not products. At some point, you have to ship something useful.

👩‍💻 thought-leader highlights

Because it broke the internet (I haven’t written that since the Kim K. champagne Paper Magazine cover..), this week I’m just laser focused on THE X post:

Matt Shumer: “Something Big Is Happening”

@mattshumer_ | 20M+ views

HyperWrite CEO Matt Shumer compares this moment to February 2020 - when most people dismissed early COVID warnings before the world changed in three weeks. His thesis: we’re in that same “this seems overblown” phase of something much bigger.

On February 5, GPT-5.3 Codex and Claude Opus 4.6 dropped. Something clicked for him: “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job.” He describes what he wants built in plain English, walks away for four hours, returns to finished work - not drafts, the actual completed thing. The AI tests its own work, iterates, and only presents it once it meets its own standards.

The key points:

• AI labs focused on code first because AI building AI creates a feedback loop - each generation helps build the next, smarter version

• Tech workers experienced “helpful tool” becoming “does my job better than I do” over the past year

• That experience is coming to everyone else - law, finance, medicine, marketing, writing - within 1-5 years (many insiders think sooner)

• OpenAI’s documentation states GPT-5.3 Codex “was instrumental in creating itself” - this isn’t a prediction, it’s already happening

• Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) predicts 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs eliminated within 1-5 years

• The free version of AI tools is over a year behind what paying users have access to - judging AI by free-tier ChatGPT is like evaluating smartphones by using a flip phone

His advice:

• Pay $20/month for Claude or ChatGPT and use the best model available (not the default)

• Push AI into your actual work - don’t just ask quick questions like it’s Google

• The person who walks into a meeting saying, “I did this analysis in an hour instead of three days,” is the most valuable person in the room right now

• Spend one hour a day experimenting with AI for six months, and you’ll understand what’s coming better than 99% of people

• That window of advantage won’t stay open long

My take: I’ll be honest - the pace of change in just the past few months has surprised me.

What resonates most:

• His point about the gap between public perception and reality hits home. I talk to people every week who tried ChatGPT in 2023, found it mediocre, and wrote off the whole space. Meanwhile, the people actually experimenting with current tools are producing 10x more output. That gap is real, and it’s widening fast.

• The “I tried it and it wasn’t that good” crowd is working from ancient history in AI terms. Six months ago is ancient history. The models available today are genuinely different. (As you all know, I am OBSESSED with Claude Code and think everyone should use it, technical or not.)

• His advice to push AI into your actual work - not just quick questions - is exactly right. The people getting ahead aren’t using it casually. They’re actively looking for ways to automate hours of work.

Where I’m more skeptical:

• Do I think 50% of jobs disappear in 1-5 years? I’m not sure about that specific timeline - enterprises move slowly, compliance matters, human relationships still drive deals, and there’s a difference between capability and deployment.

• The COVID comparison is emotionally effective but potentially misleading - COVID had fixed biology, AI development involves countless human decisions, and could shift direction.

But here’s what I believe completely:

• The people who thrive will be the ones building AI into their workflows now

• Not because AI replaces them tomorrow, but because “AI-augmented” and “non-AI-augmented” workers are becoming two very different categories with two very different levels of output

• The best time to start experimenting was six months ago; the second best time is today! (Join me!!)

• The window to get ahead by being early is real - and it’s closing faster than most people realize

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

major funding rounds

Anthropic - $30B Series G
The biggest venture deal of 2026 so far. Anthropic closed $30B at a $380B valuationn-more than double its September valuation. Claude Code’s annualized revenue hit $2.5B, and business subscriptions quadrupled since start of year.

Runway - $315M Series E
AI video startup nearly doubled valuation to $5.3B. Funding goes toward “world models”- AI systems that build internal representations of environments for planning. Follows release of Gen 4.5, which outperformed Google and OpenAI video models on benchmarks.

Simile - $100M Series A
Emerged from stealth with AI that predicts human behavior and simulates decision-making for enterprise applications—from consumer purchases to analyst questions on earnings calls.

tools that popped

Seedance 2.0 - ByteDance
ByteDance’s AI video generator went viral this week. Generates 2K video, 15-second clips from text prompts with “multi-lens storytelling” (multiple scenes, consistent characters). Disney and Paramount sent cease-and-desist letters. MPA condemned it for “unauthorized use of US copyrighted works on a massive scale.” ByteDance is now “strengthening safeguards.” Currently China-only (Jianying app), coming to CapCut globally soon.

Kuaishou Kling 3.0
Kuaishou’s competitor to Seedance - photorealistic output, 15-second videos, native audio generation across multiple languages/dialects/accents. Currently subscription-only.

other notable moves

• Cowork (Anthropic) continues gaining traction - Microsoft reportedly encouraging internal teams to adopt Claude tools

• Goldman Sachs rolled out Claude AI to automate accounting and compliance tasks across 12,000+ developers and back-office staff

• Software stocks down ~$2 trillion from peak as investors worry about AI agent disruption to SaaS

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Anthropic - Media Planning and Strategy Lead

Giga - Head of Product Marketing

Scale AI - Product Marketing Lead, Enterprise

Clay - Product Marketing

Sequence - Founding Marketer (AI-native)

Actively AI - Brand & Content Lead

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Hit reply anytime and let me know:

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🎯 what you need to know this week in ai + marketing in 15 seconds:

• The AI Super Bowl moment happened - Anthropic, OpenAI, Genspark showed up. Every AI company seemed to be asking for trust, not demanding attention. They’re negotiating acceptance, not flexing power (Multiple sources)

• AI could unlock $30B for marketers - if we fix measurement first - without cleaner data and shared definitions of performance, AI just accelerates messy systems (MarTech)

• Sam Altman called Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad “dishonest” - CEO rivalry playing out in real time. The ad was a joke that exaggerated awkwardness of talking to AI. But sensitivity in this space is high (Twitter/X)

• ChatGPT ads launched - OpenAI’s first live ad test shows sponsored messages to Free/Go users. Anthropic responded with Super Bowl ads mocking OpenAI: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude” (OpenAI)

• Claude Opus 4.6 released - Agent teams for parallel tasks, Claude in PowerPoint. Outperforms GPT-5.2 on knowledge work benchmarks (Anthropic)

• OpenAI launched Frontier - enterprise platform for building fleets of AI agents that plug into CRMs, data warehouses, internal apps. Early adopters: Uber, State Farm, Intuit (OpenAI)

• “The rise of the professional vibe coder” - Elena Verna @ Lovable hired someone to rapidly build products and campaigns using AI. This hybrid PM-designer-marketer role becoming a full profession (Elena Verna)

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🗞️ top ai + marketing news

measurement, money, and where AI actually pays off

AI could unlock $30B for marketers — if we fix measurement first
MarTech | ~4 min read
AI promises massive efficiency gains, but this piece argues the real unlock is fixing attribution and measurement. Without cleaner data and shared definitions of performance, AI just accelerates messy systems.
My take: This feels right. Most marketing teams don’t have an AI problem. They have a measuring the impact problem.

In Q1, marketers pivot to spending backed by AI and measurement
Digiday | ~5 min read
Marketers are tightening budgets and reallocating toward tools that show measurable AI impact, especially performance and analytics. Experimental AI projects are giving way to spend tied directly to ROI.
My take: The vibe shift is real, peeps. “AI innovation” is out. “Prove it” is in.

the AI super bowl

Genspark leverages AI for fast-turnaround Super Bowl spot
Adweek | ~4 min read
Genspark used AI to dramatically compress production timelines for its Super Bowl debut, positioning speed itself as the differentiator.

Super Bowl 60 AI ads: Svedka, Anthropic and more
TechCrunch | ~5 min read
Breakdown of how AI companies showed up on the biggest ad stage of the year, from Svedka to Anthropic.

OpenAI’s Super Bowl spot: the AI Bowl moment
Marketing Brew | ~4 min read
Covers OpenAI’s long-awaited Super Bowl debut and the broader “AI Bowl” narrative among competing platforms.

Exclusive: Inside OpenAI’s Super Bowl ad playbook
Fast Company | ~6 min read
Behind-the-scenes look at OpenAI’s strategy and messaging decisions heading into the game.

AI chatbots rank top Super Bowl ads — and leave out Big Tech
Adweek | ~4 min read
Chatbots were asked to rank the best ads. The results were interesting - and revealing - especially in how AI systems evaluate their own ecosystem.

Why is every AI Super Bowl ad asking for permission?
Muse by Clios | ~3 min read
Observes a clear theme: AI brands framing themselves carefully, even cautiously, instead of flexing dominance.

AI brands at the Super Bowl
Ad Age | ~5 min read
Recap of how Anthropic, Genspark, Meta, OpenAI and Wix approached their spots.

2026 Super Bowl ad trends, including AI
Ad Age | ~5 min read
Zooms out on larger themes shaping this year’s game.

Altman vs Anthropic in the Super Bowl spotlight
CNBC | ~4 min read
Focuses on the emerging rivalry narrative and the stakes of brand positioning.

ChatGPT ads spark agency interest
Ad Age | ~4 min read
Agencies are seeing AI companies as new, serious brand advertisers - not just product marketers.

AI, crypto, and the Super Bowl moment
Ad Age | ~4 min read
Explores how AI brands are filling the cultural-ad spotlight crypto once occupied.

My take (longer, because there is a lottttt):
This felt like the first Super Bowl where AI companies weren’t hovering around the edge of culture. They were in the middle of it.

Anthropic leaned into humor in a way that surprised people. The ad didn’t try to explain the tech. It made a joke about the awkwardness of talking to AI in the first place, and it trusted the audience to get it. That confidence came through. It felt like a brand that knows exactly how it wants to be perceived.

OpenAI’s spot was more controlled. Clean, careful, clearly thought through. You can sense the weight they’re carrying as the most recognizable name in AI. When you’re that visible, you don’t get to be scrappy. You get to be responsible. The ad reflected that.

Then Sam Altman tweeted that Anthropic’s ad was funny but “clearly dishonest.” Which, yes. It was a joke. Of course it exaggerated. That’s what ads do. But the fact that the CEO stepped in publicly shows how sensitive this space is right now. Brand rivalry is no longer abstract. It’s playing out in real time (and tbd Claude is winning in my opinion on product, trust, safety, and now humor (and reading the room…cough Sam Altman)).

What I found most interesting wasn’t which ad ranked higher or who had more impressions. It was the tone across the board. Almost every AI company seemed to be asking for trust. Not demanding attention. Not flexing power. Asking for permission to be part of people’s lives.

That’s a very different posture than tech had a few years ago. And it tells you where AI sits culturally. It’s powerful, but it’s still negotiating acceptance.

If anything, the real story of this Super Bowl wasn’t that AI showed up. It’s that AI showed up trying to behave…but don’t get me started on the Ring ad…you’re not getting us with mass surveillance acting as a cute pet finder. Behaving doesn’t mean pulling a fast one on us.

creators, distribution, and who gets paid

Google and Microsoft pay creators $500,000+ to promote AI
CNBC | ~4 min read
Big tech is cutting serious checks to influencers to normalize AI products. Creator marketing is now core AI distribution strategy.
My take: AI companies don’t just need ads. They need social proof.

enterprise friction and leadership

Microsoft’s pivotal AI product hits roadblocks
The Wall Street Journal | ~6 min read
Details challenges facing one of Microsoft’s flagship AI initiatives, underscoring how hard enterprise AI rollouts still are.
My take: Consumer hype does not equal enterprise adoption.

Find your AI leadership superpower
Fast Company | ~4 min read
Encourages leaders to define how they uniquely contribute in AI-driven orgs, rather than trying to be the most technical person in the room.
My take: The leaders who win here won’t be the most technical. They’ll be the clearest thinkers.

👩‍💻 linkedin highlights

Kim Caldbeck – “I was a ChatGPT loyalist. Claude Cowork just changed that”
Kim describes how Anthropic’s Cowork integrates directly with Gmail, Docs, Slack and Calendar to handle tasks end to end. It summarized her onboarding docs, created calendar invites for her kids’ sports schedule and redesigned slides while she kept working, so she still writes with ChatGPT but now relies on Claude for workflow automation.

Elena Verna – “The rise of the professional vibe coder (a new AI‑era job)”
Elena says she hired a “vibe coder” to rapidly build products, campaigns and internal tools using AI and that this hybrid PM‑designer‑marketer role is poised to become a full‑time profession as companies want experiments spun up faster.

“I think we’re watching a new profession emerge: full‑time vibe coder” - Elena Verna, Head of Growth @ Lovable

Brendan Hufford – “Content marketing is being dismantled as we speak”
Brendan argues content marketing’s decline isn’t due to AI but to outdated tactics like cold outbound, gated PDFs and high‑volume AI content that erode trust. He outlines three phases of change: the 2025 “volume trap,” today’s “credibility collapse” where only lived experience and proof resonate, and an imminent “unbundling” where content becomes an organization‑wide system focused on one point of view.

Ina Toncheva – “How I switched from ChatGPT to Claude (step‑by‑step)”
Ina shares her migration plan: export ChatGPT data, save custom instructions and top prompts, subscribe to Claude Pro, set up memory and recreate custom GPTs using Claude Skills. She says you don’t lose context but shed baggage and that Claude writes more naturally, though she still uses ChatGPT for specialized research.

Ina Toncheva – “A marketer’s guide to Claude”
Ina highlights Claude’s key marketing functions - writing with brand guidelines built in, ad platform integrations, competitor research, bulk link updates via Claude Code and Projects for campaign context. After three years of ChatGPT use, she prefers Claude for better writing and asks marketers which of these functions they find most valuable.

🛠️ latest ai + marketing tools

ChatGPT Ads
OpenAI launched its first live ad test in ChatGPT, showing sponsored messages to Free and Go tier users. Ads appear below responses, clearly labeled, and are tailored based on conversation topics and past chats. Plus/Pro/Business/Enterprise remain ad-free. The move prompted Anthropic to run Super Bowl ads mocking OpenAI with the tagline: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”

Canva Brand Kit + AI Assistants
Canva expanded its MCP integration so ChatGPT and Claude can now generate designs using your Brand Kit - automatically applying your colors, fonts, and logos. The Canva MCP Server has created over 12 million designs across ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot.

Claude Opus 4.6
Anthropic released Opus 4.6 with “agent teams” for parallel task execution, and Claude in PowerPoint as a research preview. The model outperforms GPT-5.2 on the GDPval-AA knowledge work benchmark. Anthropic’s red team found 500+ zero-day vulnerabilities in open-source code before launch.

OpenAI Frontier
OpenAI launched Frontier, an enterprise platform for building and managing fleets of AI agents that plug into existing business systems. It connects data warehouses, CRMs, and internal apps to give AI “coworkers” shared context and permissions. Early adopters include Uber, State Farm, Intuit, and Oracle.

OpenAI GPT-5.3-Codex
OpenAI released GPT-5.3-Codex, its most capable agentic coding model - 25% faster than its predecessor and the first classified “high capability” for cybersecurity. The model helped debug its own training and deployment. Available now in Codex app/CLI/IDE; API access coming soon.

Anthropic Cowork Plugins
Anthropic open-sourced 11 plugins for Cowork covering sales, finance, legal, marketing, customer support, and product management. Each bundles skills, connectors, and sub-agents to make Claude work like a domain expert.

Snowflake + OpenAI Partnership
Snowflake and OpenAI signed a $200M deal to bring GPT-5.2 directly into Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence. The integration lets 12,600+ enterprise customers build AI agents on their data without moving it outside Snowflake’s governed environment.

💼 cool ai + marketing jobs

Anthropic - Technical Product Marketing Lead

Sendbird - AI-First Full Stack Marketer

Listen Labs - Growth Lead, Acquisition

HubSpot - Senior Marketer, AI Partnerships

Stripe - Product Marketing Manager, Agentic Commerce

Higgsfield AI - AI Educator - Enterprise

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Love y’all,
Carley

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Hey there, friends!

If you’re getting this, you subscribed to my “Fun Times” Substack a couple years ago, so first, thank you!

A lot has changed on my end. I left my startup. The joy had turned into burn out. I’m smiling a lot more and at Etsy now. I also moved back to the US (hi from Brooklyn!) and started the AI + Marketing Weekly on LinkedIn - 30+ editions of curated AI tools, marketing tactics, and what’s worth paying attention to.

I’m now bringing it all to Substack (love the humanity here vs. other platforms) and merging it with Fun Times.

What you’ll get:

Every week: A curated roundup of the most important AI-in-marketing links - covering new tools, tactics, news, events, jobs, and what actually matters as AI reshapes marketing.

A couple times a month: Posts that feel like the Fun Times you signed up for. When to use AI and when to log off, unlearning perfectionism, living-in-Europe lessons, contentment, vision boards, craft nights, 90s nostalgia - and more actual fun times.

For people who want to level up with AI and wind down without it.

I’m in a chapter of more peace now. Excited to write from that place.

First send drops this week. Thanks for sticking around! You can always unsubscribe if you’re not into it. No hard feelings.

Love y’all,
Carley

• Layoffs are being framed as "AI efficiency" even when AI isn't replacing the work - companies using AI language to justify cost cuts, employees growing skeptical (NYT)
  

• 57% of consumers trust brands more when they use AI - but trust drops quickly when AI feels deceptive or replaces human support entirely (MarTech)
  

• Luxury brands double down on emotional value as AI catches on - using AI behind the scenes while emphasizing craft and human storytelling in consumer-facing work (Glossy)
  

• Marketing is starting to sound like people fluent in algorithms and illiterate in humans - brands obsessed with algorithmic optimization are ignoring human complexity, empathy, and storytelling (Mira Kaddoura)
  

• Adobe–Semrush partnership deepens AI ties - tighter integration between content creation, SEO data, and AI-driven optimization inside enterprise stacks (Yahoo Finance)
  

• SXSW 2026 is almost here (Mar 12-18, Austin) - 40th anniversary brings dedicated AI + Marketing track, CMO panels from SoFi, Lyft, Samsung. Also: NVIDIA GTC, HumanX, Adobe Summit

More top news, tools, jobs, a lot of cool events, and LI posts below👇.

Not subscribed? Sign up here.

• 🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS

• 🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

• 🟡 LATEST AI MARKETING TOOLS

• ⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

• 🟢 UPCOMING AI + MARKETING EVENTS

• 🟠 TRIVIA TIME

🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

Trust, transparency, and some more pushback against AI in marketing

the reality check: ai, trust, and layoffs (and hiring?!)

Layoffs and ‘AI-washing’
The New York Times | ~7 min read
Companies are increasingly framing layoffs as “AI efficiency,” even when the technology isn’t actually replacing the work. The piece looks at how AI language is being used to justify cost cuts, and why employees are growing skeptical of those claims.
My take: This is less about AI and more about credibility. Overusing AI as an excuse risks long-term trust with both workers and customers.

Hottest job in tech in 2026 is writing the words AI hires use, report says
Business Insider | ~5 min read
Companies are increasingly hiring writers who specialize in defining roles, prompts, and instruction sets that make AI systems work well - a specialized communication job emerging at the intersection of language, strategy, and tech.
My take: The best work often sits at the boundary between human clarity and machine execution - and that’s where the jobs are growing.

Publicis wants to be an AI marketing MVP. Now comes the hard part
Marketing Dive | ~4 min read
Publicis is pitching itself as an AI-first marketing partner, but execution, integration, and proving ROI are where the real test begins. Strategy is easy; operationalizing AI at agency scale is not.
My take: Every holding company is telling the same story. The winners will be the ones who actually simplify life for clients, not add another platform, y’all.

brand trust and consumer perception

57% of consumers trust brands more when they use AI, study finds
MarTech | ~3 min read
Survey data suggests AI use can increase trust when it improves relevance, speed, or clarity. But trust drops quickly when AI feels deceptive or replaces human support entirely.
My take: The takeaway isn’t “use more AI.” It’s “use AI where it visibly helps people.”

Why AI visibility can increase direct traffic even when nobody clicks
MarTech | ~4 min read
Explains how being cited or summarized in AI answers can still drive brand recall, later searches, and direct visits even without traditional attribution.
My take: This reframes SEO and brand as the same problem again, which honestly feels overdue.

creative bets and cultural moments

Svedka bets on AI and its ‘fembot’ to make Super Bowl history
Adweek | ~4 min read
Svedka is leaning into AI as the creative hook itself for a Super Bowl moment, reviving its long-running “fembot” character with generative tech at the center.
My take: Risky, but at least it’s intentional. Using AI as the joke or the idea is different from quietly slipping it into production! (Screaming this!)

As AI catches on, luxury brands double down on emotional value
Glossy | ~4 min read
Luxury brands are embracing AI behind the scenes while emphasizing craft, emotion, and human storytelling in consumer-facing work.
My take: Luxury understands something others don’t yet: AI makes emotion more valuable, not less.

marketing ops, data, and guardrails

Marketers are putting guardrails before growth on AI agents
eMarketer | ~3 min read
Teams are slowing down agent adoption to focus on brand safety, accuracy, and governance before scaling.
My take: This feels healthy. Fast mistakes compound faster with agents.

FAQ: Paid social, AI tools, platform costs, and brand safety in 2026
eMarketer | ~5 min read
A practical rundown of how AI is affecting paid social buying, costs, creative, and risk heading into 2026.
My take: Worth bookmarking. This is where theory meets budget reality.

email, search, and organic growth

The right and wrong way to use AI in email marketing
Entrepreneur | ~6 min read
Covers where AI actually helps in email (segmentation, testing, ideation) and where it quickly becomes spammy or off-brand.
My take: Email punishes lazy automation faster than almost any channel.

“Our marketing is not a bullshit machine”: Why Perplexity is investing in targeted organic growth
Digiday | ~5 min read
Perplexity is focusing on credibility, clarity, and slow, targeted growth instead of splashy performance tactics.
My take: This reads like a response to AI fatigue. Trust is the growth loop.

deals and power shifts

Adobe–Semrush deal deepens AI ties
Yahoo Finance | ~3 min read
The partnership signals tighter integration between content creation, SEO data, and AI-driven optimization inside enterprise marketing stacks.
My take: This is about owning the full loop: create, optimize, measure, repeat, all inside one ecosystem.

🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

Don’t forget the human brain!

Allie K. Miller – “Over reliance on AI is poison to your brain”
Allie warns that delegating “brainy” tasks to AI may speed you up but reduces comprehension and even brain activity. She urges students, parents and teachers to treat AI as a tool for sparring and challenging ideas - not a crutch- and notes that young people fear over‑reliance more than hype.

Joe Lazer – “Storytelling Tops AI Age Business Skills”
Joe writes that as AI makes mediocre content cheap, exceptional storytelling becomes a CEO‑level priority: brands can no longer buy attention but must earn it with original IP, entertaining shows and scalable narrative systems. He points to companies hiring “Chief Entertainment Officers” and suggests that great storytellers who can manage change are more valuable than ever.

Emily Kramer – “Wistia Embeds Boost AI Video Visibility”
Emily notes YouTube has overtaken Reddit as the top social source cited by language models, but LLMs rely on text metadata rather than watching video; YouTube iframes hide those transcripts. She advises adding transcripts and metadata to video embeds or using Wistia’s LLM‑friendly embed code so AI search can “see” your content.

Mira Kaddoura – “Marketing & Advertising Are Starting to Sound Like People Fluent in Algorithms and Illiterate in Humans”
Mira writes that marketing is obsessed with algorithmic optimization and ignores human complexity; she calls for more listening and empathy. She describes a world split between a “synthetic web” of bots and real communities withdrawing from the noise, and argues that brands must understand people’s pain and stories to rebuild trust and create work that heals.

❝

Over reliance on AI is poison to your brain. … If you delegate the brainy stuff to AI, maybe you gain a little speed, but you reduce your own comprehension, and in the MIT study’s case, even brain activity.

- Allie K. Miller, #1 Most Followed Voice in AI Business on LinkedIn

🟡 LATEST & TRENDING AI MARKETING TOOLS

A banana in Gamma

Datalinx AI
Datalinx raised $4.2M to build an AI "data refinery" that turns messy enterprise data into clean, AI-ready marketing assets. The company is led by ex-Amazon/Oracle exec Joe Luchs and backed by High Alpha, Databricks Ventures, and Okta co-founder Frederic Kerrest.

OpenAI Codex App
OpenAI launched a desktop app for Codex, positioning it as a "command center" for coding agents. You can run multiple agents in parallel, create reusable skills, and set up background automations. It's now available on Free and Go tiers, with doubled rate limits for paid plans.

Gamma - Nano Banana Pro
Gamma added Nano Banana Pro, the first image model that handles text perfectly inside images, with a 4K HD option. The Generate API is also now in general availability with Make.com integration.

⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

Sendbird to eBay: who's hiring this week

OpenAI - Growth - Emails, Notifications and Lifecycle 

eBay - Sr. Manager, CRM AI Transformation 

Databricks - AI GTM Leader

Adobe - AI Evangelist, Adobe Enterprise 

Sendbird - AI-First Full Stack Marketer 

Luma AI - Senior Product Marketing Manager

🟢 UPCOMING AI + MARKETING EVENTS

SXSW is almost here, and a dedicated AI + Marketing summit

SXSW 2026 (Mar 12-18, Austin TX)
The 40th anniversary brings all three tracks - Innovation, Film & TV, Music - together for the first time. Dedicated "Brand & Marketing" and "Tech & AI" tracks with 850+ sessions. AI-dominated PanelPicker submissions. CMO panels from SoFi, Lyft, Samsung, plus Amy Webb's annual tech trends report. Badges from $1,865.

NVIDIA GTC 2026 (Mar 16-19, San Jose CA)
Essential for understanding where AI is actually headed. Jensen Huang keynote, 500+ sessions on agentic AI, inference, and physical AI. Less marketing-specific, but critical for grasping the tech powering next-wave tools. Hybrid format.

HumanX 2026 (Apr 6-9, San Francisco CA)
Premier AI conference for decision-makers, expecting 6,500 attendees. Marketing track covers funnels, campaigns, personalization, and predictive analytics. Speakers include Dr. Fei-Fei Li and AWS CEO Matt Garman. From the Money20/20 and HLTH team.

Adobe Summit 2026 (Apr 19-22, Las Vegas NV)
Adobe's enterprise marketing flagship with 200+ sessions across 13 tracks. Focus: AI-native platforms for content at scale, personalized experiences, GenStudio. Free online option available. Early bird $1,995 through Feb 13.

AI x Marketing Summit (Apr 23-24, San Francisco CA)
Practitioner-focused two-day event. CMOs from Box, Writer, Webflow, Samsara speaking, with Clay workshops. Covers B2B and e-commerce AI marketing. Early bird $249.

🟠 You made it to trivia!

Which job task is AI oddly bad at compared to humans?

• Writing a punchy headline

• Summarizing a meeting

• Estimating how long work will actually take

• Translating languages

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• AI visibility is now a C-suite mandate - discovery moving into AI interfaces means marketing can't own this alone. It drags in data, product, comms, legal, CX (MarTech)
  

• Anthropic launched interactive apps inside Claude - access Slack, Clay, Canva, Figma, Asana, Hex without leaving the conversation (Anthropic)
  

• Google launched Personal Intelligence in AI Mode - connects Gmail and Photos to searches for hyper-personalized results (Google)
  

• Higgsfield integrates multiple AI video models - combines Sora, Veo, Kling into one marketer-friendly production platform (Higgsfield)
  

• Claude in Excel now available to all Pro subscribers - reads, edits, analyzes Excel files directly in sidebar. Handles formulas, tables, financial models (Anthropic)
  

• Brands turning to influencer agencies for AI strategy - agencies pitching AI services (measurement, workflows, content ops) alongside traditional creator work (eMarketer)
  

• "People want to become someone who doesn't need your product anymore" - Gene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising lesson: sell identity shifts, not features (Josue Valles)
  

• Upcoming events worth blocking time for - Product Marketing Summit Austin, MarTech Conference, and more (see below)

More top news, tools, jobs, a lot of cool events, and LI posts below👇.

Not subscribed? Sign up here.

• 🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS

• 🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

• 🟡 LATEST AI MARKETING TOOLS

• ⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

• 🟢 UPCOMING AI + MARKETING EVENTS

• 🟠 TRIVIA TIME

🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

AI is changing society… and Super Bowl ads

where marketers are placing bets right now (and what it means for 2026)

6 moves that determine whether your brand shows up
Fast Company | ~6 min read
Brands are being judged by “presence” more than polish: where you appear (AI answers, search snippets, creator feeds), how consistent you are across surfaces, and how quickly you can refresh creative without losing your voice. The piece frames “showing up” as a systems problem, not a single-channel tactic.
My take: This is the new baseline: if your metadata, content library, and creative ops are messy, no amount of media spend fixes it.

Why AI visibility is now a C-suite mandate
MarTech | ~5 min read
Argues that “AI visibility” is becoming an executive KPI because discovery is moving into AI interfaces and answer engines, and brands need governance, content structure, and measurement that match that shift.
My take: The interesting part is the implication: marketing can’t own this alone. It drags in data, product, comms, legal, and CX.

AI governance without strategy is setting marketing teams up to fail
MarTech | ~5 min read
Makes the case that policies and approval chains are useless if teams don’t define what AI is for (speed, cost, quality, personalization, analytics) and what “good” looks like, with guardrails that actually map to workflows.
My take: Governance works when it’s boring and embedded: templates, thresholds, and defaults, not a 20-page doc…

retail + shopping behavior

AI has changed holiday shopping. Here’s what the numbers say
Marketing Dive | ~4 min read
Recaps how AI is showing up in shopping journeys (discovery, comparison, support) and highlights measurable shifts tied to AI-assisted behaviors during holiday.
My take: “AI shopping” isn’t one feature. It’s lots of small assists that add up, which makes it harder to attribute and easier to underestimate.

Retail’s AI bet risks data and market share
Retail Dive | ~4 min read
Focuses on the tradeoffs retailers face when they lean on AI partners and platforms: you can gain speed and personalization, but you can also lose leverage over data, margins, and customer ownership.
My take: If your AI roadmap depends on someone else’s black box, your differentiation becomes packaging.

trust, citations, and “what counts as real” online

YouTube, Reddit, and AI search engine citations
Adweek | ~4 min read
Looks at how AI search and answer experiences are citing sources, and what that means for platforms that host the underlying content (and for brands trying to be referenced, not ignored).
My take: The win is not just traffic. It’s being the cited source that becomes the default “truth” in the answer layer.

Facing AI slop and a trust problem, AI platforms invest in Super Bowl-level brand ads
Digiday | ~5 min read
Covers AI companies spending big on brand advertising to create legitimacy and trust, in response to fatigue, skepticism, and the flood of low-quality AI content.
My take: This is a signal: performance marketing alone is not enough when the category itself has a credibility problem.

What AI is teaching brands about showing up in Super Bowl moments
The Drum | ~4 min read
Breaks down how brands are using AI to plan, react, and produce creative faster around tentpole cultural moments where timing matters as much as the idea.
My take: Speed is a strategy, but only if you already know your voice. Otherwise AI just helps you publish faster…in the wrong tone.

creators + agencies + “AI strategy” services

Brands are turning to influencer agencies for AI strategy, not just creator campaigns
eMarketer | ~3 min read
Highlights agencies pitching AI-related services (measurement, workflows, content ops, platform experimentation) alongside traditional influencer work.
My take: This is the agency land grab: “we’ll be your AI operator” is becoming a new retainer story.

platform economics + the “builder layer”

Claude Code’s success and Anthropic’s business model
Wired | ~6 min read
Explores why developer-focused products (like coding workflows) can become meaningful distribution and revenue, and what that implies for model companies competing on usefulness, not hype.
My take: The dev workflow is one of the clearest “sticky” wedges in AI. Marketers should watch it because it’s where product adoption patterns show up early.

The adolescence of technology
Dario Amodei | ~12 min read
A reflective essay on how powerful technologies mature: fast capability gains, uneven social adaptation, and the need to build institutions, norms, and safety practices that can keep up.
My take: Not very “marketing-y” but I think an important read for anyone interested in AI and what it means for society at large.

big players setting the 2026 playbook

Google unveils three AI strategies to reshape marketing in 2026
The Tech Buzz | 4 mins read
Summarizes Google’s Ads Decoded messaging: AI Max for Search (automation + expansion), Demand Gen (bridging social and search intent), and Asset Studio (gen-AI creative production at scale).
My take: Google’s subtext is loud: targeting and bidding get more automated, so creative and brand controls become the main levers you still own.

State of AI 2026
Deloitte | ~20–25 min read
A broad enterprise snapshot of where AI investment is landing, what’s blocking ROI, and how leaders are organizing for adoption (operating model, governance, talent, and measurement).
My take: Reports like this are most valuable as a mirror: if your internal blockers match the “common blockers,” you can stop treating them like personal failures and start treating them like solvable systems issues.

🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

Some fun marketing thoughts

Josue Valles - Gene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising: Timeless Marketing Principles”
Josue bought Gene Schwartz’s rare marketing manual for $900 and distills it to four timeless lessons: sell identity shifts, match messages to audience awareness, emphasize your mechanism, and amplify beliefs.

Sundar Swaminathan - “CEO: We're using 7‑day click attribution. New CMO: What's your average purchase cycle?”
Through a CEO‑CMO chat, Sindar points out that a 7‑day click window misses most of a 30‑day purchase cycle and urges marketers to test different attribution windows and focus on incrementally rather than arbitrary credit.

❝

People want to become someone who doesn't need your product anymore.

- Josue Valles, CurationLabs Founder

🟡 LATEST & TRENDING AI MARKETING TOOLS

Your favorite tools are now in Claude

Claude Interactive Apps / MCP Apps
Anthropic launched interactive apps inside Claude's chat interface, letting users access Slack, Clay, Canva, Figma, Box, Clay, Asana, Hex, and more without leaving the conversation. Built on the open MCP Apps extension.

Flora AI
Creative AI startup raised $42M Series A led by Redpoint Ventures to tackle fragmented generative AI tools for brands and agencies. Flora hosts 50+ text, image, and video AI models in a single node-based workspace. Used by Nike, Levi's, AKQA, Pentagram, and Lionsgate for early-phase campaign concepting. Total funding now $52M.

Higgsfield
Integrates multiple AI video models (Sora, Veo, Kling) into one marketer-friendly production platform.

Apple Creator Studio
Apple launched its new subscription bundle. Includes AI-powered features like Transcript Search, Visual Search, and Beat Detection. Positioned as a more affordable alternative to Adobe Creative Cloud for creators.

Google Personal Intelligence in AI Mode
Google launched "Personal Intelligence" for AI Mode in Search, allowing AI Pro/Ultra subscribers to opt-in to connect Gmail and Google Photos to searches for hyper-personalized results.

Claude in Excel
Anthropic rolled out Claude for Excel to all Pro subscribers after a beta period limited to Max/Enterprise. Claude can now read, edit, and analyze Excel files directly in a sidebar—handling formulas, tables, financial models, and large datasets.

⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

Grammarly to Zillow: who's hiring this week

Zillow - Senior Manager, Partner Communications AI

Meta - Marketing Growth Platforms - Applied AI 

Grammarly - Senior Product Marketing Manager 

OpenAI - Vertical Marketing Lead

Inuit - Principal Product Manager, AI (Mailchimp)

ScaleAI - Product Marketing Manager, Enterprise 

🟢 UPCOMING AI + MARKETING EVENTS

PMM, B2B, and more marketing events

Product Marketing Summit Austin
(Feb 24-25, Austin TX) PMM-focused event covering positioning, competitive intelligence, product launch strategy. Built by PMMs for PMMs.

MarTech Conference
(Mar 4, Online/Free) Free virtual event you can attend live or on-demand. Good for staying current without travel.

Digital Summit Tampa
(Mar 17-18, Tampa FL) Part of the Digital Summit series, broader digital marketing focus with AI-driven marketing sessions.

Spryng
(Mar 24-25, Austin TX) Wynter's "unconference" for senior B2B SaaS marketers. AI-powered matching pairs you with peers facing similar challenges. More peer learning than traditional sessions.

🟠 You made it to trivia!

What does "LLM" stand for in AI?

• Large Language Model

• Linear Learning Machine

• Long-term Learning Memory

• Logical Language Matrix

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• ChatGPT ads are coming - OpenAI will test ads in free and Go tiers in the U.S. within weeks. Pro/Business/Enterprise stay ad-free (for now….) (OpenAI)
  

• Brands winning with AI know what NOT to automate - winners define clear guardrails around voice, quality, and decision-making (Marketing Dive)
  

• Agentic AI may flatten brand differentiators - brands risk becoming interchangeable unless they signal value beyond price (Search Engine Journal)

• "I worry marketing is heading in the wrong direction" - AI tools trying to "sound like you" are hollowing out marketing (Kieran Flanagan)
  

• Match the tool to the task, not the hype - Claude Opus for thinking, Code for building, Gemini for research (Allie K. Miller)
  

• B2B must stop mass AI content production - less content, better judgment (CMSWire)
  

• The most valuable AI skill is knowing when NOT to use it - judgment matters more than prompt engineering (CMSWire)

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🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

Where AI is reshaping ads, content, and trust

Brands, creativity, and the new advertising rules

How brands can assert control as AI rewrites the advertising playbook
Marketing Dive | ~4-minute read
As AI takes on more of the execution layer, brands are being pushed to define clearer guardrails around voice, quality, and decision-making. The brands winning with AI are the ones that know what they will not automate.

How AI shopping could turn fashion advertising on its head
Vogue | ~5-minute read
AI-powered shopping tools are starting to collapse the line between inspiration, discovery, and purchase, forcing fashion brands to rethink how ads show up in the journey. When shopping becomes conversational, ads have to feel less like persuasion and more like guidance.

Avocados From Mexico turns to AI to advertise around the Super Bowl instead of a TV buy
Digiday | ~4-minute read
Rather than spend on a traditional Super Bowl ad, the brand used AI to create timely, adaptive creative across digital channels. Good news - AI is making big cultural moments more accessible to brands without Super Bowl budgets.

Agentic AI, platforms, and the risk of sameness

Why agentic AI may flatten brand differentiators
Search Engine Journal | ~4-minute read
As AI agents make decisions on behalf of users, brands risk becoming interchangeable unless they signal clear value beyond price or convenience. If agents can’t tell brands apart, customers won’t either.

Agentic AI announcements from CES and NRF
Marketing Brew | ~4-minute read
Retailers and tech companies showcased agentic AI tools designed to automate planning, merchandising, and customer interactions. We’re moving from AI features to AI coworkers, whether teams are ready or not.

Tech firms push deeper into retail with AI
New York Times | ~6-minute read
Major tech players are embedding AI deeper into retail operations, from supply chain to personalization, blurring the line between platform and merchant. Retail is becoming a tech product, not just a storefront.

Content, disclosure, and trust resets

The AI content reset: What B2B marketers must stop and start in 2026
CMSWire | ~5-minute read
B2B teams are being urged to slow down mass AI content production and refocus on relevance, accuracy, and editorial standards. Less content, better judgment.

A practical framework for AI disclosure in marketing
MarTech | ~5-minute read
This proposes clear guidelines for when and how brands should disclose AI use, aiming to protect trust without overwhelming customers. Transparency works best when it’s boring and consistent.

FAQ on AI chatbots: How they work and why marketers should care
eMarketer | ~4-minute read
A straightforward breakdown of how chatbots function, where they succeed, and where marketers still need human oversight. Chatbots are only as good as the systems behind them.

People, influence, and shifting loyalty

Ex-Pinterest marketer Andrea Mallard named Microsoft AI CMO
Adweek | ~3-minute read
Microsoft taps a brand-first leader to shape how AI products are positioned and understood. AI marketing roles are becoming reputation roles.

Authenticity is really important: Why AI is set to propel influencer marketing
Glossy | ~4-minute read
AI tools are helping brands scale influencer discovery and management, while creators remain the trust layer. AI scales reach, not credibility.

The rebalancing of travel and the decline of brand loyalty
Skift | ~5-minute read
Travel brands are seeing loyalty weaken as price, convenience, and AI-powered comparison tools take priority. Loyalty erodes fastest when choice gets easier.

Skills marketers actually need next

7 AI competencies marketers must master
CMSWire | ~5-minute read
From data literacy to judgment and ethics, this outlines the real skills marketers need as AI becomes embedded in daily work. The most valuable skill is knowing when not to use AI.

🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

What AI (and specific models) is for

Allie K. Miller – “Top AI Models for Different Tasks Revealed”
Allie shares how she actually uses AI day-to-day: Claude Opus for thinking, Claude Code for building, Gemini and NotebookLM for long research, plus Sora/Veo for video. Her point is simple - matching the tool to the task matters more than chasing the newest model.

Josh Cohenzadeh – “Sentry’s Co-Founder on Normalising LLMs at Work”
Josh shares a memo from Sentry’s co-founder making AI fluency a baseline skill, not a perk. Adoption only sticks when teams are trained, usage is measured, and AI helps people ship real work - not when tools are simply handed out.

Kieran Flanagan – “I Worry Marketing Is Heading in the Wrong Direction”
Kieran warns that AI tools trying to “sound like you” are hollowing out marketing. Automation should free teams to create better work and stronger communities, not flood feeds with empty content that pushes audiences away.

❝

To me, the beauty of AI is that it should give you more time to craft and create.

- Marketing, AI & GTM (SVP)

🟡 LATEST & TRENDING AI MARKETING TOOLS

Yay… ads! 😬

ChatGPT Ads + ChatGPT Go
OpenAI announced it will begin testing ads in the U.S. for free and Go tiers in the coming weeks. Ads appear at the bottom of answers, clearly labeled, and won't influence responses. Pro, Business, and Enterprise remain ad-free. OpenAI Also launched ChatGPT Go globally at $8/month.

Lightspeed AI
Lightspeed Commerce launched AI for agent-driven workflows, including conversational assistants for retail and restaurants that help merchants get answers without navigating dashboards.

Bloomreach Loomi AI on AWS Marketplace
Bloomreach's AI-powered search and personalization tool now available on AWS Marketplace.

⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

Anthropic to Mercury: who's hiring this week

Anthropic - Technical Product Marketing Lead

Chalk - Growth Marketing - NY 

Conductor - Product Marketing Manager

Mercury - Senior Data Scientist - Marketing 

Coframe - Growth Strategist 

Reflection AI - Brand Lead

🟠 You made it to trivia!

Who co-founded Instagram and now co-leads Anthropic Labs?

• Kevin Systrom

• Mike Krieger

• Jan Koum

• Brian Acton

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- Carley

• Anthropic launches Claude Cowork - agentic desktop app that makes Claude Code accessible to non-technical users. Works with local files, Google Docs, unifies scattered notes (Anthropic)

• Google launches Universal Commerce Protocol - open standard for agentic commerce with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart. Buy buttons directly in AI Mode and Gemini (Google)

• Only 30% of brands appear consistently across AI answers - pages updated less than quarterly lose citations. Fresh content and third-party validation matter more than SEO (Josh Grant)
  

• When AI agents become the customer - marketing shifts when autonomous agents recommend, negotiate, and select products on behalf of humans (MarTech)
  

• Lego hands AI conversation to kids - instead of fear or hype, puts exploration and play at the forefront (Adweek)
  

• 4 ways AI breaks marketing trust - poor personalization, opaque decisions, inconsistent tone, over-automation. Transparency and guardrails are the fix (CMSWire)

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🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

Because you can’t have enough 2026 AI marketing predictions

How AI agents will reshape every part of marketing in 2026
MarTech | ~6 minutes
AI agents are expected to move beyond task automation into decision coordination, orchestration, and continuous optimization. The article lays out how this will touch planning, creative, execution, and measurement.

Marketing predictions for 2026
Marketing Dive | ~5 minutes
A roundup of what industry analysts expect next year: tighter privacy interplay, AI adoption maturity, and deeper integration between data and creative. The pendulum swings from “what’s possible” to “what actually works.”

Ad Age reporters on 2026 marketing trends and pivots
Ad Age | ~7 minutes
Ad Age editors share what they’re watching for 2026: consumer behavior shifts, measurement evolution, and brand-building in an AI context.

AI and the human touch in marketing, from CES insights
Marketing Brew | ~4 minutes
From CES, brands are talking about balancing AI efficiency with emotional connection. The theme: automation can’t replace empathy.

4 ways AI breaks marketing trust - and what comes next
CMSWire | ~5 minutes
AI misalignment can break trust through poor personalization, opaque decisions, inconsistent tone, and over-automation. The article lays out fixes, including transparency and shared guardrails.

5 ways to strengthen your brand in the age of AI
MarTech | ~5 minutes
This piece highlights clarity, purpose, consistency, distinct voice, and human loops as brand defenses against algorithmic sameness. AI can multiply your brand voice, but it can also drown it if you don’t define it first.

The AI ad backlash is here and big brands are leaning in
Inc. | ~5 minutes
As consumers push back against low-quality generative ads, some brands are embracing the criticism and using it to spark conversations about creativity and authenticity.

When AI agents become the customer
MarTech | ~6 minutes
This explores how marketing will shift when autonomous agents act on behalf of customers, recommending, negotiating, and selecting products.

As adult anxieties around AI grow, Lego hands the conversation to kids
Adweek | ~4 minutes
Lego’s new campaign centers kids - a group less bogged down by fear or hype - to frame conversations about AI and creativity. Instead of technical features, it puts exploration and play at the forefront. Simple humanity beats technical complexity in the way people actually feel about AI.

🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

Fresh tips for Gamma, AI Search, Claude Cowork and Code

Josh Grant – “AI Search: Why Consistency & Freshness Matter for Visibility”
Josh explains that AI search often bypasses “page one”: only about 30 % of brands appear consistently across back‑to‑back AI answers, while pages updated less than quarterly lose citations and many citations come from outside Google’s top 20. He urges marketers to refresh content frequently, structure it cleanly and earn validation on third‑party sites and community forums, because AI models pull from conversations and user‑generated content.

Maria Gharib – “Gamma’s AI Presentation Tool Surpasses Human Effort”
Maria shares how Gamma’s AI Prompt Guide generated a full slide deck from a 30‑word prompt in minutes, outperforming a presentation she spent six hours crafting. The tool has been trained on millions of professional decks, so it knows that audience‑first storytelling and visual‑first design win; more than 70 million people are using it, and Maria says it’s now her fastest way to build clear, compelling decks.

Om Nalinde – “Founder of The Browser Company: ‘If you don’t work Claude Code‑native ASAP your team’s going to get left behind.’”
Om shares a warning from The Browser Company’s founder that teams must become “Claude Code‑native” or risk falling behind, and provides a step‑by‑step 2026 roadmap. The guide spans quick‑start tutorials, university‑level courses, toolboxes of commands and templates, video manuals, and reading lists to help engineers adopt Claude Code as a workflow, not just a tool.

Lani Assaf – “Months ago I got this DM about Claude Code, now Cowork solves it”
Lani (Brand Comms / Marketing @ Anthropic) confesses she once avoided Claude Code because the command‑line felt too technical, but Anthropic’s new Cowork interface wraps the coding agent in a user‑friendly desktop app. Cowork can read and write local files, unify years of notes from Roam and Apple Notes, access Google Docs and help with tasks like sorting files, pulling images and synthesizing scattered project notes - making Claude Code accessible to non‑technical users.

❝

If you’ve been hearing about Claude Code but didn’t know where to start… Cowork is it.

- Lani Assaf, Brand Comms / Marketing @ Anthropic

🟡 LATEST & TRENDING AI MARKETING TOOLS

All the top LLMs have something for you

Claude Cowork — Anthropic's new agentic desktop experience that lets Claude work alongside you on your computer, launched as a research preview.

Anthropic Labs — Expanded internal incubator for experimental products at the frontier of Claude's capabilities. Mike Krieger (Instagram co-founder) moves from CPO to co-lead Labs.

Ralph Wiggum Technique — Development methodology for continuous AI agent loops - keep feeding an agent a task until the job is done, with verification and feedback between iterations. Check out tips on how to use.

ChatGPT Health — Dedicated health experience where users can securely connect medical records and wellness apps (Apple Health, Function, MyFitnessPal) with enhanced privacy protections.

Optimove AI Marketing Tools Hub — Comprehensive resource helping marketers operate with greater speed and autonomy - discover insights, create assets, run self-optimizing campaigns without waiting on other teams.

Bento Tanuki AI — AI agent that transforms plain-English descriptions into production-ready email automations. Describe what you need; Tanuki generates the complete workflow in seconds.

COEY — AI-first media company from Ted Murphy (IZEA founder, "father of influencer marketing"). Three divisions: AI Automation, AI Studios, and AI Media—a proprietary network of AI-first channels.

Google Universal Commerce Protocol — Open standard for agentic commerce across the full shopping journey. Built with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart. Enables buy buttons directly in AI Mode and Gemini.

Emberos — AI brand visibility platform that predicts how brands will appear in AI engines and pushes fixes directly into marketing workflows via Slack, HubSpot, Jira.

⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

Meta to Intuit: who's hiring this week

Monday . com - AI GTM Manager 

Navan - Product Marketing Manager, AI Solutions 

Intuit - Staff Marketing Manager, GEO  

NVIDIA - Senior Manager, CPU Technical Product Marketing  

Meta - Consumer Product Marketing Manager, AI

🟢 EVENT TO CHECK OUT

NVIDIA GTC AI Conference

March 16-19, 2026 | San Jose
The premier global AI conference for developers, researchers, and business leaders exploring the next wave of AI innovation.

Learn more

🟠 You made it to trivia!

In the movie "Her," what is the AI assistant's name that Theodore falls in love with?

• Sophia

• Samantha

• Siri

• Echo

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- Carley

• AI powers the back end more - most real impact is happening behind the scenes in data processing and optimization, not flashy consumer experiences (eMarketer)
  

• Meta acquired Manus - the AI startup everyone's been talking about. Big platforms are buying leverage, not experiments (TechCrunch)
  

• OpenAI experiments with sponsored ads - raising questions about trust and intent. Ads change how people interpret answers (Futurism)
  

• OpenAI bets big on audio - Silicon Valley declares war on screens. Voice lowers friction but raises expectations (TechCrunch)
  

• 2026 prediction: "Seussian" brands rise - as AI creates sameness, brands will embrace whimsy, imperfection, and delightful nonsense to stand out (Michelle Blaser)
  

• LLMs are forking - Claude for enterprise, ChatGPT for consumers. Stop asking "which is best," start asking which fits your workflow (Alexandra Charters Zubko)
  

• Unusual raised $3.6M - treating AI models like human influencers, not search engines. The entire buyer journey compressed into one chat (Unusual)
  

• AI doesn't fix broken systems, it exposes them - plugging AI into old org structures limits value. Teams need new roles and workflows (Fast Company)

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🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

The robots are shopping and AI turns Instagram into a new online world, according to the CEO…

Why marketing data governance and AI skills now go hand in hand
Think with Google | ~5 minutes
As AI gets embedded across marketing workflows, weak data governance is becoming a real blocker. This piece argues that clean data, shared standards, and clear ownership matter more than adding new tools. AI skill gaps are often data discipline gaps in disguise.

Digital marketing trends for 2026
Google | ~6 minutes
A forward look at how privacy shifts, AI-assisted measurement, and changing consumer expectations are reshaping marketing strategy going into 2026. The next wave of marketing wins won’t come from growth hacks, but from trust and clarity.

AI powers the back end of digital marketing more than the front end
eMarketer | ~4 minutes
Most AI impact today is happening behind the scenes, from data processing to optimization, rather than in consumer-facing experiences. Quiet AI work is doing more than flashy demos.

AI will change the way you shop in 2026
Fast Company | ~5 minutes
AI-driven recommendations, search, and checkout flows are set to make shopping feel more assisted and less transactional. Convenience is rising, but so are questions about control and choice.

Key enterprise SEO and AI trends for 2026
Search Engine Journal | ~6 minutes
Enterprise SEO teams are preparing for AI-driven search results, structured data demands, and brand authority signals replacing keyword tricks. SEO is becoming an engineering and content quality problem, not a keyword game.

What happens to personal style in the age of AI-powered shopping
Glossy | ~4 minutes
As AI styling tools grow, fashion brands are questioning whether personalization enhances taste or flattens it. Style still needs humans to break the pattern.

To take advantage of AI, marketing must evolve
Fast Company | ~4 minutes
This argues that plugging AI into old org structures limits its value. Teams need new roles, workflows, and decision rights. AI doesn’t fix broken systems, it exposes them.

Meta just bought Manus, an AI startup everyone’s been talking about
TechCrunch | ~3 minutes
Meta’s acquisition signals continued investment in AI-driven creation and tooling across its platforms. Big platforms are buying leverage, not experiments.

Three ethical AI questions every brand leader should be asking
Fast Company | ~4 minutes
A practical look at responsibility, transparency, and trust as brands deploy AI at scale. Ethics shows up fastest in customer backlash.

The rise of AI-generated advertising
Rolling Stone | ~6 minutes
AI-generated ads are becoming more common, forcing brands to rethink authorship, originality, and creative ownership. Efficiency can’t replace taste.

2026 will prove whether AI checkout is here to stay
Modern Retail | ~4 minutes
Retailers are testing AI-driven checkout and payment flows, but consumer trust remains the big question. Speed matters less than confidence at checkout.

Four AI research trends enterprise teams should watch in 2026
VentureBeat | ~5 minutes
A look at emerging research areas shaping enterprise AI adoption, from reasoning models to efficiency gains. Research timelines don’t match marketing timelines.

OpenAI and the push toward sponsored ads
Futurism | ~3 minutes
Discussion around OpenAI experimenting with sponsored placements raises questions about trust and intent. Ads change how people interpret answers.

OpenAI bets big on audio as Silicon Valley declares war on screens
TechCrunch | ~4 minutes
Audio-first AI experiences are gaining momentum as companies look beyond screens for engagement. Voice lowers friction but raises expectation.

Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri, on AI and content direction
Threads | ~1 minute
Mosseri shares thoughts on how AI fits into content creation and platform evolution. Platform signals matter more than product announcements.

🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

The year of the ‘Seussian’ brand

Alex Vacca – “Top AI Agents for Business: Sales, Research, Customer Service, and More”
Alex lists 33 agentic solutions that automate sales, research, customer service and marketing, arguing that smart companies use agents as “employees” to handle low‑value work and even follow up on leads.

Alexandra Charters Zubko – “LLMs Diverge: Claude for Enterprise, ChatGPT for Consumers”
Alexandra argues 2026 is the year large‑language models fork: Claude is becoming an enterprise workhorse for extended thinking and integration, ChatGPT is leaning into consumer and shopping use‑cases, and Gemini must prove it’s different. Her advice: stop asking which model is “best” and start asking which fits your workflow.

Ronnie Parsons – “Master Claude with Anthropic’s Free Learning Path”
Ronnie highlights Anthropic’s free ten‑step roadmap for getting from Claude novice to building autonomous systems, spanning fundamentals, prompt engineering, tool use and retrieval‑augmented generation.

Michelle Blaser – “My 2026 Prediction? The Rise of ‘Seussian’ Brands”
Michelle predicts brands will react to AI’s sameness by embracing “Seussian” qualities - whimsical, unexpected, human and craft‑driven - to stand out.

❝

The further the pendulum swings towards AI, algorithms being in charge, and everyone questioning what is real, the brands who will stand out will embrace imperfection, humanity, being off‑kilter, and a splash of delightful nonsense.

- Michelle Blaser

🟡 LATEST & TRENDING AI MARKETING TOOLS

Cool AI agents alert 🚨

Unusual
Unlike competitors who treat AI models like a new search engine (coining terms like AEO and GEO), Unusual treats AI models like human influencers. "People use ChatGPT for more than just search," said founder Will Jack. "The entire buyer journey - search, discovery, research, evaluation, and selection-is compressed into a single conversation with an AI chatbot." This week they announced it has raised $3.6 million in early-stage funding.

Akii AI Visibility Score Directory
Akii launched the AI Visibility Score Directory, the first public, longitudinal directory measuring how AI systems evaluate, interpret, and recommend brands.

Listen Labs
Replaces slow, manual qualitative studies with AI agents that conduct, transcribe, and synthesize customer conversations.

Bear
Helps teams capture high-intent leads from AI agents by zeroing in on visitors who arrive from conversational tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity. Scans the exact questions prospects ask and guides brands on what content to publish.

Eden
AI agents that autonomously schedule campaigns, run A/B tests, and personalize experiences across email, SMS, and onsite displays for e-commerce brands.

TheHog.ai
Predicts "your next customer before they enter the market" by leveraging a proprietary Global Graph that fuses live social listening with identity resolution.

⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

Clay to Chalk: who's hiring this week

Clay - Product Marketing 

DataAnnotation - Senior Marketing Manager

AirOps - Product Marketing Lead 

Chalk - Growth Marketing - NY 

Braintrust - Marketing SME - AI Evaluation (US-Remote)

Aidoc - Sr. Director, Growth Marketing

🟢 EVENT TO CHECK OUT

HumanX Conference

San Francisco, April 6-9, 2026; Amsterdam, Sept 22-24, 2026
Designed for AI and business leaders focused on actionable insights and real-world applications, with 300+ speakers from companies like Salesforce, Canva, and Zoom. Learn more

🟠 You made it to trivia!

Which trend highlights how widely generative AI is now used among marketing teams?

• 10% use AI for decisions

• 30% still avoid AI

• 63% of teams use generative AI

• 5% use AI for reporting

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Sharing this because it's been super helpful: a weekly AI + marketing newsletter that curates all the news, tools, and posts worth knowing about. I was spending way too much time trying to keep up with what's happening in AI, and this does it for me. Quick read every Tuesday: [your referral link]

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- Carley

• Layoffs expected as marketers face pressure over AI savings - teams under growing pressure to justify AI investments through cost cuts, not just productivity (WSJ)
  

• Counter-take: AI might create more marketing jobs, not fewer - fewer busywork roles, more thinking roles around orchestration, QA, strategy, and judgment (PPC Land)
  

• 2026 prediction: marketers will rediscover the basics - after years of chasing tools, we're returning to positioning, creative, and customer understanding (Fast Company)
  

• Slowing down is becoming marketers' secret weapon - as AI speeds up execution, smart teams slow decisions to protect quality and brand coherence (PPC Land)
  

• Peak content is here - AI made attention harder to earn. 2026 prediction: brands will invest in real-world moments you can't scroll past (María J. Morales)
  

• BigCommerce + Stripe enable agentic commerce - products can now be discovered and purchased through AI agents, not just websites (BigCommerce)
  

• Great CMOs act like GMs - strongest CMOs speak in unit economics, payback periods, and margin impact. They own growth systems end-to-end (David Manela)

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• 🟠 TRIVIA TIME

🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

AI’s moment of truth: layoffs pressure, brand experiments, and search discovery shifts

Layoffs expected as marketers face pressure over AI savings, survey finds
Wall Street Journal | ~4 minutes
A new survey shows marketing teams under growing pressure to justify AI investments through cost savings, with layoffs increasingly framed as efficiency wins. Expectations are rising faster than real workflow change.

Why AI might create more marketing jobs, not fewer
PPC Land | ~3 minutes
And here is a totally opposite take. 🙂 This article outlines that AI is automating tasks, but also creating demand for new roles around orchestration, QA, strategy, and judgment. The work is shifting, not disappearing. Fewer busywork roles, more thinking roles.

Ahrefs tested AI misinformation — and proved something else
Search Engine Journal | ~4 minutes
Ahrefs ran an AI misinformation test and found the real issue wasn’t hallucinations, but how quickly unverified outputs spread when humans don’t intervene. My take: AI errors scale fastest when no one’s checking.

The AI search revolution: A commerce brand’s guide to discovery
Modern Retail | ~6 minutes
A look at how AI-driven search is changing product discovery, moving away from keyword tricks and toward structured data, content quality, and brand signals. My take: Being findable is replacing being optimized.

2026 will be the year marketers rediscover the basics
Fast Company | ~4 minutes
After years of chasing tools, this argues marketers will return to fundamentals: positioning, creative, and customer understanding. My take: AI didn’t break marketing - it exposed weak foundations.

AI ads are flopping and sparking backlash at major brands
Business Insider | ~5 minutes
High-profile AI ads from brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s sparked confusion and backlash, often due to tone and context rather than tech quality. My take: Taste still matters more than tools…printing this on a shirt for my 2025 learning!

Slowing down becomes marketers’ secret weapon in the AI speed race
PPC Land | ~3 minutes
As AI speeds up execution, some teams are intentionally slowing decisions to protect quality and brand coherence. My take: Slower thinking upstream saves time everywhere else.

Luxury fashion’s AI marketing experiments hit a turning point
Glossy | ~4 minutes
Luxury brands are pulling back from flashy AI use and focusing on subtle, behind-the-scenes applications that protect brand equity. My take: Restraint is the strategy.

AI tools are changing how B2B websites are designed
DesignRush | ~3 minutes
AI is speeding up personalization, testing, and iteration in B2B web design, while human judgment still drives taste and structure. My take: AI builds faster; humans decide what’s good.

Why scalable AI blog content matters for growing brands
Nerdbot | ~4 minutes
An argument for using AI to scale content responsibly, focusing on consistency over viral hits. My take: Scale only works if the foundation is solid.

🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

AI + Marketing 2026 predictions 🔮

Maddie Raedts – “What’s next for influencer marketing in 2026”
Maddie predicts a shift toward fewer, more intentional creator partnerships, prioritizing real human perspective and community over follower counts. The future is creator-led thinking and campaigns people actually remember.

María J. Morales – “The biggest marketing trend of 2026”
María says we’ve hit peak content, and AI only made attention harder to earn. In 2026, brands will stop chasing algorithms and invest in real-world moments, experiences you can’t scroll past, that the internet then amplifies.

Alexandra Manderstam – “Brand & content predictions for 2026”
Alexandra forecasts every brand becoming a media company, with online channels for reach and offline moments for connection. She also predicts a rise in long-form content, more individualistic aesthetics, and a move away from traditional lifestyle influencers toward expertise-led voices.

Alex Greenshpun – “From AI tourists to system builders”
Alex observes that marketers are moving past experimenting with AI tools and toward building real systems and workflows. The focus is no longer which model you use, but how tools connect into durable infrastructure.

David Manela – “Great CMOs act like GMs”
David argues the strongest CMOs think like general managers, speaking in unit economics, payback periods, and margin impact. They own growth systems end-to-end and align tightly with finance, product, and sales.

Lenny Rachitsky – “What 1,750 tech workers say about AI productivity”
Lenny shares survey data showing most workers say AI improves work quality and saves time, with founders seeing the biggest gains. Engineers want help with reviews and documentation, while agentic tools are still early.

❝

If your CFO and CMO don’t share the same metrics, you won’t scale.

David Manela, Co-founder @ Violet

🟡 LATEST AI MARKETING TOOLS

AI tools quietly changing search and shopping this week

TOOL

WHAT IT DOES

WHY IT MATTERS

BEST FOR

Akii AI Engage – GenAI Search Engagement Platform

Akii AI Engage helps brands actively educate generative AI search engines about their content, products, and positioning.

AI search visibility is no longer passive. Brands now need tools that proactively shape how they appear and are understood by genAI engines.

SEO Teams • Brand & Content Leaders • Enterprise Marketers

GoDaddy ANS Marketplace – Agent Discovery Layer

GoDaddy launched the ANS Marketplace as the next phase of its Agent Name Service, allowing users to discover verified AI agents.

Agent discovery and trust are becoming first-class problems. This is an early attempt to create a directory and identity layer for AI agents.

SMBs • Entrepreneurs • Platform Builders

BigCommerce + Stripe – Agentic Commerce Suite

BigCommerce integrated with Stripe’s agentic commerce capabilities, enabling products to be discovered and purchased directly through AI agents rather than traditional storefronts.

Commerce is expanding beyond websites into AI-driven shopping flows, with agents acting as the new buyers.

Ecommerce Teams • Marketplace Operators • Commerce Product Leads

Teikametrics ARI – Artificial Retail Intelligence

Teikametrics launched ARI, an AI-driven platform that unifies campaigns, inventory, and performance optimization across Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok Shop.

Marketplace growth now requires centralized intelligence across fragmented retail channels, not siloed optimization.

Marketplace Sellers • Retail Media Teams • Growth Operators

⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

Stripe to Huge: who's hiring this week

JPMorganChase - Prompt Engineer (Brand) 

Pinecone - Growth Marketing Lead

Navan - Product Marketing Manager, AI Solutions 

Stripe - Product Marketing Manager, AI Industry  

Huge - Associate Director, AI Content Strategy 

Basis - Narratives & Communications Lead

🟢 EVENT TO CHECK OUT

CES is almost here

Las Vegas, Jan 6-9
The biggest brands show off what they've been working on - AI, health tech, entertainment. Great for understanding big shifts that will shape customer behavior. Learn more

🟠 You made it to trivia!

Which AI image generator was trained on billions of images from the internet and sparked major copyright debates?

• DALL-E

• Midjourney

• Stable Diffusion

• All of the above

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• Salesforce acquires Qualified - intensifying its AI push by embedding agentic tools deeper into CRM workflows (Yahoo Finance)
  

• 62% of B2B CMOs aren't ready for AI-native competitors - gaps in talent, data, and internal alignment are holding teams back (MarTech)
  

• Anti-AI backlash is growing louder - from creative fields to customer service, frustration with AI overuse is gaining traction (CNN)
  

• AI search is shaping your brand's reputation - what AI surfaces often becomes your brand story, and you're losing control (Fast Company)
  

• Google tests CC - AI assistant that lives in email - summarizes threads, drafts replies, manages tasks. Email is becoming an AI command center (Google)
  

• Cutting brand investment costs $1.92 in future spend - BCG research shows brand behaves like capital that compounds when sustained, decays when cut (Kevin Goodwin)
  

• Clay now works inside ChatGPT - collapse prospecting, enrichment, and reasoning into one workspace (Clay)
  

• The AI Visibility Index launched - Semrush now tracks how visible brands are in AI-powered search engines (Semrush)

More top news 🗞️, tools 🧰, jobs 💼, and LI posts 👩‍💻 below!

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• 🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

• 🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

• 🟡 LATEST AI MARKETING TOOLS

• ⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

🔵 TOP AI + MARKETING NEWS/GUIDES

Salesforce’s AI buy, brand experiments, and the backlash brewing

9 brands that doubled down on AI in 2025
Adweek | ~5 minutes
A look at brands that went all-in on AI across media, creative, operations, and personalization this year. The examples range from cautious pilots to deeply embedded AI workflows that touch the full funnel.

62% of B2B CMOs aren’t ready to compete against AI-enabled companies
MarTech | ~4 minutes
New research shows most B2B marketing leaders feel underprepared for AI-native competitors, citing gaps in talent, data, and internal alignment.

How a French spirits company created employee buy-in for AI
Harvard Business Review | ~6 minutes
This case study breaks down how Pernod Ricard focused on trust, training, and real use cases to get employees comfortable using AI, rather than forcing adoption from the top down.

AI search is shaping your brand’s reputation
Fast Company | ~4 minutes
As people rely more on AI-powered search and summaries, brands are losing control over how they’re described. What AI surfaces often becomes the brand story.

Inside Rocket’s new NFL campaign as its in-house creative team embraces AI
Marketing Dive | ~4 minutes
Rocket’s in-house team used AI to speed up creative production while keeping strategy and final decisions human. The campaign shows how AI can support scale without replacing creative direction.

The anti-AI backlash is growing louder
CNN | ~4 minutes
From creative fields to customer service, frustration with AI overuse is starting to show. The piece explores where resentment is coming from and why it’s gaining traction.

The state of consumer AI 2025: hits, misses, and what’s next
a16z | ~8 minutes
A deep dive into which consumer AI products actually stuck in 2025, which ones faded, and why habits matter more than hype.
My take: Daily utility beats novelty every time.

CMOs’ most overlooked marketing strategies in 2025
Marketing Brew | ~4 minutes
This piece highlights underused tactics CMOs say deserve more attention, from better internal alignment to smarter lifecycle marketing.

Growth lessons behind Lovable’s $66B outcome
Elena Verna | ~6 minutes
A sharp breakdown of Lovable’s growth engine, focusing on distribution, product-led loops, and disciplined prioritization..from it’s head of Growth, Elena! .

The AI Visibility Index
Semrush | ~5 minutes
A new index tracking how visible brands are inside AI-powered search and answer engines, offering a glimpse into what “SEO” looks like in an AI-first world.

Salesforce buys AI marketing firm intensifying its AI push
Yahoo Finance | ~3 minutes
Salesforce announced it is acquiring an AI marketing startup Qualified to strengthen its portfolio of agentic and AI-driven enterprise tools. The move reflects Salesforce’s strategy of embedding AI deeper into its core CRM and workflow products rather than treating it as an add-on feature.

🟣 LINKEDIN POSTS YOU SHOULDN’T MISS

Being recommended > being found

Margaux Viola – “Boost AI Feedback with Personalization Settings”
Margaux explains how turning on ChatGPT Personalization transformed AI from agreeable to genuinely useful by asking it to challenge assumptions and surface blind spots. Her takeaway: better prompts = sharper thinking and faster decisions.

Kevin Goodwin – “Cutting Brand Investment Costs Companies $1.92 in Future Spend”
Kevin shares BCG research showing that cutting brand spend today costs nearly 2× more to recover later, because brand behaves like capital that compounds when sustained and decays when neglected.

David Manela – “Optimize for AI and Google for Growth”
David argues customers aren’t Googling anymore - they’re asking AI, which learns from Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, and reviews. Winning brands will optimize for being recommended by AI, not just ranked by Google.

Alaura Weaver – “AI-Generated Content and the Role of the Storyteller”
Alaura writes why AI hasn’t replaced storytellers: companies can generate content easily, but still need humans to shape meaning, narrative, and taste. She notes a surge in storyteller roles - and confusion about what they actually do.

Rashad Assir – “What Founders Miss About Hiring Storytellers”
Rashad says AI has created content abundance and meaning scarcity. The best storytellers don’t just write—they turn everyday company moments into narratives that cut through the noise.

❝

A good storyteller should be able to take seemingly ordinary things about the company and package them in a way that appeals to tribal curiosity.

Rashad Assir, Content at Redpoint

🟡 LATEST AI MARKETING TOOLS

AI Ad updates + more in agentic commerce.

TOOL

WHAT IT DOES

WHY IT MATTERS

BEST FOR

Adobe Firefly - Prompt-Based Video Editing

Adobe Firefly now supports prompt-based video editing, letting creators add, remove, extend, and modify video clips using natural language.

This pushes generative video from creation into real editing workflows, making AI usable mid-production, not just at the start.

Creative Directors • Video Teams • Brand Studios

Meta SAM Audio

Meta released SAM Audio, extending its Segment Anything Model to audio. It can isolate, separate, and analyze sounds within complex audio environments.

Audio editing, moderation, and analysis gain the same granular control image and video already have with segmentation models.

Audio Creators • Media Platforms • AI Research Teams

Clay in ChatGPT

Clay is now directly accessible inside ChatGPT, allowing users to enrich leads, pull data, and run GTM workflows without leaving the chat interface.

This collapses prospecting, enrichment, and reasoning into one workspace, reducing tool switching for growth teams.

Growth Marketers • RevOps • Sales Teams

Gemini 3 Flash

Gemini 3 Flash is Google’s faster, lighter-weight Gemini model optimized for low latency, real-time use cases, and high-throughput tasks.

It enables AI-powered features where speed and cost matter more than deep reasoning, like search, assistants, and live experiences.

Product Teams • Search & Platform Teams • Developers

Apps Can Now Be Submitted to ChatGPT

OpenAI now lets developers submit apps directly into ChatGPT, making them discoverable and usable inside the ChatGPT interface.

ChatGPT is becoming a distribution platform, not just a model, shifting how AI products reach users.

AI Founders • Product Builders • Developer Teams

Google Tests Email-Based Productivity Assistant - CC

Google is testing the AI assistant CC that lives inside email, helping users summarize threads, draft replies, and manage tasks directly from their inbox.

Email is turning into an AI command center, not just a communication tool.

Knowledge Workers • Ops Teams • Busy Executives

Opal - Google’s Vibe Coding Tool in Gemini

Opal is Google’s new “vibe coding” tool that helps users build apps by describing what they want, now integrated into Gemini.

Coding is shifting from syntax-driven to intent-driven, accelerating prototyping for non-technical builders.

Indie Builders • Product Designers • Early-Stage Founders

New ChatGPT Images

ChatGPT rolled out a major image upgrade with higher-quality generation, better prompt adherence, and stronger editing capabilities.

This closes the gap between standalone image tools and conversational creation workflows.

Designers • Social Teams • Creative Marketers

Claude for Chrome

Anthropic launched a Claude Chrome extension that brings Claude directly into the browser for reading, summarizing, writing, and researching across tabs.

AI assistants are moving closer to where work actually happens: the browser.

Writers • Researchers • Knowledge Workers

⚫️ COOL AI + MARKETING JOBS

From Datadog to Intuit: who's hiring this week

OpenAI - Growth - Emails, Notifications and Lifecycle

Adobe - Director, Enterprise AI Strategy

Google - AI Knowledge Strategist, Creator Experience, YouTube 

Datadog - Senior Product Marketing Manager (AI Security) 

Intuit - Head of Marketing Futures 

Evertune AI - Data Journalist, AI & Search

You made it to trivia!

What did Merriam-Webster name as its 2025 Word of the Year?

• Vibe

• Slop

• Agentic

• Prompt

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Sharing this because it's been super helpful: a weekly AI + marketing newsletter that curates all the news, tools, and posts worth knowing about. I was spending way too much time trying to keep up with what's happening in AI, and this does it for me. Quick read every Tuesday: [your referral link]

Have feedback? Suggestions? Questions? Want to advertise/collaborate?

Message [email protected]

Thanks, y’all! Get those stickers!
- Carley