What did we do before AI access became widespread?

Remembering that for some of us is easy, but others insist there’s no other way to do the most fundamentally human parts of their jobs without AI. And we’re just beginning to see the blowback from when that goes wrong.

When someone asks the question above, it tends to come from one of four perspectives:

A) They are amazed by how they’re learning new skills and accomplishing tasks they could not do before AI access became widely available.

B) They’ve forgotten how to do many basic functions of their job, like research, analysis, or stringing a sentence together without 30 em dashes. It’s not that they forgot how to do their job; it’s that they can’t remember how not to use AI.

C) Whether or not they can do their job as before, they are so busy cutting corners by passing off AI-generated slop as their own that they insist this is how the world works now.

D) They are trying to sell you an AI-enabled product. Do not buy it. 

Camp A can feel magical. I am particularly fond of how vibe coding gives me a new creative outlet. On a more mundane level, connecting Claude to Slack, Asana, and Gmail makes me far more efficient with knowledge management and project management. 

Conversely, the most depressing uses of AI I’ve experienced are when I tried to have it do work that I enjoy and where I have some degree of competency. Last week, I mentioned how I asked my Town.com AI assistant to write the column, and I didn’t use a single sentence it wrote — maybe a few phrases were useful starting points. That was an experiment where I expected AI to fail, but any time I’ve tried using AI to tackle a core competency of mine, I felt empty. It’s like when you eat more than the recommended serving size of Oreos. It seems like fun, but then you’re left wondering if this is what your life has come to.

Camp C is a scary place. It’s full of people who should know better, including many academics and authors who you should hope would have higher standards. 

Derek Thompson recently covered this in his weekly trend analysis newsletter that often covers issues like whether we're in an AI bubble and how the backlash to data centers is surging. 

He wrote in his “9 Questions I’m Obsessed With” edition, "A recent study found that between 2023 and 2026, the number of books with any sales grew by a factor of 19, far outpacing the growth in sales. Books with 'substantial AI text' are making more money with every passing year, while authors who don’t write with AI are earning less per book in almost every genre, with fantasy as the major exception."

When I asked AI (Gemini), ironically, to help me fact-check this and understand the study better, it flagged a major caveat Thompson didn't share: "On average, individual AI books earn significantly less than human-written books. Substantial-AI titles make up 20% of catalog titles but account for only 11.3% of total revenue." 

The need for speed that some authors are craving has led to some notable corners getting cut. One case study in this comes from Steve Rosenbaum, founder of Sustainable Media Center, who was caught using AI to make up quotes for his book — I kid you not — entitled, "The Future of Truth." (Full disclosure: I was an advisor to SMC but since resigned.)

The interview he did with Wired didn't help. His responses were essentially a mix of “Everybody's doing it,” “It wasn't my fault,” and “It's not my job to fact-check AI.” This is in a book about TRUTH! 

Wired found that 53% of "The Future of Truth" seemed to be AI-generated, and another 9% was flagged as "likely AI-assisted" based on results from the AI detection tool Pangram.

Wired's Kate Knibbs wrote: "I asked him whether he would rather stop writing than stop using AI in his writing process. 'Yeah,' he answered. Rosenbaum vacillated between acknowledging that AI use could cause problems (‘I do not understand why it's my job as an author to play whack-a-mole with a multibillion-dollar company who puts hallucinations into their feed as a business practice"‘) and repeatedly insisting that AI is indispensable, calling it the best writing partner he has ever had."

I can recommend better writing partners than that. 

Alternatively, if your writing partner says, "Here's a quote from Kara Swisher," and you know your partner constantly makes things up, it IS your job to ask your partner to show you the original source so you can verify it. If you're putting it in a book, Swisher would presumably rather respond to you directly so she can tell you not to include it instead of refuting it when the press calls her after the book is published.

“I also sound like I have a stick up my butt, according to ChatGPT,” Swisher told The New York Times regarding the hallucination that Rosenbaum passed off as "truth." Or maybe this is what truth looks like in the future. George Orwell couldn’t have scripted this better.

There's hope for those who prefer truth in the present era, instead of those who think it's OK to pass off hallucinations as truth. Anthropic is including invisible watermarks for content created in Claude, and Google does this with Gemini. Perhaps that will be a deterrent for some. Perhaps not.

My biggest concern isn't AI, or even with people passing off AI slop as their own work. I'm worried that people won't care if work is slop, or slop dressed up in a suit of credibility. When I wrote my book about AI and marketing that was published last year,  I used AI to help with ideation, research, and organization, but the writing had to be my own. I cared, and I hope others care too, as I'm the only one who could have written my book — even if AI could have potentially written it better. 

To borrow a phrase from Ms. Swisher, I hope we have sticks up our butts about this. If we don’t, there’s no reason to prioritize truth, as long as you sell some books.

— David Berkowitz, Chief Community Officer, Marketecture Media

Who: Consumer Electronics Marketers, Global Brand Strategists, Creative Directors, Home and Appliance Vertical

What: LG Electronics launched its global "Life's Good" campaign centered on the message, "Free up your mind," highlighting how home AI can quietly automate routine domestic chores. Backed by global consumer survey data showing people spend roughly 87 days a year burdened by invisible micro-decisions, the campaign positioning steps away from technical product specs toward emotional well-being. A cinematic hero film illustrates how silent household automation gives consumers room to focus on presence and rest.

Why it matters: Smart hardware and appliance brands are shifting AI marketing narratives from tech performance and speed to tangible lifestyle relief and mental health benefits.

(Marketing-Interactive)

Who: Retail Marketers, Media Planners, E-commerce Strategy Leads, Agency Executives

What: Digiday released its 2026 Holiday Marketing Report, showing that 76% of surveyed brand and agency insiders expect revenue growth despite macroeconomic pressures. Advertisers are reallocating spend into connected TV and streaming ads while cutting back on traditional unboxing videos and static gift guides. However, brand executives noted that curated gift lists remain crucial behind the scenes because AI-powered search engines heavily index curated best-of lists to generate consumer holiday recommendations.

Why it matters: Traditional promotional tactics like influencer hauls are losing favor, but curated content remains vital as fuel for AI recommendation engines during peak shopping seasons.

(Digiday)

Who: CRM Marketers, Email Strategists, E-commerce Leads, Performance Marketing

What: Researchers at Chicago Booth partnered with an online wine retailer across three field experiments to test whether automated AI systems could handle end-to-end email marketing campaigns. The AI models consistently matched copywriters in generating click-through and conversion rates while maximizing projected annual net profit. The findings demonstrate that generative AI can successfully automate routine lifecycle copy and campaign variations without eroding consumer engagement.

Why it matters: Performance and CRM teams can safely automate high-volume daily email variations to drastically reduce production costs while maintaining conversion performance.

(Chicago Booth Review)

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