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CMO Confidential
AI - The Year in Review & The Year Ahead | Andy Sack and Adam Brotman | Forum3
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Andy Sack
The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.
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Podcast Narrator
The podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the Head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton.
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Mike Linton
Typeface helps the world's biggest brands move from business brief to fully personalized campaigns in hours, not months with its Agentic AI marketing platform. They are the first enterprise platform with agentic AI marketing workflows designed to instantly automate work that used to take weeks. With Typeface, one campaign scales into thousands of personalized experiences across ads, email and video while staying true to your brand. The company's AI native platform integrates seamlessly into your martech stack and marketing workflows and includes enterprise grade security. Adweek named Typeface AI Company of the Year. Time Magazine featured them as a best invention and Fast Company called them the next big thing in tech. See how major brands like Asics and Microsoft are transforming marketing with Typeface. Learn more at Typeface AI CMO welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer Confidential CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of Marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com here today with my guests Adam Brotman and Andy Sack. Today's topic AI the year in review and the year ahead. Adam was the Chief Digital Officer of Starbucks as well as the EVP of Global Global Retail Operations. He also served as a President and Chief Experience Officer and Co CEO of J. Crew. He probably one of the longest business cards anybody's ever had. Andy is the Managing Partner at Keen Capital and the Innovation Arts Group and has many experiences in the digital and financial world. They founded Forum3, a company focused on the intersection artificial intelligence and and digital transformation and wrote a book called AI first, which is a really good book. I actually have a signed copy. I can vouch for it. It's really good. They joined us over a year ago for a show called It's a Bird, It's a Plane, Holy It's AI where they laid out the case for how AI would change business and the world and now they're back to tell us how it's going. Welcome, Andy and Adam.
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Andy Sack
Thank you.
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Adam Brotman
Thanks for having us.
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Mike Linton
Great to see you guys again. Hey, now let's start just with a general update. You know, we're almost at the close of 2025 and you've been in the catbird seat of what's really going on in the year. Give us a report from the front lines of what happened in AI writ large in this year.
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Andy Sack
I'll dive in. I mean, I'm going to broaden it because it was two years ago, almost to the day, Mike, that Adam and I had our first interview for our book AI first with Sam Altman at the OpenAI headquarters. It's almost three years to the day that ChatGPT 3.5 was announced. And so in three years, ChatGPT is now doing, you know, I think they're serving a billion weekly active users. Just in Recent, recent times, OpenAI has released a browser, Sora2. You know, it's just mind boggling the amount of technology advancement that has occurred in the last two to three years. And it's easy to forget that ChatGPT launched three years ago. So what happened this year? I don't know, but we're now at a billion weekly active users and have full video capability. I watched a video that was totally AI generated of Sam Altman talking about really the geopolitical landscape of US versus China and the impact it has on really the, the future of the world and frankly the whether we're going to get along and how, and the role that AI plays in political decision making. So we've come a long way in.
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Mike Linton
A couple of years and are we picking up speed, like, because I would say we're on. That is a really good perspective. Let's look back three years and say the, the revolution is here and it's, it's, it's gathering momentum as it goes downhill. But you would say, I guess it's, it's still just the beginning of all this stuff. Right?
- [05:36]
Andy Sack
My sense is where I, I, we, I can feel just myself just in this year. When you look at what's been, what's been released by the large language models that we're on, on an exponential curve. And I, I feel it just trying to keep pace with the announcements. Adam, how about you?
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Adam Brotman
Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I mean, it's actually interesting looking back at this year because I can't believe it feels like in this space things are happening so fast and progressing so fast that it feels like it's been longer than a year. So for example, at about this time last year roughly is when reasoning models first came out. You'd think they've reasoning models and thinking models which or transformative in this space. Like it went from just a simple chat model that could make a lot of mistakes and couldn't do higher order reasoning all the time to where now if you just, if you're using the thinking model specifically of ChatGPT5 for example, or if you're using Gemini 2.5 Pro or whatever, one of these ones where reasoning and thinking is built in like a year ago that was brand new, right? Which is wild to think about. Secondly, the Trump administration came online this year, that wasn't last year. Right. So there has been this like, from a, from a federal policy perspective there's been this like accelerationist sort of stance. And then thirdly, we did get ChatGPT5, we did get Gemini Pro 2.5, 2.5 Pro. We've gotten Claude Heavy, sorry, Grok Heavy and Claude 4.5. These things were this year and they are significant steps up in capability. And yet we're kind of all being boiled like frogs in a way, thinking like wow, is it really accelerating what's going on in the meantime? The ability for these models to do incredible things is still is happening recently. And then you've got this also this year, the rise of these long duration task agents like Replit Agent 3, which can sit there and code and check its own code and actually test itself for hours at a time. So the concept of the improvement of the models, the reasoning models themselves and these improvements, it's been a hell of a year. And I think as a result right now at the end of this year it's like all. And I know we're going to get to this, you're hearing about like there's just insatiable demands for these chips and for the data infrastructure and the energy to run them. Yeah, energy, the chips, the data infrastructure, the hyperscalers behind all this, the crazy amount of value in the stock market that's happening. And I, you know, putting aside, we get to predictions in a minute. It's just been a year of just incredible progress. And I think when Andy mentions there's like almost a bill, almost a billion weekly active users of ChatGPT alone, like in terms of adoption, consumer and business adoption, it's been a huge.
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Mike Linton
That's the fastest ever, right? So yes, I want to talk about, you mentioned it, you guys both touch on it. It's all These tie ups between all the companies in AI, the chip makers, the AI models, the companies, everyone is co investing or tying each other up. How should we think about that? And in the long run, are there winners and losers here? And then I want to flip over to winners and losers in the marketplace or consumers as well. But tell me about the tie ups.
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Andy Sack
I mean Adam, you want to. You go first.
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Adam Brotman
Sure. I actually, I. I'm actually a little bit in the middle in terms of am I thinking that these types make total sense or are they circular nonsense. I actually I'm closer to they make sense than the other in the sense that it seem. It feels like they're just sort of making up money out of thin air. On and on some levels you could say that because you've got like for example Nvidia does a deal with OpenAI where they are going to invest in OpenAI the more that OpenAI buys Nvidia chips and so is there just money going to them? Is there money going From Nvidia to OpenAI then turn around as an investment and they turn around just buy the chips and that makes.
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Mike Linton
Which we remember when the dot com bubble burst that was people would. That was circular money that really didn't produce anything.
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Podcast Narrator
We are now going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor Typeface to orchestrate workflows across channels. Meet ARC agents, your AI teammates handling complexity so you can focus on what matters all within a reimagined workspace where you and AI create as one spaces works the way you do. Create anything from documents to videos to entire campaigns at scale. Our agents help you craft campaign storyboards powered by your brand hub giving you the perfect starting point. Transform one asset into countless variations for every audience and market. Join industry leaders already reimagining their content lifecycle with typeface. Welcome to marketing's next chapter where every story finds its voice. Now back to our episode with Andy Sack and Adam Brotman.
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Adam Brotman
That's right. They call, you know, lazy Susan deals or whatever you want to call them. In this case though, you know, unlike that, one thing I heard recently that I thought was interesting is back in. I remember those days. I was quite a bit younger, but I do remember the dot com days and all the fiber being laid and all that stuff. And the difference is like 90% at the time, 90% of the fiber was dark or something like that when all those deals were happening. And also the Internet was still a promise. Not a thing that's happening today. When you think about how much the utilization of These chips is at like full utilization across a dozen different hyperscalers that are like absolutely using the chips and you're getting consumers that are like in demand and enterprise users that are in demand. So right now I feel like if anything it's demand driven. And then of course, if you're a chip maker like Nvidia, you should want to get a piece of the upside of the, of the model company. So it's, it's, to me it's less circular and it's more a factor of, I think that there's a number of these companies that realize that they're going to all be worth several trillion dollars, if not $10 trillion in the next five years or so. And if that's the case, I don't blame them for doing the deals they're doing.
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Mike Linton
And so is this, is this creating winners and losers? Like if you don't have a tie up deal or, you know, if you get left out of this game, can you still survive?
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Andy Sack
I mean, so let me answer your winners and losers question before. Let me chime in first on, and build on what Adam was saying. I, my take on these, on the majority of these deals is that they're exposing a level of capitalism that, that generally business people that the investing public is, are not that familiar with. If you're Costco and you want to have the Kirkland brand and you want to release a new hoodie, you're going to lock up supply. You've got your idea of where you want to get that supply and you're going to go to the supplier and you're going to lock it up because you want to make sure you have supply across the United States to fulfill it. And so I think what you're seeing in the technology space, in the AI space because demand is so high for, by the LLMs for building, for training, the need for chips and electricity is through the roof. One could argue that instead of trying to lock up supply one way or the other through the supply chain, that the LLMs should have collaborated and done training together. Like, do we do all, you know, do all these companies really need their own proprietary one? It, it would be much more efficient if a couple of them pulled together and were like, yeah, we'll share the results in some, in some way that would have been a more efficient approach. But it doesn't. These, I don't, I don't have a problem with these lockup deals or supply chain deals as I think of them.
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Mike Linton
Oh, you guys would say it's capitalism at its Best. Tell me. You know, sorry, I was going to.
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Andy Sack
Get to your winners and I was going to get to your winners.
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Mike Linton
All right, go ahead. Winners and losers.
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Andy Sack
Yeah. There's a, there's a game that's being played and capitalism is the game. And there has never been a bigger prize available for that. The, the person or the entity, the company that gets the AGI. And you saw that play out this year with, with Meta trying to get back in the game and offering billion dollar salaries. And it's because they, it's because the. There are winners and losers here and there's about seven companies that are playing. I think they'll, I think next year there'll be five companies playing maybe that. I think that it's hard to keep pace with the level of investment that is required.
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Mike Linton
Interesting. So, Adam, you guys have been on a tour after the book, and I'm sure you're talking to a lot of boards and a lot of CEOs. You know, how are people that are getting traction and getting traction and what are the biggest obstacles to progress as we take this down to the company level?
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Adam Brotman
It's a subject that Andy and I were just talking about this morning, in fact, because first of all, most boards and CEOs to start there, are still in the. I wonder how fast we should go with this. I don't think anybody's saying, oh, I wonder if this is a real thing. They're just, they're still questioning how much to lean in. We've seen a few that are like, they're fully leaning in, right? And you've seen, you see these AI First CEO memos, and the boards are behind them and they're going really fast. And then there's. That's the exception, not the rule. I think most of the boards and the CEOs we talk to are still having their aha moment, like now. And then they're sort of trying to figure out what it means to lean in. And what I'd say is we've seen that the only way that you're really going to be able to take advantage of this if you have a combination of real CEO sponsorship and this is not a tech implementation, this is a change management, strategic change management for the whole organization type moment. And those CEOs and boards that get that and lean into it in that way are going to get more traction because they're going to lead by example. They're going to empower a playbook for their organization that's going to allow this to happen. And by the way, this kind of transformation is hard. Like we're talking about, this isn't some tech pilot implementation. And that's where I think people get confused. They read these bait clicky article headlines about corporate pilots that are failing and whatnot. And so you can be kind of hesitant in reality. Like this is a multi month CEO led transformation that these companies need to go through. And, and we've seen the ones that are doing it and they're. And they're getting results and they're getting buy in and it's working. And for those that sort of tiptoe in, it becomes more of a game of like what pilot is working and not working.
- [18:15]
Mike Linton
And we did a whole show on this about the cold start problem that laid a lot of the blame on the board and said if you're just delegating this and saying go make AI happen and let me know you're failing because you got to pick use cases and be in it with the company or else. Or else you'll just run a bunch of experiments and not really understand anything. And, and you'll be managing by clickbait, which I think is. Is that.
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Andy Sack
Hey.
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Mike Linton
Hey. So in your estimation or estimate, what percent of companies are really well underway and what are just what percent are just getting started? Andy, you're always good at the math on this.
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Andy Sack
5%. 95%.
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Mike Linton
95% not underway. Really?
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Andy Sack
Just, I mean, no. 5% well underway.
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Mike Linton
Yeah, yeah.
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Andy Sack
95 have gotten started and are doing stuff, but they're not very far. I think in general the, you know, we continue to, when we, when we talk publicly and, and do boot camps, we continue to be reminded, you know, the people don't even know the difference between the different models. Like there's some very basic things about how to use AI that people just don't understand. And, and when they see it, they do it. They're like, oh, it can do that. And now we're continu. Continually blown away by the lack of understanding. And that lack of understanding comes from a lack of use and lack understand. And so that limits the ability for people to have the like we're sitting here going holy. You know our episode a year ago was the whole. Was the. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's the holy moment.
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Mike Linton
One of my favorite titles of CMO Confidential all time.
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Andy Sack
Mine too. Mine too. So we, we wanted to name the book after it, Mike.
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Mike Linton
I know. That's what makes sense. So good.
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Adam Brotman
I'll add that, Mike. I think a lot of what happens here and is still Happening here is even when a board or a CEO decides to go for it, they have their aha moment. They realize, holy shit, this is a transformative technology. They'll turn around and they'll give it to their technology department to go implement. And by the way, it doesn't mean that a head of IT or a CIO or a CTO is. Can't be the right champion. In many cases they are. We have many examples where the right champion is the technology leader. However, it's not because they're the technology leader. And this is a technology implementation. And when. And I'd say, I don't know. More than 50% of companies today that we run into are still muscle memory into like, oh, I'm going to have my CTO or my CEO lead this, even if that person isn't of the right growth mindset and understanding of the transformative nature of this technology.
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Mike Linton
Are you, are you all seeing a lot of blockers, like a bunch of people in there? You know, remember when I, you know, and, and we've talked about this on a couple shows. Yeah. Remember when the martech stack was being built out, A bunch of people bought every single thing. And then there's a whole bunch of like CFOs or, you know, people that kind of were a little more sober about it going, we bought too much stuff. We should be cautious. Are there a lot of blockers out there on this or is it really more just people unwilling to get involved?
- [21:49]
Andy Sack
I mean, the block. I'd say the primary blocker is really, is human. It's human change and its understanding and usage. There are other blockers which are. There's a lot of vendors, there's a lot. There's a lot of different tools. There's complexity, there's data security. But the primary blocker is. There's a current way of doing business. People are busy doing business and this takes some effort and time and behavior change of human beings. And that's hard.
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Mike Linton
Hey, Adam, let's flip over and talk about the consumers. You said there's a billion users out there growing, I'm sure, exponentially. Where is the marketplace and the end consumer really in the adoption curve? And then let's talk about what that means for companies.
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Adam Brotman
I think the end consumer is. This was the year that the end consumer just absolutely got on board. There's still a lot of, I'll call it AI hate and AI skepticism in the consumer space in general, where. Which is interesting because it gets, it's out there and I think affects the End consumer. But I'd say the average end consumer totally has ChatGPT or Gemini or something on their phone that they're using. They're aware of the power of it. But I would say this, they are just like enterprise. 90% of the end consumer is under utilizing and under or misunderstanding the power of this technology. So this was the year that the consumer's using it and you're seeing that in the rise of AI search and.
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Mike Linton
The rise zero click search and all kinds of stuff.
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Adam Brotman
Yeah, exactly. So you're seeing the effect of that and by the way, and then they're bringing it to work with them under the table of a lot of the times because the enterprise hasn't given them the right access to the right tools to use in the right way at the company. So you're starting to see this stream of consumer usage but still not fully understanding how to take advantage of it and the power of it using it. Nonetheless, they bring it into work and it's going to affect things like search. Like we said, it's going to affect everything from creativity to homework to companionship, which is a huge topic in this space.
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Mike Linton
It's crazy how many people are using it for companionship. And I teach a couple college classes and you have to just give them assignments. Assuming that AI is the basis for everything.
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Adam Brotman
Yeah, for sure. It's changed, it's going to change education. Thank God for K through 12 teachers and schools because I think they're going to be more important than they've ever been in a lot of ways in the age of AI.
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Mike Linton
Hey, are companies keeping up with the consumer on this? You've got zero click search, you've got all kinds of. The consumer behavior is probably changing at speed in terms of the marketing funnel and adopting to, you know, how consumers are absorb information and make decisions. Are companies keeping up with that?
- [25:26]
Adam Brotman
Andy, what would you say?
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Andy Sack
I mean I'd say it's what I said before. 5%, 95%. I think companies lag and I think it's hard. Like the technology is moving. So what's so unique about this technology is, is the speed with which it's being developed. It's super powerful but it's the speed that it's changing that is, that is so insane and we have difficulty keeping up. So it's no, doesn't surprise me and I don't fault anyone for it and they need help which is, you know, I mean it's frankly why, why we're in business at Forum three. Like it's. This is Hard to do. The change management part is hard to do. The tools simple, but its implications are profound.
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Adam Brotman
Yeah, Mike. I would also say that it's interesting because, for example, Gemini came out with this incredible photo editing and creation capability called Nano Banana that it's built into Gemini and it just absolutely took off. And so I think in pockets, the consumer is starting to see VO3 or Sora for video, starting to realize that they can do incredible things with images on Nano Banana, for example, or even just on ChatGPT. And so, you know, it's. And then that leaks into social media, leaks into TikTok. And so, you know, my guess, next year the consumer, like the enterprise, will start to realize how powerful this technology is. But right now, everyone's just still getting their feet wet.
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Andy Sack
I read one forecast that said that 50% of consumer purchasing decisions will be, will be AI driven. Will involve an LLM next year. 50% of purchase decisions. So cars, travel, you know, all the things, all the products, electronics that you buy. You're going to consult an LLM first. And that's just, you know, three years ago that didn't exist even when ChatGPT launched. It's, it's really the reasoning and the consumer behavior that's a, that's an incredible statistic.
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Adam Brotman
And it's going to end up being, it is an incredible statistic. And it. And you know, think about the fact that the lines are getting blurred as well on that kind of statistic, because when you do a Google search now, think of how often you're getting this AI overview. So is that like, am I getting, is that Google or is that AI, right? Is that, you know, in other words, LLMs are gonna like creep their way into everything we do. And then I think it's, you know, rumors are flying around on when Siri on Apple is gonna end up having I'll call it Gemini or whatever they decide to use embedded into it. And pretty soon it's gonna go from 50% to 100% because you're not gonna be able to do anything that doesn't have LLMs embedded into it. So it's not gonna. For a while there it was like one or the other, and pretty soon it's just going to all happen. And again, you wonder why these hyperscalers and these chip stocks are as high as they are because the amount of usage is just astronomical.
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Mike Linton
Hey, so let's write marketers into this story. One of your challenges to all of marketing is think bigger as a marketer. You know, we know everybody starts down the efficiency route. Are many marketers thinking bigger yet within their company? And what does thinking bigger kind of mean when you say that?
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Andy Sack
I would say marketing of the departments is doing a reasonable, is doing a better job than other departments in terms of adopting the technology you're seeing this year you saw a number of instances where full on advertisements, video advertisements are being released. They're being released on tv. There were, there were a number of examples of that. Separate from that you've got the whole marketing stack and paid advertising and increasingly segmentation as well as virtual customers testing things. So I, I think, I think marketing's come along and is going, is beyond just the efficiency thing and they're actually because of the nature of the business of marketing ideas etc, they're actually pushing on the tool to not just be an efficiency play but also to be like an ideation play, an insight play.
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Mike Linton
And a full automation experience play a person. So many plays you could make. If you were telling our audience go look at here's some best practice companies or here's some best practice agencies that are on the cutting edge. Who would you tell them to look at?
- [30:33]
Adam Brotman
I mean, well, for starters, on the, on kind of the extreme side, I would tell them to look up what's happening with Video Creative in, in the area. There's a, there's a, an influencer name. I think his name is PJ Harvey. He created the ad that ran during the NBA finals this year for Kalshi. If you haven't googled or looked up the Kalshi AI ad and then you can actually.
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Andy Sack
Is it Kalshi or Kelshi?
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Adam Brotman
Kalshi.
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Andy Sack
Yeah, Kalshi. Okay.
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Adam Brotman
K A L S H I Potato Patata. Yeah, exactly. So the call she had is one that I would look at. I would also there's another one that was done for a company called IM8. The letters I and M and the number 8. They're just an incredible example of the power of what you can do with AI video. And I encourage people to look at that in terms of understanding what can be done beyond that in terms of companies to look at for best practices in using AI for marketing. Honestly, it gets pretty diffuse after that in terms of, I would say Andy mentioned it's actually much more of the individual marketer and we do see this a lot. Andy's right. We do see marketers being particularly early adopters of thinking about the different micro solutions of how they themselves can use vision from an AI perspective or the reasoning models from an AI perspective to really create synthetic Personas to do testing against, to take all of their data they have on their customers and their marketing and efforts, and then run those through a reasoning model and effectively look for insights, look for optimization. I think marketers in general are pretty early to look for an edge and look for something to differentiate what they're doing so they can actually, by definition, drive some sort of comp store sale. And so this technology is one that. Andy's right. We see marketers leaning when we talk to them. They're like the first function that says, oh, yeah, I.
- [33:02]
Mike Linton
Almost everyone kind of expects you as the marketer being the front end of this because it's where the technology hits the customer. So any agencies you think are on the front end that you're seeing form three.
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Andy Sack
Yeah.
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Mike Linton
Other than you guys, of course. Who at the front end?
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Adam Brotman
That's a good question. It's not because there aren't, I'm sure, plenty of other good agencies out there. It's actually interesting because I've been following the big agencies, which is maybe not what you meant, but I'm talking about the big consulting agencies, not creative agencies per se. And it's fascinating to watch. For example, what's happening with Accenture and how many, like, how they're having to redefine what they're doing. They view this.
- [33:54]
Mike Linton
They're laying off.
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Adam Brotman
That's right. People view it as an existential moment, and yet they're totally using it. I know McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group are also developing their own sort of internal tools for this. And I got to imagine that all of the great creative agencies that are out there are, Again, they probably are paying attention to this and figuring out how to use it to their advantage. But no, there's no agencies that come to mind for us necessarily.
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Mike Linton
Got it. I want to get into predictions for 2026. What are Adam and Andy's big predictions for our listeners?
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Andy Sack
I. I mean, I'll go first. I would say Apple gets into the game, and they get into the game, not in a small way, but in a big way. And I'll go further to say that Apple buys Perplexity. Wow. That. So that's. That's my prediction. And I think there's. Yeah. So that app. That's prediction number one. Prediction number two. I. I had predicted for 2025 that it was the year of the agent. 2026 is the year of the agent.
- [35:11]
Mike Linton
That's like every year they predict a connected home.
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Andy Sack
Yeah. So. So I think at 26 agent agents for consumers in particular. But the the rise of software that does jobs for you. You know, there'll be the travel planner and the travel booker, and that's gonna like. That's a really good use case. It's being. If you're not using LLMs already as a travel assistant, I think there's going to be a bunch of services that come in that domain and then eventually.
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Mike Linton
It can do wedding planners. Go. Go ahead. Sorry.
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Andy Sack
Yeah. And then my last thing is, I do think that we'll see the first consumer device that, you know, maybe it's. Maybe it's the next version of the glasses, maybe it's a local pin, but I think we're going to see those non, non keyboard consumer devices that are AI enabled rise in 2026.
- [36:10]
Mike Linton
Those are three great predictions. Thank you, Andy.
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Andy Sack
I did not prepare. I did not prepare in advance, Mike. Those were on the spot.
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Mike Linton
That's what I love about you guys. All right, Adam, any predictions you want to throw in there?
- [36:23]
Adam Brotman
Wow. I want to. As my business partner, I want to take full credit for Andy's predictions. I thought those were. He carried the water for us. I would, you know, honestly, in 2026, I think there might be some bumpiness in this space. And what I mean by that is I. So I'm not taking the other side of what Andy's saying because I agree with his predictions. The. I actually think that There's. I think 2026 is the year that society more broadly realizes that this is. That there are some real potential issues here in terms of how much this technology is capable of disrupting the labor market and disrupting the world. Yeah, everything. And I think as a result of that, I feel like 2026 is going to be a year of great progress in the ways that Andy mentioned. And there's going to be this pull and pushing, this tug of war between people that are scared, and rightfully so, of the implications of this with the fact that this is going to continue to accelerate in some ways. There might be economic crashes, there might be creator and labor market backlash against this. And I think that that's going to set up the sort of tension of the year for 2026. And that's because this technology is going to continue to exponentially, which has been improve. And I think the bumpiness of it is going to start to really kick in and I think we're going to all have. And I don't think it's going to slow down adoption, but I do think it's going to change the conversation, hopefully.
- [38:07]
Mike Linton
In a productive way, because the punches of the technology are coming clearer and clearer, and it's job loss. It's a lot of power. So we'll have you all back on the show to talk about it. But before we get to our traditional last question, any other AI things you want to share with our listeners before we go to, you know, our, our final question?
- [38:34]
Andy Sack
Use it 10 times a day. Cannot using it 10 times a day. You're, you're falling behind.
- [38:41]
Mike Linton
Yeah, I, I, I think that's right. You know, find, find a bunch of ways to do it. All right, you guys know the traditional last question, funniest story you can tell on the air, and, or practical advice we haven't discussed yet. You can take one or both and, and either one of you can answer for both of you or both of you can answer. So, but you must take at least one. I guess I'll start with Adam.
- [39:10]
Andy Sack
Great pick, Mike.
- [39:11]
Adam Brotman
Yeah, thank you.
- [39:12]
Mike Linton
Thank you.
- [39:13]
Adam Brotman
I know interviewer, I don't have the funniest story I can share on the air, but from practical advice, I actually would say that there's two things, they kind of go together. If you're not, whatever AI app you, you're using, I would download it on your phone if you haven't already, and I would make sure that you use whatever the advanced voice mode is and just talk to the AI app and that. So that, that's something that we've, we've talked to people about. Andy will probably give you his refrigerator example in a second. But the, but like just talking to it, don't try to become a prompt master. Just talk to it like a human. And the second thing I'll mention is if you haven't already done this, if you're using ChatGPT, don't just use the auto mode, go to the model picker and use the thinking model. And it's less than 25% of people do this. And you won't believe how much smarter and how much better it will be if you just talk to it like a human you. And separately, when you're, when you're typing in your prompts, make sure you use a thinking model. And I think those two things alone will be life changing. For those that don't use ChatGPT multiple times a day.
- [40:48]
Mike Linton
Great. Andy.
- [40:51]
Andy Sack
I would say if you haven't already, I mean, this falls into, I guess, tool recommended. You should check out lovable dot com.
- [41:00]
Mike Linton
That's a vibe coding thing, right?
- [41:01]
Andy Sack
It's a vibe coding thing. And I think it's a tool that particularly your Audience Mike, if they're not, they should be playing with. Allows you to build the apps soup to nuts just by talking to it. It's an amazing tool. So that's one piece of practical advice.
- [41:25]
Adam Brotman
That's a good one.
- [41:27]
Andy Sack
Thanks, Adam. I thought yours were good also. I don't really know, but like my funny story. Oh, I do have another practical piece of practical advice. If you don't yet have a family password, have a family password that you speak, that you don't mention anywhere around Amazon's Alexa, you should have a verbal family password for security purposes. I mean, Adam does. Adam may or may not know it, but we have a. We have a business verbal password that.
- [41:59]
Mike Linton
What is it?
- [42:01]
Andy Sack
So a family password. A family. A family. I'm not going to tell you what the password is, Mike, but just so people understand what this is, it's a security measure so that if you get a call from your child for, you know, I need X thousands of dollars, I've been in a car accident, you can say, what's the family password? And you can know whether you're actually talking to your child or an AI bot. We're going to increasingly have disinformation and uncertainty around who we're talking to, businesses, familial relationships, because it's so easy to copy voice and impersonate people. So you should have. That's my practical advice is that develop a family password and a business password. There was a. And if the anecdotal story is. There was a. A zoom call that. A CFO part, it wasn't a cfo, as a finance person, participated in a multinational zoom call. And there were like eight people or 10 people on the call and that. And she transferred $20 million. She was told to transfer $20 million in six wires, and she transferred $20 million into six W. Suarez. And it took the company two weeks. And it was. The entire zoom call was filled with bots. So they were bots of her employee boss and her. And her colleagues telling her to. And she wasn't able to tell the difference between the bots and the instructions. And so she transferred $20 million. That's the cautionary tale. To get you to develop a family password.
- [43:33]
Mike Linton
Wow. All right. Well, I think that is a great bunch of practical advice to.
- [43:38]
Andy Sack
That was my.
- [43:39]
Mike Linton
That's. That.
- [43:39]
Andy Sack
That's the funny story. That's a funny. I mean, it's. I mean, it's funny.
- [43:43]
Mike Linton
Unless you're the person that transferred.
- [43:44]
Andy Sack
Exactly. It's a terrible story. Unless. Yeah.
- [43:47]
Mike Linton
I mean, there's something. Even if you don't get like shot by your company, the jokes are probably pretty funny in the company. So I think great practical advice. Thank you Adam and Andy and thanks to everybody for listening to CMO Confidential. If you're enjoying the show, like subscribe and share new episodes drop every Tuesday on Spotify, Apple and YouTube. Our catalog gives you access to nearly 150 shows, including Colonel Mustard in the study with the job Spec Is your next best customer an AI bot? Welcome to the new frontier. The rise and fall of Peloton is seen through the eyes of CLTV and and of course Adam and Andy's first show. It's a bird. It's a plane. Holy shit. It's AI Parts one and two. Hey all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential. Legacy marketing tools weren't built for AI Typeface is the first multimodal platform where agentic workflows handle everything from brainstorming to launch across every channel and customer touchpoint. Their AI native design transforms manual marketing tasks into automated workflows that create personalized text, imagery and video at enterprise scale. Typefaces AI integrates with existing martech stacks through APIs and native connections so you keep your processes while gaining AI superpowers and enterprise grade security. See how brands like Asics and Microsoft accelerate innovation and transform a single idea into thousands of personalized on brand experiences. Instantly ready to see what marketing looks like when AI handles the heavy lifting? Learn more at Typeface AI CMO.