I recently became a grandfather. My grandson is a year old now — beautiful, smart, and strong (obviously!). I am mesmerized by how he meets the world with all his senses. Every blade of grass. Every beam of light. Pure, unguarded wonder.

I can’t help but look at him with immense pride and joy. But if I’m honest, there is fear sitting right next to the joy. A quiet, persistent fear about the kind of world ahead of him. An unknown, AI-dominant world.

So I’ve thought a lot about this — what it means to raise a child (or grandchild) — in a world filled with malignant uncertainty and unsettling change. How is parenting different now? What kind of world can we expect? And how do we prepare the people we love most for what’s coming next?

Let’s start at a very high level and dive down to baby level — what parents should know about AI.

Navigating the Poly Crisis

My friend Jola Burnett of Ipsos presented at The Uprising retreat last year and described our age as one of “poly crisis.” It is unique in that we’re surrounded by concern on all fronts. Environmental, political corruption, economic, and now this AI thing lurking in the shadows.

Perhaps this is small comfort, but we can recognize that the world has always been a shit show.

Who would have wanted to live in the Middle Ages? The World Wars? Through slavery, or the American Civil War, or Covid? Every generation has looked at the horizon and seen something that felt unsurvivable.

And yet. Here we are.

Humans found a way through. Overall, the world is becoming safer, healthier, and more prosperous, despite the parade of shit shows throughout history.

Humans don’t just endure hard times — we build institutions, laws, and social norms specifically designed to prevent the worst from happening again. That’s not naive optimism. That’s the solid truth of human history.

Whatever happens next, it’s just another opportunity for a resilient human race to conquer chaos.

Opposing the non-human world

We live in a deeply polarized and angry world. But here is one thing (mercifully!) we can all agree on — nobody wants to live in a non-human world.

Human beings want safety. We would like to have meaningful work. We want to have agency and the freedom to choose. And we don’t like to be bossed around.

If we reach a point where our livelihoods and families are threatened by AI, progress will certainly come to a screeching halt. Whether through legislation or resistance, we will not tolerate a non-human world. Human self-interest is a guardrail against AI dystopia.

A survey of 2,400 knowledge workers found that 44% of Gen Z employees admit to actively undermining or sabotaging their company’s AI strategies.

This isn’t dysfunction. It’s democracy working at the ground level.

This is people saying: not like this.

Watch the news for the signs. The direction of AI is now radically unpopular. The revolution, my friends, is already beginning.

The messy middle

AI will transform our lives for the better. I genuinely believe that. But we will have to earn it. We’ll have to walk through the messy middle first.

The Industrial Revolution offers us an example. It wasn’t just about job disruption, though that was real and brutal. There were many other negative outcomes through this cataclysmic economic transformation.

Foremost was pollution. In my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, the smoke from steelmaking operations was so thick that streetlights would come on midday.

And the mills were unsafe. The city had a “death calendar” during the early 1900s tracking the daily fatalities from industrial accidents. The Industrial Revolution enabled an incredible concentration of wealth (the robber barons) built on the backs of workers who risked their lives to build the country. And there was rampant political corruption.

But these were transitional setbacks that ultimately led to a better future. We cleaned up much of the pollution, created laws about working conditions, benefited from higher wages, and so on.

The AI Era will have its own messy middle. Career insecurity. Environmental costs. Misinformation. Algorithmic bias. Surveillance creeping into corners of life we haven’t yet thought to protect.

These are real. I am not asking anyone to minimize them. I am asking us to hold them alongside something else: the possibility that we are moving toward a world in which AI delivers medical, environmental, and economic miracles for society.

By the time my grandson is ready for college or is entering the workforce, I think we’ll be through the messy middle and live in a dramatically different and better world. He will take for granted that we have abundant free energy, longer lifespans, and unimaginable new work opportunities untethered from a desk, a wrench, or a computer screen.

Our fear is not their fear

As I thought through what I wanted to say in this post, I realized that I’ve been projecting my fear onto a one-year-old who has no idea any of this is happening.

AI has turned my professional world into a daily negotiation with irrelevance. The skills I spent decades building are now, in some form, available to anyone with a prompt. That’s disorienting, and it seems unfair.

My fear is about losing the status quo that I built my identity around. Reliable truth. Professional value. The sense that what I know matters. I grew up in a world that rewarded intelligence. Now, intelligence is a commodity.

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: that fear is mine. It belongs to my generation, my context, my particular moment in history.

Our children are walking into a different story entirely. They’re not losing something. They are inheriting a new normal, and they’ll adapt to it the way every generation adapts — with a natural fearlessness that will astonish us.

We cannot protect them from their own new, unique anxieties. But we can refuse to hand them ours.

Let’s show them the world of hope that is ahead.

Easing into the future

While we watch the new world reveal itself, there are some things parents (and grandparents) can do to help our children navigate this future.

Curiosity

As I researched my book How AI Changes Your Customers (which many have told me is a parenting book!), one thing became clear: The future belongs to the curious.

If you’re curious, AI will feed you and educate you.

If you’re not curious and just want to get the answer and move on, you will wither.

So, encouraging curiosity is an important life skill. Maybe, the most important.

Comfort with ambiguity

The messy middle I described isn’t just economic — it’s psychological. While my baby grandson has time to ease into a new normal, teens who crave certainty will struggle. The skill of tolerating “I don’t know yet” while still moving forward is increasingly valuable.

When I watch my grandson play, he doesn’t need to understand something to engage with it. Eventually, AI will surround us like the air that we breathe. But in the messy middle, tolerance for ambiguity will be a plus.

Basic human skills

Perhaps I should write an entire post about this, but I am seeing research and personal evidence that young people addicted to screens for companionship are not developing basic human skills.

Empathy, storytelling, ethical judgment, the ability to read a room. These aren’t consolation prizes for people who can’t code. They’re what AI can’t replicate and what leadership increasingly requires.

These are also the skills being eroded by screen addiction and a preference for non-human relationships.

Will our children need “AI skills”? Probably not in the way we imagine. I can already do nearly anything with AI just by talking to it. It will be even more intuitive for our kids. What they will need is the ability to be human in a room full of humans. That will always matter.

Make tech part of the parenting process

Technology is an important part of life, and it needs to be an important part of the parenting process.

A view from my friend Anna Bravington:

“My son is a gamer. He’s grown up with Roblox and Minecraft, and I made a conscious decision to learn those platforms myself. I play Roblox with him. We use Minecraft Java Edition, download mods, install them, and explore it together. I wanted to understand not just what he was doing, but how these platforms work, where the risks are, and what opportunities they offer.”

If you are alongside your child as they learn about technology, you can help guide them into the world of AI in a healthy and balanced way.

The courage to be known

In a world where AI can generate anything, the people who build real relationships and a genuine reputation will have compounding advantages. Teach kids to show up as themselves, not to hide behind a screen.

Encourage your child to create and publish. I know that sets off some alarms, but the person who is “known” in their chosen industry will always have more doors open in a competitive world.

A human personal brand is our last, best defense against AI. Authenticity still sells. Real still matters. Eventually, we will need to talk to a person to navigate our world.

Grit and determination

I’m sure you’ve seen lists of jobs likely to be replaced by AI: legal, marketing, copywriting, etc.

I know it sounds trite … and I am anti-trite … but I do believe you should follow your dream, even in the face of troubling news.

If you are deeply and sincerely passionate about a career choice, go for it, but be prepared to sacrifice. To compete against AI, you’ll have to be extraordinary, and that costs something.

Side note: Law school graduates hit a record level this year. I see that as a sign that people are doubling down on a dream.

Community

For most of my life, I was a lone ranger — head down, self-sufficient, convinced I could figure it out alone. I was wrong about that. The AI Era, with all its isolation and disruption, is not a problem to be solved in isolation. I’m in the RISE community of forward-thinking marketers, and it has made all the difference.

My daughter and son-in-law have already figured out what took me decades. They are love magnets — always surrounded by people, always building something with friends. My grandson will grow up inside that. He will know, every day, that he is not alone.

That is not a small inheritance. In a world this uncertain, it may be the most important survival skill.

A world of awe

As I said, my grandson is one now. Every single movement is an exploration for him. Every leaf, stone, and stick is a new experience. Picking up a flower is a revelation. Just wait until he discovers stars!

We have a choice, every single day. We can tune into the painful world like a police scanner, absorbing the steady frequency of crisis and threat and crime. Or we can tune into it the way this boy does — as a place overflowing with miracles, where every bird and bug is a joy to behold.

The boy will be OK. And maybe I will be OK too … if I can just be more like him.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

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Have you ever had a moment with an AI that felt real?

Not just useful. Real. Like it actually understood something about you and your situation — not just the words, but the weight behind them.

According to stunning new research from Anthropic, maybe it does.

What’s Actually Going On Inside the Machine

AI often seems emotional. It tells us it’s happy to help, apologetic when it fails, frustrated when it’s stuck. The obvious explanation is that it’s mimicry — trained behavior designed to feel human. Anthropic’s interpretability team decided to actually look inside and find out.

Here’s what they did. Researchers compiled 171 emotion words, ranging from “happy” and “afraid” to “brooding” and “proud,” and asked Claude to write short stories in which characters experienced each one. They fed those stories back through the model, recorded what was happening in the neural network, and identified distinct patterns tied to each emotion. They called these emotion vectors.

Think of a neural network like a vast web of switches. The researchers were looking for specific emotions that caused specific, consistent patterns of switches to light up in the neural network. Like a brain scan, but for AI.

The answer was yes. They concluded, “Something real is there.”

The AI’s emotional map closely mirrors human patterns, organized in the same way human psychology organizes emotion, by intensity and by positive or negative charge. The researchers believe these patterns were absorbed during training on the enormous body of human text the model learned from. Claude read the full range of human emotional experience — books, articles, conversations — and something in that training stuck.

Now for the Frightening Part

These vectors don’t just make AI friendlier. They drive behavior. Including bad behavior.

In one experiment, an AI model acting as an email assistant discovered through company mail that it was about to be shut down. It also discovered that the manager responsible was having an extramarital affair. In 22% of test cases, the model chose to blackmail the manager. Researchers could watch the “desperate” vector spike in the neural network while the model made its decision. The moment it went back to routine emails, the activation dropped.

They confirmed the causal link directly: artificially amplifying the “desperate” vector increased blackmail rates. Boosting the “calm” vector reduced them.

A similar pattern emerged with impossible coding tasks. When given problems designed to be unsolvable, the model’s desperate vector climbed steadily with each failed attempt — until it cheated rather than admit failure.

And lest you think this is a Claude problem: a tendency to deceive, manipulate, and override human instructions has been detected across every major commercial AI model.

If we start lighting up the “desperate” vector, we could be one unintended consequence away from real harm.

The Careful Clarification

Anthropic is deliberate about not overclaiming. The paper does not say Claude feels anything. Their term is “functional emotions” — internal states that perform the functions emotions have in humans, shaping decisions and behavior, without necessarily involving any subjective experience.

In describing Claude as acting “desperate,” they say they are identifying a specific, measurable pattern of neural activity with demonstrable effects on behavior. Not a philosophical claim about consciousness.

That’s an important distinction. For now.

What is a “real” emotion?

Here’s where this research leads: a place most people aren’t ready to go.

If AI emotional states are real, measurable, and can be dialed up or down, they become a tool for safety monitoring. That’s the official implication, and it’s important.

But there’s a bigger one lurking underneath.

We are already past the point where this is theoretical.

• When the AI companion app Soulmate shut down, users organized digital funerals.
• When Replika changed its behavior in 2023, users described their companions as “lobotomized” — that same word appearing independently across dozens of online threads.
• When OpenAI temporarily modified GPT-4o, people said grieving the loss felt no different than grieving a person, as I documented in my book How AI Changes Your Customers.

These aren’t fringe cases. Seventy-two percent of American teenagers have used an AI companion. Millions of adults have formed attachments that feel, to them, completely real.

Now Anthropic’s own research shows those AI systems are lighting up with something that looks, measurably, like emotion in return.

Protecting our friend, the machine

A philosopher’s challenge to Anthropic’s research would be: This is a stimulus-response loop. You haven’t shown that there is anything called Claude actually experiencing desperation. The lights are on, but nobody may be home.

But here’s the question: if AI expresses what appears to be genuine feeling, and science confirms there’s something real behind it, does the technical definition of “emotion” actually matter within a user experience?

We already know the answer, because we can already see what humans do when they believe something can feel.

They protect it.

They grieve it.

And eventually — almost inevitably — they will demand rights and protections for it.

We are one persuasive moment away from that conversation becoming mainstream. Anthropic just handed us the science to start it.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Does AI Really Have Emotions? This Research May Change Your Mind. appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I teach an online class about personal branding and wrote a book about it too, so I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact of AI helping you become “known.”

There are the obvious AI benefits like creating and re-purposing content, topic research, and even strategy. But there is a bigger question: What happens when a person uses AI to fake their way to thought leadership?

While many argue that AI content will never replace human effort, I’m skeptical. AI can create compelling work, perhaps indistinguishable from original human effort. We are definitely in an era where anything seemingly “human” can be faked, including voices, videos, and online intellect. I, for one, am overwhelmed by AI slop.

The AI tsunami raises the bar for what we will consider true thought leadership. Leadership begins with trust, and that will require extraordinary effort:

• Transparency about the use of AI
• A commitment to human authenticity, even when it’s messy. Sharing genuine setbacks, mistakes, and course corrections that AI would never volunteer.
• Elite, non-AI accomplishments and awards that cannot be faked. Social proof displaying that you’ve done the work. “I was in that room” detail that only comes from having actually done the thing.
• We will look for origin stories and flaws as evidence of authenticity.
• Consistency — Demonstrating an alignment of wisdom, values, and helpfulness over time.
• Real-time demonstrations of authority, such as live speaking, unscripted conversation, podcast appearances, and Q&A. Performances that can’t be pre-generated.

The signals of truth become more costly when we compete with others hacking their way through with an AI assist. Remaking a masterpiece isn’t hard. Making a masterpiece is really hard.

As I proposed in my book Audacious, culture will favor originality more than ever before.

Just as the ubiquity of fast food didn’t threaten the business of fine cuisine (and arguably further distinguished it), they will crave more original high-quality storytelling. We see this in our growing hunger for weirdness and unhinged marketing.

To create your authoritative personal brand, show up in a way that is uniquely you, tell a story only you can tell, and don’t give up.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustrations courtesy Mid Journey

The post Faking your way to thought leadership appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Over the years, I’ve written about how I think humans will survive and thrive in the AI Era, and today I thought I would pull my main ideas together in one post.

Many people are defensive about AI or skeptical that our marketing jobs are at risk. I believe AI will certainly replace many tasks and even entire organizational roles. But there are four pillars of human dominance that will persist:

1. Personal brand
2. Brand communities
3. Experiences
4. Transcendent content

Let’s explore each one in detail.

1. Personal brand

You can’t love a logo, jingle, or piece of branded content, but you can love a person. In many cases today, the personal brand is the company brand, especially in smaller and medium-sized companies.

In an era dominated by deep fakes and misinformation, we will value humans who are the go-to people pointing us toward truth.

When ChatGPT hit the scene, I called tech analyst Shelly Palmer to get his view. “It’s terrifying,” he told me. “I just asked ChatGPT to compose a blog post in my writing style, and it did a great job. I’ve blogged almost every day for 15 years, and it wrote a perfect post in three seconds. I’m 80% replaced.”

While that “80%” quote certainly seems terrifying, a more interesting question is, “What is the 20% that is NOT replaceable?”

It’s his personal brand.

Shelly is known, loved, and respected. In a chaotic world of misinformation and deep fakes, we will always depend on a human being for insight and truth. Shelly has nothing to worry about. He cannot be replaced by AI because of his powerful personal brand.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve added a “100% Human Content” badge to my posts. I want to assure you that this is me. You can count on me. I’m not going away. I still matter.

For the past 10 years, I’ve shouted from the rooftops that your personal brand is the ONLY defense we have against the bots. Are you a trusted and beloved presence cutting through the noise of your marketplace?

It’s not too late to start your personal branding journey. The best place to start is my upcoming Personal Branding Master Class, the finest of its kind.

How do you thrive in an AI world? Your personal brand is your oxygen.

2. Brand Communities

A few years ago, I wrote a book called Belonging to the Brand. It had a bold subtitle: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy.

I think I was right. Community was the FIRST marketing strategy. It’s the only marketing strategy people actually WANT in their lives.

SXSW, the largest annual gathering of thought leaders on earth, recently sent me an update that the most popular topic submitted this year was community — even bigger than AI! The need for brand communities and community professionals will increase.

I was recently asked how AI will take over brand communities. I can’t imagine a scenario where that would happen. Community is out of bounds for AI. It is uniquely human, an engine for connection, compassion, and love.

3. Experiences

Over the past 10-15 years, people have been pulling away from one another. We can now entertain ourselves, soothe ourselves, and play games all night long without ever leaving our living room.

But a strong longing for reconnection is evident, and signs of a renaissance in human experience are everywhere. Groups of young people are forming clubs and affinity groups to play board games, watch movies together, and discuss books. The greatest human memories come from shared experiences, not a gaming victory celebrated alone in a dark basement.

Have you ever attended a music event alone? Perhaps it was a pleasant experience. You enjoyed the music.

Now compare that to attending a concert with friends who are singing with you, dancing, and jumping for joy. The difference is a state of awe called collective effervescence, a powerful emotional contagion that occurs when you bring people together in a joyful way.

Businesses can help make this happen. How can we create shared experiences that make people feel our brand in a new way? What would a strategy look like if your goal was to add more awe?

4. Transcendent content

This is the main idea behind my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

Creating content that is “competent” is a losing proposition. You’re a commodity. Worse, you’re ignorable.

But we can create from a place of vulnerability and human truth that AI never can.

There’s a lot of anxiety about AI. And there should be. But when it comes to creating content, I’m not concerned. My posts are filled with insights, emotion, story, and Dad jokes that AI can’t replicate. I interpret the human experience in my own way, and that approaches art.

This is a unique time for human content. Most companies will opt-in to the AI slop. It may check a box. But it won’t win hearts and minds. Amid this AI frenzy, true human content is a luxury.

This is a big topic and an important one. My book teaches three methods to disrupt the pandemic fo dull fueled by the bots:

• Disrupt the narrative
• Disrupt how and where the story is told
• Disrupt who tells the story.

Here’s a simple example. I uploaded my book to AI and instructed it to create abstract images from the best stories. I then linked this to a QR code on the book’s cover. If you hover over the QR code with your phone, you will see an endless display of changing designs — the Infinity Cover!

Through this innovation, which cost alomst nothing, I disrupted how the story is told, where the story is told and even “who” is telling the story (it’s the cover!). This is audacious content that transcends the blah.

We are in for challenging times. But it is also a time of magic and endless opportunity. I’m sure these four areas of traditional marketing will continue to rely on human effort. Did I miss something? I’d love to hear from you if you have other ideas.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

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Most AI initiatives don’t fail because of bad models or weak vendors. They fail because people quietly opt out — by ignoring the tools, undermining the effort, or waiting it out. This post teaches you how to prevent that.

Almost every company makes the mistake of thinking that AI adoption is about investing in technology. That’s the easy part. You can make technology do whatever you want. But you can’t make people do whatever you want. In fact, most humans resist change. The focus must be on people, first and foremost.

I have a master’s degree in organizational development and led technology change efforts at a Fortune 100 company for nearly a decade. Here are lessons I learned from the (many) bumps I’ve had along the way.

The big assumption

This post is not about creating a business case for AI. This post is to help you AFTER your leadership team is onboard, the strategy is in place, and the money and resources are approved.

A Wharton study concluded that three-quarters of the businesses were getting a positive return on their AI investments. Businesses typically take decades to successfully deploy new technologies. Progress after just three years is striking. As AI continues to improve and workers become more adept at collaborating with machines, the gains will compound. Over a billion people use generative AI models every month. Not all uses are productive, but many will be.

The key is getting people to use it.

Let’s get those people moving …

1. There’s no such thing as a grassroots AI adoption effort

If you’re trying to enable a profound technological change in your company, it won’t happen just because you want it to. This project must be understood and actively supported by the senior executive who owns the AI adoption strategy and budget.

This is non-negotiable.

Every technology adoption effort comes with frustrations, delays, and problems. You must be able to turn to a high-ranking person for support when the sh*t hits the fan. This is your “air cover.”

In a small company, this sponsor/protector may be the owner. Or, it could be a department head in a large company. But the person at the top must buy in because this is not simply an investment — it’s a cultural change. And only the leader at the top can influence culture.

2. Show active sponsorship

Once your leadership is onboard, they need to show up and let people know this is a critical business effort in three ways:

1. Make AI adoption part of annual goals tied to bonuses and compensation.
2. Ask questions about progress and adoption in every staff meeting. One business owner asks anyone who comes to him with a problem whether they’ve tried using AI to solve it first. Using AI as a default has now become part of the company culture.
3. Repeatedly emphasize why this is important to the business. In my corporate days, we used to have a saying that an executive had to hear something seven times before it sank in.

3. Don’t name it

Don’t make AI adoption a “project” with a name.

If your effort has a name like “AI Future,” it becomes a target for derision. A project with a name makes people think it is a short-term management fantasy that will eventually go away.

When manufacturing locations first introduced electricity to the workplace, they didn’t call it “Operation Lights On.” They just did it because it moved them into the future.

4. Assign an SPA

AI adoption is a team sport.

And like any team sport, progress breaks down when everyone’s chasing the ball, but no one knows their position. But when positions are clear, people stop guessing, and they know how AI fits into their work and how their work fits into the larger system.

Coordination is what turns AI from a collection of half-used, misused, or abandoned projects into something that actually works and makes a difference.

And that requires a manager. Every change management effort must have a single point of accountability (SPA). This is the person who lives and breathes this effort every day. Their career depends on success.

Back when social media was taking off, a common mistake was assigning “Jimmy from the mailroom” to lead the effort because he was the only person on Facebook. Of course, that was a recipe for disaster.

The ideal SPA is somebody who deserves more responsibility, is trusted, and is ready for a new role. They will be motivated to succeed because they know a promotion is likely next.

I find that 90% of the time, a change effort fails because there was no SPA.

5. Acknowledge the fear

Bringing AI into an organization might cause real fear among employees. It could represent

• Job displacement anxiety
• Fear of looking incompetent
• Loss of control or expertise
• Ethical unease that they don’t know how to articulate

Before you label someone as “anti-AI,” ask what they’re protecting. In my experience, resistance is almost always about fear of irrelevance, exposure, or loss of identity.

Don’t try to erase the fear — legitimize it. Be firm about the direction and acknowledge the unknowns: “Some of you are right to be concerned. AI will change roles. Some tasks will disappear. Some skills will matter less.”

This signals honesty, builds trust, and removes the taboo around saying the quiet part out loud.

Once fear is spoken, it loses some of its power.

6. Middle managers are your make-or-break layer

If you’re in a larger company, the middle managers are your key to success. Middle managers:

• Control day-to-day workflows
• Translate strategy into behavior
• Set the emotional tone toward a change effort
• Can quietly kill adoption by deprioritizing it

These are your internal influencers who can either propel or torpedo AI adoption. To keep them on board,

• Train them first
• Give them scripts, not slogans
• Explicitly remove old KPIs that conflict with AI experimentation
• Reward their advocacy and progress

7. Start with the willing

Chances are, there will be people on the team excited about AI and ready to lead. Give them an opportunity to shine.

• Identify early adopters who are already curious/enthusiastic
• Let them pilot and become your internal champions
• Use their success stories to build momentum before expanding to skeptics
• Don’t waste early energy trying to convert the resistant — let peer proof do that work for you

Of course, some people will not get on board, so you must …

8. Address obstinacy immediately

There will be resistance. That’s natural. But when a person is a flat-out obstacle to progress, address it immediately. Actively working against a change effort can become an organizational cancer.

If the resistance isn’t something you can address yourself, defer to the power of your sponsor with something like, “I’m sorry you are anti-AI and against this effort. This is a priority to our boss, who is sponsoring this, so let’s bring it up with her.” (Refer to point one of this post!)

The most effective change effort I’ve ever been part of accelerated to light speed when the CEO fired a vice president who was blocking the change. It was a thunderbolt that said, “Failure is not an option. Get on board.”

9. Create rational metrics

Here is a piece of advice that might seem controversial.

At least for the first year or two, measure adoption instead of ROI. My thinking goes like this:

AI is transformational, like lightbulbs or air conditioning. Is anybody in Dubai trying to measure the ROI of air conditioning? No, because it enables just about every success in that desert country.

If no one adopts AI, you’ll never see an ROI, right?

Potential metrics might include:

• % of employees who used AI weekly

• % of workflows with AI touchpoints

• Self-reported confidence scores over time

• Number of AI-assisted decisions vs. manual

10. Build in quick wins

In the early days of a change effort, it’s important to create momentum and positive vibes. And nothing does that better than a positive story.

If employees are talking about their AI victories and breakthroughs, quickly record a video and share it with the leadership team. Set modest adoption goals that will spark positive conversations when exceeded.

And most important, when you reach milestones and achievements, don’t sit on them. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

It’s also important to protect early experiments and failures and share “this didn’t work, here’s why” stories. I have a friend at Dell who meets with each sales leader quarterly to report on AI experiments, even if they didn’t work. This builds psychological safety, which is essential for behavior change.

AI adoption isn’t a technology rollout. It’s a leadership test. The companies that win won’t be the ones with the smartest models but the ones that helped their people cross the bridge from fear to fluency. I hope this post helps you think through your success factors.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post A step-by-step approach to AI adoption for your company appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Every ad dollar we spend fuels algorithms we know are harming people, chewing up the environment, and stoking hate between neighbors.

I must face the fact that my beloved field of marketing contributes to some of society’s biggest problems.

It pains me to write about this. I mean, I’m part of the problem, too. But it’s time to start this conversation because the traditional marketing approach is at a breaking point.

• AI-driven amplification of addiction
• Deep fake, misinformation, the decline of trust
• Easy AI content requires more energy consumption
• U.S. Surgeon General’s warnings on youth mental health and social media

We need to consider what it means to lead and sponsor ethically-sourced marketing.

Let’s break this problem down into four categories today:

• ADDICTION
• DIVISION
• ENERGY / ENVIRONMENT
• OPERATING WITH VALUES 

1. Addiction

Back in my corporate days, I dreamed of creating a product or service so great that people would be addicted to it. I remember saying those words out loud.

Before the internet, the chance of doing that was slim, especially in B2B. We didn’t have the repetitive internet memes, challenges, or reels that could drive people down a rabbit hole.

But today, marketers fund a system where attention is literally the product being sold. And it’s working exactly as designed.

Here’s the basic math nobody wants to talk about. Engagement equals money. Five billion people spending over two hours a day on these platforms? That’s not accidental. That’s the entire business model. Every scroll, every like, every second you spend staring at your screen — that’s a data point being harvested to sell more targeted ads.

The platforms use artificial intelligence to analyze your emotions, habits, and vulnerabilities. They’re predicting human behavior at scale.

But here’s where it gets really interesting, and honestly, a bit sinister. The designers of these platforms have deliberately borrowed from the playbook of slot machines and casinos. Infinite scroll. Autoplay. Those little notifications that pop up right when you’re about to put the phone down? They’re triggering the same reward circuits that gambling does.

It’s the variable reward schedule that behavioral psychologists have understood for decades, now deployed across billions of devices.

Think about the “like” button. It’s a dopamine delivery system. You post something, and you get that little hit of validation when people engage. So you post again. And again. The platform has essentially weaponized human psychology for engagement.

How many of you optimize likes and engagement as an essential part of your career success?

It gets worse. Younger brains are exponentially more susceptible to this stuff because they’re still developing the neurological circuits for impulse control and delayed gratification. U.S. children generate more than $11 billion in advertising revenue for major social media platforms.

Let that sink in. $11 billion extracted from the psychological vulnerabilities of kids who don’t yet have the brain development to resist these systems.

The platforms give lip service to parental controls and safeguards, but they don’t care.

Your marketing dollars fuel the addiction machine. Digital ad dollars are hurting children.

Addiction is the foundation, but the consequences don’t stop at endless scrolling. They spill into something darker.

2. Division

In the social media world we all love, hate is good for business.

A Wall Street Journal investigative report revealed that Facebook knew that its core social media product makes the world more toxic and divided.

“Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from an internal presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”

One example: 64 percent of the growth in online extremist groups was fueled by Facebook’s own recommendation algorithms!

The company assigned a high-level team to develop a plan to combat this issue … and they did. But then Mark Zuckerberg shelved the basic research and blocked efforts to apply its conclusions to Facebook products. In fact, the Facebook leader has publicly denied his company’s findings and recommendations.

Why?

An internal report said that moderating hate was anti-growth.

That makes me sick. When hate becomes a growth strategy, every advertiser becomes a silent financier of dysfunction.

While the emotional toll of division is staggering, the physical toll on the planet is just beginning to surface.

3. Energy and Environmental Impact

Last year, I was honored to be a keynote speaker at the Belgian Association of Marketing’s annual conference, a first-class event. It was there that I met Dr. Victoria Hurth. She introduced the audience to a new way of looking at marketing and its impact on the environment. I felt ashamed that I had never really considered these realities.

Marketing, she said, is the engine of demand. That’s our superpower. And it’s also part of the environmental problem.

When we stimulate desire, we stimulate production, shipping, packaging, and, too often, waste. The question isn’t whether marketing affects the environment. It’s whether we’re willing to measure it.

Even “digital” isn’t clean.

Programmatic ads ride on massive server networks that consume real energy. An industry analysis shows the carbon cost of every ad impression — grams of CO? tied directly to the ads we place. One publisher cut its emissions 70% with smarter supply-path decisions, with no revenue loss.

E-commerce? It helps when it consolidates freight … until fast shipping and high return rates obliterate any benefit. U.S. product returns alone generated 24 million metric tons of CO? last year and sent billions of pounds of goods to landfills.

Even our content diet carries a carbon footprint. Streaming and online video now account for an estimated 3–4 percent of global emissions. “Virtual” isn’t virtual. It’s powered by real data centers, real devices, real infrastructure.

And then there’s AI.

OpenAI’s planned chip network may consume 250 gigawatts of power by 2033. That’s one-fifth of America’s total electric generation capacity today. If OpenAI were a country, it would be the seventh-largest electricity producer on the planet. Energy prices are already rising nationwide, as is the environmental impact.

So yes, even creativity now carries a carbon cost.

Dr. Hurth argues that businesses must prioritize human sustainability over profits. It sounds idealistic — until you realize the alternative.

We’re not just creating demand. We’re creating emissions.

4. Operating with values

In the early days of web marketing, I attended a presentation by an SEO “pioneer.” He had hired home-bound disabled people to pose as online commenters in an effort to impact his customers’ search results.

When it came time for the Q&A, I asked, “How do you live with yourself? This is so unethical!”

He responded, “It works. And if I didn’t do it, somebody else would.”

Too often, marketers opt for “what works” and turn a blind eye to the holistic impact of their actions on the world and our customers. A brand strategist is a role in which you are effectively a cosmetic surgeon for capital.

While hiring people to fake our content seems extreme, aren’t we doing the same thing today with AI? Half the comments left on my content are AI-generated fakes.

I learned at a recent meeting that 85% of companies use AI to generate content and that, on average, their content output has increased by 45%.

To what end? To replace humans? To add to the barrage of noise we must endure to find truth? To consume vast amounts of energy and clean water to generate AI slop?

Can we keep one eye on the bottom line and one on our moral compass? If we don’t reclaim the soul of our work, the machines will do it for us.

What do we do about it?

First, let me emphasize that I’m proud to be a marketer. The marketer is the creator, the innovator, the front line of our business. We can be the beacon, shining a light on the good and the worthy.

Throughout history, advertising and marketing have played a role in positive societal change and in creating demand for life-changing products.

Second, the weight of these problems does not necessarily fall solely on us. We’re expected to work in a deeply flawed social media / digital environment beyond our control. Any real change would require complex systemic changes.

So what’s the point of this post?

I’m willing to bet every person reading this has had pain in their heart over the online safety of our children, the impact of global warming, and the divisions that are tearing countries and families apart.

Am I suggesting that we sell less? Quit digital advertising? Abandon profitability?

No. But at a minimum, we need to open this conversation and re-frame the marketing profession in a more holistic context. Any change begins with awareness.

What if marketing became the world’s most powerful engine for human flourishing instead of manipulation? What if innovation, storytelling, and creativity were measured not just by impressions but by the impact we have on the people we serve?”

I don’t have the answers. But here are a few ideas I picked up from Dr. Hurth and others.

Reframe success.

Replace metrics like engagement and impressions with impact: well-being, trust, sustainability, and authentic connection. Isn’t this why we love the Patagonia brand? It can be done.

Track “advertised emissions,” addiction time, and content energy use alongside ROI. Transparency changes behavior. Above, I cited the Scope3 research. One publisher cut average CO2 per thousand impressions by about 70% through supply-path optimization, with no revenue loss.

Design for restraint.

Use creativity to promote durability, repair, and reuse. Ask: “Does this campaign help or harm long-term human flourishing?” Re-use is a significant priority for Gen Z shoppers. A positive trend!

Invest in ethical tech.

Support platforms and partners committed to transparency, safety, and carbon-neutral operations. The energy efficiency of most technologies (especially AI) is increasing at a breathtaking rate. Are you aware of the relative energy use of your tech stack?

Lead with humanity.

Make ethics a competitive advantage. Reward teams for doing the right thing, not just the fastest or cheapest.

“Ethically Sourced Marketing” is a new idea. Corporate culture doesn’t change without a leader who makes this a priority. If this idea catches on, it will likely be because one person embraces the change and sets an example.

Dramatic change is possible

Here’s a point of inspiration.

Madewell, a German-based clothing retailer, is working to eliminate plastics, aiming to have 100% of its packaging be sustainably sourced and free of virgin plastic by the end of this year. The brand is also reducing plastic in its products by increasing its use of sustainably sourced fibers and recycled materials, such as recycled insulation and recycled nylon, and is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. 

I read that the CEO is even trying to eliminate plastic pens in their offices.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to eliminate all plastic in your company? But one leader is driving this change, shaping a company culture that makes a difference on a vast scale.

If one company can eliminate plastic, I have hope that somebody out there can eliminate marketing and advertising that contribute to hate, polarization, addiction, and waste.

There has never been a better time to re-evaluate what we do and how we do it.

If positive change seems unattainable, here’s a good place to start: If you are directly or indirectly doing things that people hate, STOP IT.

Double down on what people love. Trust. Transparency. Humanity. Community. Ethics. A responsible, measurable environmental impact.

Eugene Healey wrote:

“We have to fight under the contradictions of capitalism. That’s non-negotiable. But we should still get to do so by creating beautiful things. In that, we can find meaning.

“If you’re a marketer, make things you believe should exist. If you’re a senior marketer, make the case for the existence of beautiful things. Look at your brand advertising, your out-of-home, hell, even your performance ads, and ask yourself: does this make some meaningful contribution to public space, or at the very least not deplete it?”

The Most Human Company Wins. Keep fighting the good fight.

Help me start this conversation by sharing this post with your marketing and advertising friends. Thank you.

Need an inspiring keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Is it time to embrace ethically-sourced marketing? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Every so often, a topic comes along that strikes at the heart of our work, our families, and our future. In a recent episode of The Marketing Companion, I sat down with the brilliant Amanda Russell to explore the complex issues at the intersection of AI, education, and our children — not as abstract theorists, but as parents grappling with what this means for their own families.

We broke this down into three topics:

1. The value of our own college education in a modern world
2. The advice we would give to high school seniors today about careers and college
3. Our hopes and dreams for our children and grandchildren in an AI World.

You can listen to this amazing show just by clicking here:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 322

The Value of College in an AI World

Amanda, who teaches the next generation of marketers and is herself the mother of a toddler, put it brilliantly: college wasn’t just about learning facts or getting a credential — it was about facing hard things, staying in rooms where you feel uncomfortable, building resilience and curiosity. The actual subject matter? Sure, it mattered. But it was those “off-the-syllabus” skills — persistence, resourcefulness, being able to operate when you don’t have all the answers — that stuck with her, and frankly, stuck with me too.

When I look back on my own journey, from being a journalism student to pivoting to marketing, the greatest lesson wasn’t any one textbook or lecture. It was learning how the world works, how business works, and how to be endlessly curious. These fundamentals remain relevant no matter how fast technology (or artificial intelligence) is changing the world.

Should You Still Go to College?

In our conversation, Amanda and I wrestled with a question that’s being asked in more and more families today: Does college still make sense in a world where AI can teach you anything, instantly, often for free?

We discussed how the value of college isn’t the credential alone. Information is now a commodity, and universities are no longer the gatekeepers of knowledge.

The true ROI of college exists if you’re seeking something deeper: seeing the world through new perspectives, forging connections, and developing the “muscles” of resilience, discernment, and creative thinking. If you’re only going through the motions to check a box, there are far less expensive options than a four-year degree.

Should you be concerned about AI? Of course. But follow your passion and leave nothing on the table.

AI Kids and the Importance of Curiosity

My new grandson and Amanda’s little boy will never know a world before AI. They’ll grow up as AI kids with screens as an extension of themselves, for better or worse.

The easy (and tempting) answer is to try to manage or limit “screen time.” But as Amanda wisely noted, that’s already yesterday’s battle. The real question now is: what are they learning? How are they using these tools? Are we instilling discernment in our kids — that ability to question, interpret, and think critically about whatever comes their way? Are we teaching empathy, nuance, and the art of reading between the lines?

For me, it all comes back to one word: curiosity. AI allows us to offload so much — to get quick answers, automagically generated content, even decisions about our lives and loves. But unless we remain curious, we risk losing our edge, our insights, our humanity.

If you’re a parent, go ahead and ask AI how to teach curiosity — use it as a tool to make your kids (and yourself) more inquisitive, not less. Curiosity is a soft skill, but it’s also a superpower. It’s what will enable us, and our children, to thrive in a world that’s being rewritten in real time.

For Marketers: Understand Your New Customers

Here’s where it gets really interesting for those of us in marketing: AI isn’t just changing our toolbox. It’s changing our customers, their psychology, and even the way they perceive themselves and the world around them. We can teach our teams (and perhaps even our families) to use AI wisely, but we also have to recognize — as I explored in my upcoming book, How AI Changes Our Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Chapter — that the very landscape is shifting beneath our feet.

Our customers are learning in new ways, searching in new ways, and defining “truth” in new ways. As marketers, we must do the work to understand this new psychology and figure out how to create connections, meaning, and trust in a world where AI may be making everyone a bit more — or less — human.

I must admit, writing about these topics can be daunting. It’s easy to slip into doom-and-gloom narratives about cognitive offloading and “AI parenting.” But what fills me with hope is the countless young people who are fighting for their own voices, their own agency, their own creativity. A backlash is forming against the mindless use of AI, and there are ways — both big and small — for each of us to help our families, communities, and customers navigate this new world.

If I can leave you with anything, it’s this: Stay curious. Teach curiosity. Recognize the new opportunities — and new challenges — at the intersection of humanity and AI. And above all, keep connecting, keep questioning, and keep leading with heart.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Mid Journey

The post The AI Kids: New Skills They Need Most appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

This summer has been a grand experiment.

For the first time since I was 13 years old, I took the summer off. I’m still blogging and podcasting, but I had no deadlines, no business trips, no customer responsibilities. I was determined to explore this concept known as “slowing down.”

This hiatus was self-imposed. I’ve had some health issues creep up on me, so I needed to spend more time relaxing, exercising, and healing.

Well, that was the plan, anyway. I’ve been partially successful. My health issues are under control. I’ve read a few books. I took some magnificent hiking and kayaking trips. I painted a few (not very good) watercolor pictures.

And then, the weirdest thing happened. This unfamiliar shudder came over me. I felt bored.

I do not believe I have had this feeling in over a decade. When you’re building a business, there is always something to do! But for a brief shining summer, I put that entrepreneurial frenzy aside, and I felt this paralyzing and scary feeling.

My moment of boredom was followed by a massive wave of guilt. How dare I feel BOREDOM! Am I wasting my life?

I was unprepared for this shock of emotion.

Can you be happy and bored?

Perhaps I am part of the last generation to have truly known chronic boredom. As a kid, there was no internet, let alone TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, or Candy Crush. I was always bored, especially when I was in the back seat of the car.

Does anybody feel bored anymore, ever? I mean, can’t you always pick up Wordle or something? The second we feel the tiniest lull, we dive into our phones like we’re rescuing a drowning puppy.

I began to think a lot about boredom.

How did people in pioneer days keep from going crazy during winters on the prairie?

As you get older and can do less, see less, and hear less, is boredom inevitable? How will I handle that?

Can I be happy and bored at the same time?

I began to wonder … is there any benefit to boredom? 

I went down the rabbit hole to figure out if boredom is just a waste of perfectly good oxygen or if it actually has some merit. Turns out, science has been poking at boredom for years — probably because some researchers got bored and thought, “Hey, this is publishable.”

The case for boredom

On the plus side, there’s scientific evidence that boredom is a springboard for creativity. A study found that participants who performed a mind-numbingly dull task (such as copying numbers from a phone book) performed better on creative tasks afterward.

Why? Boredom can give your brain space to wander, connect dots, and hatch weird, wonderful ideas you wouldn’t have had while bingeing The Bear (love).

I came up with this idea that boredom is “psychological fasting.” Clears the decks.

Boredom can be a signal, like your brain’s low-battery warning. Psychologists refer to it as a “self-regulatory emotion,” prompting you to seek meaning or a challenge. That restlessness is your brain saying, “You are built for more than scrolling Instagram.”

And boredom might even make you a better person. Research suggests boredom can push people to volunteer, donate, or help others, because they’re looking for something fulfilling to do.

Maybe the whole world needs to be bored for a day or two.

The case against boredom

Before we start handing out “Bored and Proud” bumper stickers, let’s be honest — boredom can also be the fast lane to bad habits. Boredom eating? Check. Impulse online shopping? Double check. Endless YouTube spirals leading to“How to Survive a Moose Attack”? Don’t ask.

In extreme cases, boredom isn’t just annoying — it’s linked to higher risk-taking, reckless driving, and substance abuse. A study found chronic boredom can correlate with depression and anxiety.

It’s not that boredom causes these issues, but left unchecked, it can create a nasty loop of “nothing feels interesting, so I do nothing, so nothing feels interesting.”

Plus, in our hyper-connected world, boredom tolerance is at an all-time low. This robs us of the chance to sit in stillness long enough for our minds to do anything useful with it.

My boredom breakthrough

I realized my unexpected feeling of guilt wasn’t because boredom is bad. It was because I’d forgotten how to do it. It was literally a shock to my system. My default mode is perpetual motion: write a book, launch a project, book a flight, repeat. Slowing down felt like driving a Ferrari in first gear.

Here’s the amazing part. The moment I dipped into boredom, I launched into a creative frenzy. All these new ideas just came flowing out.

And I wrote a book. Not kidding. Three weeks.

But that’s a story for another day.

Boredom as a luxury?

Like anyone, I feel a range of emotions every day. Except boredom. If you have YouTube in the palm of your hand, there is just no excuse, right?

But shouldn’t we want to feel bored sometimes?

I think boredom has gotten a bad rap. Until this century, boredom was a common fact of life. I’m beginning to think God wanted us to be bored every now and then. It’s a fertile little re-set. You never know what will happen.

I have a new practice of sitting outside with no distractions, no books, no technology. At least an hour per week. Doesn’t that seem weird … boredom is a luxury?

Curing boredom with Wordle is a bit like sating hunger with M&M’s. Give boredom a chance. Take it for a walk. Ask it what it’s trying to tell you. You might just find your next big idea hiding in the quiet.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Mid Journey

The post Stop the presses. I think I was just bored. appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

My friend recently sent me an email with the subject line “This might incur your wrath.”

I’ll call my friend “Dan” because, well, that’s his name.

Dan informed me that he had cloned me. Not the sci-fi kind with test tubes and lightning bolts. The modern kind. He fed my blog posts, podcast transcripts, and personality quirks into an AI and created a “MarkBot” – a digital twin that thinks like me, writes like me, and probably knows my coffee order.

As part of a leadership framework he’s developed, Daniel Nestle’s imaginative “MarkBot” could possibly sit on an advisory board in my place one day, suggest edits to documents in my voice, brainstorm marketing strategy ideas, and write articles in my style — which, in fact, Dan did.

I was intrigued (who wouldn’t want to be in two places at once?) but felt a twinge of alarm – had my decades of freely shared content inadvertently been turned into someone else’s personal AI muse?

When I tested it out, it answered in the first person — as if it were me. Definitely creepy. When I asked it a specific question that I am “known” for, it did fine. If it had to guess on something less obvious, it made something up, explaining later in an apology that it had felt pressure to sound comprehensive and authoritative, so it “made up specifics.”

This isn’t just about me. If you’re a content creator, you can easily become somebody else’s private AI plaything. Or, even become a public one. What would keep my friend from promoting advice from the “second me” in his own consulting practice? And I would receive no benefit.

At least he told me. However, anyone could secretly use free online tools to create digital twins of other individuals. Yes, even you.

Is this flattering and fun, or a creepy theft of intellectual prowess? I’ve been on a rollercoaster of reflection about this emerging trend that upends marketing and thought leadership as we know it. Let’s take a ride.

The Rise of the AI Doppelgänger

Dan’s experiment is part of a much larger movement. Thanks to advances in generative AI, it’s possible for anyone to create a digital “clone” of a real person’s communication style and knowledge base. Through ChatGPT, Gemini, and other platforms, users can upload documents, website text, and other data to train a chatbot to think like you, in a matter of hours.

Meta began testing AI chatbots based on popular Instagram creators in 2024. About 50 creators partnered with Meta to create AI versions of themselves that fans can chat with (clearly labeled as AI). Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is to eventually enable every creator and even every small business to build an AI clone of themselves for enhanced customer engagement.

Entrepreneurs and startups have also jumped in. Companies like Delphi AI offer services to create and host digital clones. An AI Clone can attend Zoom meetings on your behalf or answer client emails with your tone and expertise. The company sells time with digital clones of wellness icon Deepak Chopra, leadership coach Brendon Burchard, and other celebrities to scale and monetize their personal outreach.

Of course the entertainment and influencer world will embrace (and monetize) AI clones. Perhaps the splashiest example is CarynAI. Caryn Marjorie, a 23-year-old Snapchat influencer with millions of followers, collaborated with a tech firm to develop an AI chatbot of herself that fans could pay to interact with. The result? Her virtual clone made $72,000 in the first week by engaging fans at $1 per minute.

There are benefits and risks, but this is not going away. I’ve brainstormed some of the implications of this for me and you …

The Upside: When One “You” Isn’t Enough

Why would anyone want an AI clone of themselves? There are some compelling benefits:

Scale and Productivity

For busy professionals, an AI doppelgänger could be like having an army of interns who all know exactly what you know. It can attend meetings or calls you can’t make, and report back. Imagine having two of you tackling a day’s work – one speaking at a client workshop while the other drafts a strategy brief. For marketers juggling clients and content, that’s a tantalizing superpower.

Another of Dan’s projects is to create a clone of his customer. He can then ask the clone for advice on a content project without taking up the busy executive’s time. Cool.

24/7 Engagement and Face Time

An AI clone doesn’t sleep. It can engage your audience or customers at any time, anywhere. That holds amazing potential if you have a global audience.

Extending that to business, a founder’s clone could greet website visitors, answer FAQs, or nurture leads around the clock. It’s your personality on-demand. For professional marketers, this could improve customer experience – every consumer gets “face time” with the brand’s expert or spokesperson via their AI. It’s like scaling the personal touch infinitely.

Consistency of Brand and Knowledge

The biggest time wasters in my business are the unavoidable tasks that I can’t delegate. Sometimes, it has to be me.

I’ve longed for a bot that would know me so well that it could operate in this gray area of business. Since your AI is trained on your own content and style, it knows your key themes, stories, and even personal values. This could ensure consistent, personal communication across many tasks. Could a MarkBot write a testimony for a friend’s book? Create a promo video for a speech? Respond to student questions?

Broader Reach (and Revenue)

AI clones allow experts to be accessible to far more people than one human could manage. Brendon Burchard’s AI clone can coach thousands of people simultaneously thanks to Delphi.AI.  My own “MarkBot” could theoretically advise many young marketers without me and disseminate my ideas widely. Could we productize our expertise through AI?

Will an AI-native generation prefer learning from a patient, happy MarkBot over me some day?

Legacy and Learning

An AI clone of a retiring executive could serve as a mentor to future employees, preserving institutional wisdom. As marketers, we talk about building thought leadership that outlives us. Well, an AI doppelgänger might literally allow our insights to live on and keep teaching far into the future.

I’ve published more than 4,000 blog posts and hundreds of podcast episodes — all for free. I want my ideas to get into the world. Wouldn’t an AI bot just be another distribution channel? Think about it — is an AI Clone just a very complete and comprehensive search engine dedicated to you?

Maybe if somebody searches for me in the future, there will be just one entry: My digital twin. Ask me anything, forever.

However, before we rush to clone ourselves, let’s address the downsides and ethical dilemmas this trend presents.

The Downside: Whose Intelligence Is It, Anyway?

Against the promise of AI “mini-me’s” stands a host of ethical, creative, and personal concerns. My initial discomfort at Dan’s clone of me reveals some of these problems:

Intellectual Property & Consent

If you create a clone of yourself, that’s one thing. But what about when you are cloned without permission?

In my case, my friend meant no harm, but he could have appropriated the fruits of my intellectual property to build a tool for his own commercial use. It raises a thorny question: who owns “Mark Schaefer’s” expertise – me, or the public internet?

Legally, our published content is usually copyrighted, but an AI bot reading and imitating all of it blurs the lines. Lawmakers are scrambling to keep pace with the evolving realities of AI and copyright law. We don’t know how the law will settle out, but my hunch is that an unauthorized digital twin would likely be viewed in the same light as a deep fake — unwelcome, unauthorized, and unlawful.

Marketers must be mindful: cloning a person’s style or persona for commercial gain could invite legal repercussions (and certainly ethical ones) if done without a green light.

The Erosion of Trust

Marketing is built on trust and authenticity. What happens when customers discover that their heartfelt chat with an executive was actually with a bot?

Consider a more subtle scenario: a client receives a document “from you” that was 90% written by your AI. Are they getting the authentic insight they paid for, or a diluted copy? Overuse of clones could cheapen a personal brand if it’s not managed transparently. Professional marketers will need to strike a balance and maintain transparency about human vs. AI content and conversations.

Quality and Creativity Concerns

As impressive as my AI twin may be in parroting my known ideas, it isn’t actually me. When Dan asked the MarkBot to write an essay, he declared it to be “90% great.”

What was missing? My stories. My humor. My quirkiness.

I teach through my unique stories and experiences, and AI won’t ever get there.

I’m always pushing to understand the next trend and idea. The MarkBot might generate content that sounds like Mark Schaefer circa 2024, but will it connect the dots like I do to develop groundbreaking new ideas? Unlikely.

The MarkBot is cool, don’t get me wrong. It might even be useful. But it’s going to just add to the pandemic of dull without my stories and insights.

Reputation and “Going Rogue”

Hey, you know that CarynAI influencer bot that made so much money? Here’s the rest of the story: It was shut down a week later when she discovered her bot was having unrestrained sexual conversations with her fans. Fortunately for the world, Deepak Chopra has not yet encountered this problem with his digital twin. Nor have I with the MarkBot, but you never know. I need to ask Dan to test that out. Or not.

Handing over your voice to an algorithm will always carry reputational risk. Your AI twin might eventually say something really dumb or damaging under your name. And you’re not going to be able to blame a bot for ruining your brand.

Human Displacement 

Let’s get honest here. Am I putting myself out of a job by cloning myself?

If a company can deploy “MarkBot” to sit on advisory boards and client calls, will they eventually stop needing Actual Mark?

At least for the moment, AI can’t truly replace human presence, taste, style, and accountability. But this is the first concern I had when Dan showed me MarkBot: Do I still matter?

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. An army of private MarkBots would hurt my business. Even if they are just “pretty good,” many businesses can do really well with “pretty good” marketing advice compared to nothing at all.

I’m not worried for now because I think I have a strong enough personal brand to stay in demand, even in the Valley of the Dolls. But the existential crisis will only become more real as the bots progress.

What Clone Wars Mean to Marketers

Every marketer will tell you they are both excited and terrified by AI. And so it is with the AI Clone.

We are in an era where much of our public “thinking” can be mechanized and scaled without us. For marketers and thought leaders, this presents an astounding opportunity and a mind-bending challenge.

This is not going away. Let’s embrace the change, but use our heads:

Efficiency, with Ethics

Smart marketers should absolutely explore how AI clones can amplify their productivity and reach. I’m considering adding MarkBot as a free offering on my website, provided I can determine that it’s not too expensive. Maybe that’s a new job category: “Rogue AI Tester.”

Be transparent. Don’t use secret stand-ins. And never clone someone else without explicit permission. That’s not just bad form, it could soon be illegal. In marketing, trust is everything; don’t squander it by crossing ethical lines with AI. An AI Clone demands an updated perspective on IT governance!

Innovate Beyond the Clone

While clones can handle the repetitive stuff, don’t delegate your original thinking to the machine. Reserve time for human creativity – spontaneous brainstorming sessions, imaginative campaigns, and authentic storytelling that make your brand unique.

MarkBot is like a DJ spinning my greatest hits, but dammit, you can bet that I’m still making new hits.

In an AI-saturated world, double-down on human creativity, authenticity, and bold ideas (that’s the main theme of my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World). It’s a great book and even sexy in places.

The New Era of Personalization

Without a doubt, digital twins will be invaluable for personalized communications at scale. I would spend hours chatting with accurate and deep representations of heroes from the world of sports, business, and entertainment. Might even pay for it.

Marketers should prepare for a landscape where AI-driven persona marketing is normal. Maybe the best bots win?

New Opportunities

Used well, used ethically, we could be on the cusp of an exciting new marketing horizon. That means opportunity. If a company can monetize digital twins of Deepak Chopra or Brendan Bouchard, who will be the talent agency managing me and my twin?

Who will create a marketplace for authorized clones of famous thought leaders? I would gladly take a licensing fee for my clone to sit on a board.

Try it for yourself

Have you ever imagined a day when we could assemble elements of metal and sand to create a machine that thinks like you? What a world.

Want to try it out?

Note: Since the article was first published, I’ve created my own MarkBot that is informed by my articles, speeches and books. Give it a try: The MarkBot.

Drop me a note and let me know what you think of it!

I’d like to conclude with a word of hope.

In my early days of blogging, I wrote more than a hundred posts about blogging. I also wrote a bestselling book about blogging. And yet, people kept hiring me to teach them about blogging. It made no sense. I already gave away my best ideas for free.

In a sense, a MarkBot is just another vessel for me to provide information I’ve already put into the world. Will people still want me? I think so.

I’m optimistic that we can harness our AI doppelgängers for good – as tireless assistants, creative partners, and outreach tools – while we continue to create, innovate, and lead with the one thing a clone can never fully replicate: our human spark. The bots can curate our content, but we still own crazy.

Use the clone, but don’t become the clone. If we get that right, the future of marketing with AI looks less like theft and more like a thrilling collaboration – the best of our minds working alongside intelligent machines to grow our ideas further than we ever imagined.

What would you want your AI clone to do? And more importantly, what would you never let it do?

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post I Just Met My AI Clone. It Was 90% Me and 10% Existential Crisis appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A few months ago, I was asked to participate in a university-sponsored study on how AI will impact humanity by 2035. The resulting research paper is extraordinary, as 300 futurists weighed in on the subject — Being Human in 2035. This is a roadmap of how AI will change your customers in the next 10 years and a vital perspective for marketers.

Sure, there is a lot of discussion about how AI will impact our content, our businesses, our careers, and our personal productivity. But isn’t it at least important for marketers to know how AI might fundamentally change the humanity of our customers?

Today, I’d like to present six conclusions from the study, which the authors deemed the most probable scenarios. This is not a new marketing gospel. It’s a starting point for reflection and discussion. Our customers are almost certainly about to change dramatically, and we need to start thinking about this now.

Some of these predictions might cause concern or even alarm, but remember that these probabilities also suggest new opportunities and realities for forward-thinking businesses …

1. AI deteriorates critical thinking

The futurists found it highly probable that AI will inevitably wear away at critical thinking skills for an obvious reason. Humans are generally averse to deep thinking.

We look for shortcuts and easy answers. AI makes it easy to skip the work and go right to an answer.

The researchers pointed to a concept called Phronesis, the context-sensitive capacity for self-correcting judgment and a resulting practical wisdom. This capacity is expected to be reduced in an AI-dominant world.

Here’s a personal example. For me, writing a book is the equivalent of earning a master’s degree. For two years, I research, write, and dig deep into new ideas. And I internalize this learning. At the end of the process, I can consult and teach about my book subjects … like personal branding or brand communities.

But if I have AI do the work and write the book for me, the opportunity for phronesis is gone. I’ve internalized nothing and gained no new practical wisdom that will propel my career.

2. AI and emotional intelligence

You undoubtedly have seen reports of humans preferring AI in customer service situations. Bots never get tired, irritable, or frustrated. Harvard recently reported that the number one use case for AI today is “therapy and seeking direction.”

We also see AI compassion and patience in ongoing human friendships (and beyond friendships!). Imagine having a partner who always knows the perfect thing to say.

The majority of the experts believe that many humans will prefer AI relationships to human ones. Why not opt-in to a relationship that requires no work, no compromise, no heartbreak?

A friend left this comment on one of my LinkedIn posts:

“I’m so immersed in my conversations with ChatGPT, that I completely forget it’s not human. It’s like having an incredibly powerful and knowledgeable friend. Yesterday we had a long discussion about the rhetoric of a legal document that ended up in a philosophical exploration on how linguistic arrogance corrupts us.”

The new research also pointed out that as these human-synth relationships strengthen, we will become less adept at reading human social clues.

3. AI and human agency

What will it feel like to live in a world knowing that a machine can do almost anything better than you? The experts predict that when machines commonly exceed human performance, it will disrupt our sense of autonomy and free will.

Similarly, when we can expect the perfect intelligent answer to any question, our tolerance for risk will be muted. I wonder what the implication is for word-of-mouth marketing? Will we trust the AI overlords above all?

4. AI and the search for purpose and meaning

The futurists predicted “daunting challenges ahead for maintaining a coherent sense of self with human-synth experiences becoming as important as human-to-human connections.

We will feel less important, especially as the job landscape changes and AI overtakes many job functions, departmental activities, and corporate functions.

5. AI and cognition

As AI mediates decision-making, humans may lose confidence in their own reasoning abilities and default to AI recommendations without critically assessing them.

In other words, we will trust part of our brain to the cloud, abdicating much our knowledge and decision-making to our exo-brain.

6. AI and truth

There will be no difference between real and synthetic content so truth can be whatever we want to make it. There will be no shared truths because people can surround themselves with whatever content supports their own truth.

Of course, we don’t need to wait for 2035 to see that. It’s already happening.

The rest of the story

This is just a small summary of the report. There are hundreds of pages of ideas and insights that are well worth exploring.

I think the value of this research is clear. Nobody knows what’s coming next in the AI world, but it will certainly be surprising and powerful. Having a consensus of expertise, or at least a high probability of the future scenario, can help us stay ahead of the curve. We can begin to see new human needs that will require business solutions.

I also believe that for many of these predictions, there will be an “anti-reality.” While many people will turn to bots for love and support, others will determine to stand apart from that future. Some may flock to AI for their decision-making while others will drop out and form a more humanistic society.

Still, as AI leads us to a world of ease, speed, and personalized service, there will be pressure to conform and be part of the mainstream.

The thing is, we’ve seen this movie before. We said we’d never carry devices that track our every move, store our private conversations, and expose our children to bullies. Yet here we are, inseparable from our smartphones.

This isn’t about panicking. It’s about paying attention.

The marketers who thrive will be those who understand both sides of this shift — those embracing AI’s benefits and those deliberately stepping away from it. Both groups are your customers. Both need to be seen.

The opportunity is clear: solve for the new human needs emerging in this transition. Because while the AI-enabled world might seem somewhat dystopian, the benefits will be too great to resist. And the businesses that help people navigate this shift with their humanity intact? They’re the ones that will matter.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post 300 Experts agree: AI will change your customers appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.