EP45: What Gen-AI Means for Your 2026 Strategy

What's the right way to use it? How do you ensure that the content you're producing is human and authentic versus just more AI slot for me as a plaything, Sora 2 is fantastic. You can create some very funny videos and initially you could create some videos that were definitely in breach of copyright, although they're now improving those controls. How it will be applied within marketing, within brand positioning is going to be fascinating. It is going to be very difficult to understand what is real and what is fake content. And those deep fakes of various industry professionals, leaders, government members will continue to be made at scale and you really aren't going to be able to tell what's real or not. I don't think it's doom and gloom. I think we need to look at how we position ourselves to have the skills to have a conversation with people, to care for people, to understand how to solve their problems, and then hand off the delivery to AI and robots so that we're working in combination.

Hi, I'm Freya. Welcome to the Skynet Chronicles Business in the AI Age, the podcast that dives deep into the world where artificial intelligence meets business. Join us as we explore the latest trends, challenges and opportunities in this ever evolving landscape. From innovative startups to established enterprises will uncover the secrets behind the successful integration of AI technologies. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and get ready to unlock the mysteries of business in the AI age.

Hi, and welcome to Skynet Chronicles. So in this episode, I'm going to talk about some of the latest advances in AI and some of our services and offerings that can help you in your adoption of technology within your business. So I hope it's useful to you. I look forward to your feedback. Here we go. Recently, Channel 4's Dispatches program did a series where it was an episode with four different elements on will AI take your job? And they looked at four different job types and had a direct comparison of a human performing the role versus AI performing the role. And it was an interesting showpiece, especially around how the host for the entire program was obviously simulated and they gave that away at the end, so even that person wasn't real. But some of the job types were very, very close to being at parity with the humans doing them. And one of them, the AI, outperformed the human doing that role. For me, it was interesting because we know that the capabilities of AI is essentially doubling, improving twofold every six months. And that may not be apparent in terms of your how you're using ChatGPT, how you're producing images, how you're looking at music creation, but if you look at the entire industry, it's accelerating and it's moving incredibly quickly. And so all of the capabilities that around us now are as bad as they're ever going to get. And while you can't currently create a scene for a movie, a score rather, the audio as well as a human can, it's only going to be a matter of time before you can input the video. And the video will then create the script with timed stages for the different scenes. So we can already see how the technology that's out there now can be improved using learnings and lessons from other industries and other ways. AI is being applied in almost every way. So it doesn't really matter how you're looking at artificial intelligence now, which tools you're using, if you think it's already good enough, you're probably not using the full capabilities of what's there. But also it's going to keep on moving. And if we look at the recent release of Sora, Sora 2, it's effectively a TikTok or an Instagram app, but it's also an underlying video creation technology where you can create a cameo, a version of yourself that you can use exclusively, or you can make available to others that you can then produce realistic lifelike video, which currently has a little Sora watermark on it, although there are already watermark removing tools that are taking that off. And those videos, while meant to be within the Sora 2 app, are already leaking onto TikTok and YouTube as people post them. And it's becoming very challenging to know what's real video and what's been created, because it is breathtakingly close. That technology is also available over API, and so it's impossible to create batches of videos to create content for a business that is entirely simulated. And while it's a relatively new capability, it will be everywhere. And that raises challenges for how you as a business, present yourself online. Do you lean into these capabilities? Do you create a load of video content that is representing your brand? It can be on brand, but what's the right way to use it? How do you ensure that the content you're producing is human and authentic versus just more AI slope? For me, as a plaything, Sora 2 is fantastic. You can create some very funny videos, and initially you could create some videos that were definitely in breach of copyright, although they're now improving those controls. How it will be applied within marketing, within brand positioning is going to be fascinating. And we're already seeing rapid changes where storyboarding and production processes lean into these tools and it's inevitable. We'll see simulated video almost everywhere within our lives and it will be indistinguishable to our eyes as to whether it was AI created or not. There may be watermarks, the watermarks will be enforced within the eu, but equally there will be people who are happy to remove those. So it is going to be very difficult to understand what is real and what is fake content. And those deep fakes of various industry professionals, leaders, government members will continue to be made at scale and you really aren't going to be able to tell what's real or not. So you're going to have to go into things with a questioning mindset and say, okay, this is probably AI created and make sure you're validating your sources if you're quoting something as truth so soar 2 is moving quick, but the whole industry of video creation is moving at breakneck speed. And Hollywood is on warning because it used to cost hundreds of millions to make a big film. There are already people producing feature length movies of all sorts of different themes entirely with AI. While they're not Hollywood grade yet, it won't be long until they are. So it's going to be fun times. One of my favorite AI tools to use at the weekends is a music generation tool called Suno, and I don't use it often, but it is a great showpiece of what's possible. You can put in any concept, any combination of music, and effectively you're using a prompt to create a song. It will produce two different versions of the song and you can then choose the one you like, which it will also add images and videos to if you like. It's an amazing tool that demonstrates how prompting is moving beyond just language models into audio music creation. We've obviously seen the same with ElevenLabs, making it possible to have anybody, anywhere say anything, even though it's entirely simulated. And that's formed the backbone of a lot of the video creation capabilities. But when focusing specifically on music, it's fascinating how you can mix different genres, you can pull together different styles, and you can just create something for fun. I recommend you have a go. It's free and it is a giggle. When I'm at events and I'm asked for my opinions on what sort of jobs should I do, what sort of jobs should my children do? It's always an interesting conversation because whether it's an audience of HR professionals, finance professionals, food service equipment professionals, or anything else Essentially, people are worried about what jobs are going to be around for my kids. And it's easy to look at the jobs market and go, there's challenges ahead. But fundamentally people buy people. And any role where there is customer facing interaction, where people enjoy having a human experience, where you're going to an event, where you're doing something in person, where somebody is looking after and caring for you in person, these roles will be secure forever because we will want to be served and experience times with people. So I don't think it's doom and gloom. I think we need to look at how we position ourselves to have the skills to have a conversation with people, to care for people, to understand how to solve their problems, and then hand off the delivery to AI and robots so that we're working in combination. We're free to do the peopling that we enjoy, but hand off the actions that can be automated to automated processes. So jobs like plumbers, electricians, sparks, carpenters, they'll be around for a long time. Nurses will be around forever. Carers will be around forever. But really those jobs that focus on human experiences I think are going to be a key area to focus on. How can you bring people together to experience something new that they'll have a memory of for a lifetime? Because that's going to be something that we'll continue to value. So while the job market is going to change, people buy people and experiences will be king. But when we think about the jobs market as a whole, at the moment we're largely augmenting people. There are tech giants that are removing some of their workforce and openly saying that they're replacing them with AI. We know of call center operations that are being shifted entirely to AI and we've helped companies make that transition. So it is starting to make a significant impact to the jobs market. And we can already see from graduate job adoption and from lower and middle management roles that there is effectively a thinning out of organization structures as companies look at how they can use AI to be more efficient. But not all use of AI is more efficient. You can see these examples and there are some great memes about it, of AI being used to produce long winded emails or highly detailed reports that are then handed off to supervisors who immediately just have them summarize so that they can have the two to three sentence version. This isn't a good use of AI within a business, so understanding how you could and should be applying it is crucial. And having a strategy for how it's going to be deployed within Your business is essential. But there will be significant changes to the job market. We'll have new jobs created, but there is inevitably going to be people that are left behind, people who don't adapt to those new jobs and people who had specific roles in specific parts of countries that just don't exist anymore. And that's going to create a need for some form of universal basic income or universal basic provision where those people are looked after by the state and likely funded by AI companies profits. It's a rapidly changing world and whereas we initially thought everything would be driven around, AI is not going to impact the creative jobs, it's just going to impact the blue collar workers we're actually seeing. It's heavily impacting white collar, it's heavily impacting creative jobs. And now with ever advancing robotics, it's starting to look like it's going to take over a lot of blue collar jobs too. So we are looking at a future where many of the tasks within our companies will be done by AI. Many of the jobs within our homes will be performed by robots, although arguably they have been. For the last 50 years. We've been continually bringing in advances to make our lives easier. But making sure that we are actually getting time back and focusing on things that make a difference to us as individuals and having those experiences versus just doing more work is going to be crucial. So it's going to be a fun time, it's going to be a roller coaster. Buckle up. There'll be some challenges ahead, but as long as you're looking at how you can use these technologies, you'll be fine. I'm often asked about Vibe coding and whether anybody can now create software. And the answer is yes and no. So you can use a tool that will build a basic application and you'll get something that's pretty good, whether it'll be stable, whether it'll be reliable, whether it'll be secure. These are all questions that you'll have to ask. But something that can now be done is in person build days where we can pull together the important people within your business, the influencers, the people who are critical in terms of change management, the people with the great ideas. And over the course of a one day workshop, we can idea on what solutions your business needs and we can build agents live that are ready and deployed within that day. We can involve the whole team in that process. That's really going to help with the change management of understanding what's possible of being able to communicate the benefits of AI within a business, but also gives You a ready to go working solution that's connected into your systems, delivering immediate, measurable benefit. So if that's something that you'd like to discuss, you'd like to see how AI can make a real impact in your business in just a day, then get in touch and speak to a member of our team. We love these build days because it gives us the opportunity to actually play. We like building things quickly and the capabilities of an AI agent or a series of connected AI agents that are working with your data in a safe and secure way, connected to your systems and delivering those individual tasks can make a real benefit to your business. We'd love to show you how. When I present on stage, the most popular part is always when I stop talking and ask the audience for questions. The level of engagement and interaction is always high. The questions I get asked range from, where do we start? What should my kids do? Are robots going to take over? Is it all just about Terminators? And many other things? And so we've decided to add a service to our offering which is effectively a live ask me anything where for an hour a month I'll be available to answer any questions you have. We'll have a mediator to help with the questions that come in so that you and anybody else that wants to can ask direct questions and get answers on how AI is going to impact your business, what the latest events mean and the benefits that you can apply right now. So if you'd like to participate in those, ask me anything, you can find a link on our website. Essentially, I'm just going to be answering questions and I don't know what they are yet. And that's fun. So if you'd like to participate, just get in touch. Shortly, we'll be launching our AI toolkit. Now, eventually it's going to get a much better name than that. But essentially this is a series of AI agents that are aware of your business, aware of the business logic that you use, connected to your data safely and securely, but most importantly, incredibly easy to use. And they can help with specific tasks that all of our customers have been facing. We've taken the eight years of learning of AI application build that we've made and we're effectively making that into micro little solutions that you can deploy within your business quickly and easily. So whether you've got an IT team or not, whether you understand how to deploy agents or not, we're making it super easy. And so when our toolkit launches, you'll be able to quickly connect the data within your business. To an underlying backbone of APIs, which sounds complicated, but I promise you, it's just click and approve. And that then gives the toolkit the awareness it needs to start making recommendations and to start demonstrating the power of AI within your business. So whether that's understanding competitive threats, helping you reduce your subscription spend, helping you to understand IT issues, helping you with your marketing, identifying the key trends within your business, or, or acting as a board of advisors, our toolkit's going to be there to help, it's going to be reasonably priced, and hopefully we can help all of your businesses improve through the application of AI. The term of AGI is being bandied around a lot at the moment. Artificial general intelligence. We used to just talk about artificial intelligence and whether it was actually intelligent or artificial, and now we're talking about artificial general intelligence, which is effectively an autonomous intelligence that is smarter and better than us at the majority of tasks. It's a difficult definition to manage because it evolves over time, But I think if I look at the tasks that I do and ask, can AI already do it better? I'd argue we already have artificial general intelligence, or at least AI is smarter than I am. When I plug into AI, I'm effectively augmenting my intelligence, Adding IQ points, adding access to information, but the ability to complete tasks in terms of writing, in terms of ideation, in terms of music creation, in terms of image creation, video creation is all beyond my abilities as a human. So we're moving into this environment where AI is effectively becoming a teammate. We can choose to augment ourselves and lean into these capabilities and hand over more and more responsibilities for task delivery to AI, or we can choose not to. And if we choose not to, then we're left behind by the people that do lean into them. So essentially, we're going to see a transition of more and more task responsibility and decision making to AI as these forms of intelligence get stronger and more capable. Some may think that's a scary thing, and for a job market, it is definitely a serious consideration. But in terms of the efficiency within a business and getting more done and allowing your people to focus on the things that they enjoy, it allows us to hand off some of those more menial tasks to AI so that we're more efficient as a business. And I think you can do the same. So Looking ahead to 2026, what are your plans for AI? Have you put in place an AI strategy for 2026? Are you looking at how your team are going to take on new technologies, how you're going to be deploying them how you're going to measure their success. That sort of planning is crucial and if you need help with that then myself or a member of my team are very happy to help. We can help you deploy a policy, we can help you create a strategy, we can help you workshop how your team could work together to make the most of these technologies. So if you're still thinking we're not really sure where to start, reach out and we'll find a way to help you. Ultimately it needs to be fun, it needs to be embedded so that it happens on a regular basis and it needs to be measurable in terms of a return on investment otherwise there's no point. Don't just try technology, make sure it's actually making a difference in your business. So that's it from me today. Download of the latest in AI and some of the updates from where we are as a business. Thank you.