Why AI May Be the Best Thing to Happen to Creativity in Decades

There is a collective consensus, on my feeds at least, that AI is eroding creativity. But the people actually building with these tools in innovative ways are combating that messaging with their imagination. At Magnific’s annual Upscale Conference in San Francisco, they made that abundantly clear. I went into it curious, not knowing what to expect. I found a room full of people who weren’t replacing creativity with automation, but instead a gathering of entrepreneurs, filmmakers, and artists using these tools to make the most personal, ambitious work of their careers. The message to the doomsayers was consistent across every keynote: you’re not watching creativity die. You’re watching the gate come down. The system was always broken. Before diagnosing what AI is doing to the culture of creativity, it’s worth asking what it looked like before. Magnific co-founder Joaquín Cuenca had a clear answer. “The system, beautiful as it is, is kind of broken because so few people can enjoy working in that system,” he explained. Creative industries have always been denominated in years of training, proximity to the right institutions, and gatekeepers deciding whose vision was worth funding. Cuenca calls what’s emerging the “No-Collar Economy,” a third civilizational wave alongside the industrial and digital revolutions, except this one restructures who gets to participate in creative and entrepreneurial work entirely. “There are very, very few opportunities to really define history,” he said. “Very few breakthroughs that were so deep that didn’t change one job but changed one entire industry. It’s almost like you go from creating a company to creating an economy.” The entrepreneurial implication is enormous. When the cost of execution collapses, the only remaining differentiator is the specificity of what you have to say. Your story is your IP. Nobody on that stage understood this more viscerally than Momo Wang, animation director and founder of Bunny Galaxy. “When the tools are easy and cheap to access, nobody has to give up their dream anymore,” she reflected. “And when everybody has access to the same tool, the only thing that makes a difference is you. Every moment of your life, up and low, the happy ones, the painful ones, the embarrassing ones — every part of your life builds up your voice, your perspective, your story. And that’s something no tools can generate, and no prompts can replace.” History rhymes — if you’re listening Writer, director and head of AI and innovation at Echobend Pictures, Noah Wagner, titled his Upscale keynote Nothing Has Changed. He meant it as both provocation and thesis. “I keep thinking about the 1960s and 70s — the new Hollywood era — when the studio system was weakening and cheaper, more flexible production tools gave way to a new generation of exciting filmmakers like Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, everyone with their own stories to tell,” he said. “History constantly rhymes if you listen for it.” In a follow-up conversation, Wagner pushed the idea further. “I try not to follow fads,” he shared. “I’m just old enough to have experienced some 20 and 30-year patterns where I’ve heard those rhymes.” Wagner read on the current moment isn’t fear but pattern recognition. The tools change, but the fundamentals don’t. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that we’re doing all of this for an audience of humans,” he encouraged. He went on to share that the meticulous human decision-making process about what to keep is where the art lives. “Intention is the difference between art and slop,” Wagner said. “In a world where there’s so much abundance, scarcity can be a superpower.” The person behind the prompt I told Cuenca that after the two days of keynotes, networking, and immersing myself in the vibrant community, the conference had made me look again at how we look at my own creativity through the lens of being a shadow artist, with instincts and references but always one step removed from making the thing itself. He didn’t flinch. “Your life is the most precious thing,” Cuenca concluded. “That’s the thing that separates artificial intelligence from human intelligence. We, as entities, live a set of experiences that are unique to us.” Then simply: “Your taste is your DNA.” Wagner, in our follow-up, put the uncertainty of this moment in perspective. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, but there’s a lot of possibility in that uncertainty,” he noted. The No-Collar Economy doesn’t promise ease, but it does provide unprecedented access and opportunity. The entrepreneurs who stay ahead will be those who understand that the tool is only as interesting as the person behind the prompt. EXPERT OPINION BY SOPHIE MEHARENNA, FOUNDER + NARRATIVE STRATEGIST, @WORDYSOPH

The Hidden AI Problem No One’s Talking About: It’s Destroying Customer Trust

AI is in nearly everything now. It’s easy to see some of the disruption this is causing, including the mass layoffs that continue to make the news. But there is an effect that AI is having in another area, too: consumer trust. As people see more AI in their everyday life, they may become less likely to immediately trust what they see, hear or read. Think about the last time you read a marketing message. Did you believe it at first sight? Or did you question things? More specifically, did you wonder if it was AI-generated? And if you did, when was the last time you thought that and ended up trusting what you were looking at? AI may be contributing to lower trust at first contact “Is this AI?” It’s a relevant question in 2026. It’s also a subtle yet important new part of the consumer filter. The simple act of asking whether something is AI, even if it isn’t, can reduce trust in what a person is seeing. The average person interacts with around 5,000 ads every day. That’s ten times the number of ads they had to sift through in the 1970s. Now, complicating this constant ad exposure is the fact that many of these ads are filled with AI-generated copy. They have photos, songs and videos that aren’t human — or at least aren’t fully human. This is because everything from visual clips to news stories to blog articles can easily be created and shared now at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional, human-made marketing assets. Complicating matters further, the multi-billion-dollar AI industry is working to make these AI look-alikes more sophisticated all the time. They are working to make AI-generated material more difficult for the general public to identify. This new reality raises the stakes for business owners, chief marketing officers and anyone trying to get a promotional message out there. Trust is no longer something companies can automatically count on simply by maintaining a strong product and good reviews. If you want a potential customer to notice you in the first place, you increasingly need to demonstrate value quickly. Trying to prove value in a trustless AI space AI is increasing the importance of trust. Companies need to think more carefully about how they can build trust with their target audiences. Traditionally, trust has come from some pretty basic activities. If you could maintain consistent brand messaging and be honest and transparent, over time, consumers would trust your brand. Now that AI can replicate many common marketing approaches, marketers need to be more deliberate about how they use their marketing assets to help build trust. One way to do this is by investing in resources that are less flashy and more substantial. BioStem Technologies is one example. The regenerative-medicine company openly addresses the scientific complexities behind its work. In fact, it has built entire pages on its website devoted to explaining the science behind its business philosophy. Other resource pages tackle deep, complex questions surrounding its products. Providing detailed information instead of relying primarily on broad marketing language signals to potential clients that the company has invested in its solutions. You can also demonstrate value that builds trust by showing your commitment to adhere to industry regulations. Companies already need to follow regulations. This shouldn’t be a back-room-only element of a business. Instead, companies should repurpose the effort they put into following regulations into their marketing, too. They can build consumer-friendly, customer-facing resources that are framed as a business code of conduct. These can share details about investments made to uphold ethical behavior or integrity in how a business operates day to day. Again, this can signal to clients that a business is not focused solely on revenue growth. There are real integrity boundaries in place. Creating accessible resources that demonstrate this investment without heavy legal jargon can help reassure customers and build trust alongside other marketing materials. Investing in trust in the AI era As consumers sift through a growing quantity of AI content, business leaders should recognize how valuable consumer trust has become. Marketing leaders must lean on less “thin” content and look for ways to build strong, substantial resources. These should go beyond marketing slogans and aim to demonstrate data-backed science and clearly defined company philosophies. If marketers can integrate these integrity-based elements into their strategies, they may be better positioned to build trust with customers as AI contributes to greater skepticism around content. EXPERT OPINION BY JOEL COMM, AUTHOR AND SPEAKER @JOELCOMM

20 Incredibly Useful Things You Didn’t Know Google’s Gemini AI Could Do

When we hear about Google’s Gemini AI engine these days, it’s almost always the result of some wildly ambitious and futuristic-sounding advancement. You don’t have to look far to find examples. Gemini, like other generative AI systems, is increasingly being positioned as an agent that can handle complex tasks for you, as we heard about throughout Google’s I/O conference keynote last week. They span everything from shopping and purchasing tickets to planning travel and even meandering around the web on your behalf. And, of course, there’s vibe-coding your own custom apps without needing to know a lick of code. That’s all well and good, but for most of us, it isn’t exactly the sort of stuff we’re relying on in day-to-day life. In reality, it’s Gemini’s more mundane and less marketing-worthy wizardry that’s likely to be most useful in an ordinary moment. And those are exactly the types of tricks that are underemphasized and go unnoticed—often because they’re off the beaten path and buried. So today, we’re going to skip over the standard superlatives and focus instead on the wow-worthy little gems lurking within Gemini that you don’t usually hear about and might otherwise never encounter. Check out the 20 truly useful Gemini abilities below and see how Google’s AI can actually help you. (Note that, Gemini, like all generative AI systems, can at times be inconsistent and may relay inaccurate info. The use cases I’m highlighting here generally minimize that risk and focus on more confined data sets and task-oriented missions that play to the technology’s strengths—but, as always, proceed with caution and approach all results with a critical eye. AI may be powerful, but the human touch around it very much still matters. And that part’s on you to provide.) 1. Act as your on-demand memory expansion Sometimes, the simplest feats really are the most valuable of all. The next time you find yourself facing some manner of random fact you need to remember—the name of someone’s partner or kids, the gate or door code at a particular place, the license plate on your vehicle or rental vehicle, or anything else imaginable—just tell Gemini: “Remember that Susan’s husband is named Carl.” “Remember that the gate code at Josh’s apartment is 8934.” And so on. Then, whenever you next need that nugget of info, all you’ve got to do is ask. 2. Set a timely reminder in no time Speaking of remembering, don’t forget that Gemini can also perform the simple but supremely useful task of helping you recall specific things at specific times—thanks to its native integration with the oft-forgotten Google Tasks service. No matter what device or interface you’re using, ask Gemini to remind you about anything at any date and time you want. It’ll set the reminder in Tasks and then pop up an alert when the right moment arrives. Just make sure you’ve got the Google Tasks app installed and set up on your phone—be it Android or iPhone—so you see the notification. 3. Help you find your way back anywhere One final reminder-related resource that’s worth tucking away in your memory bank—a two-parter: First, if you’re using the Gemini mobile app on a phone, make yourself a mental note that you can always ask Gemini the only slightly embarrassing question of “Where am I?” So long as you’ve allowed the app the proper location-sensing permissions, it should then tell you roughly where you are—with a city name and, depending on your whereabouts, also potentially the name of a specific business or address. Then, if it’s a place you want to remember for the future, ask Gemini to “remember that location as”—followed by whatever description you want (e.g., “remember that location as the best place to park in Westwood”). You can then ask Gemini for that info anytime down the road, and it’ll zap you right back to the spot you need. 4. Dig up details from a video You probably know that Gemini can summarize most any text you show it. One of its even more mind-blowing powers is its ability to summarize and analyze any video you feed into its metaphorical maw. Now, when you’re watching something for pleasure, this probably isn’t a power you’ll need. But when you encounter a video that you need to parse for purely informational purposes and you don’t feel like sitting through 22 minutes to get a shred of knowledge that’d take you 10 seconds to read, you can upload the video file or simply copy and paste its URL directly into Gemini—then tell Gemini to “summarize this video” or “give me a short bulleted summary of the high points.” If you’ve got something super-specific you’re seeking, you can also just ask Gemini about it: “What does this person say about battery life?” “Does the interview reveal anything about when the product will be released?” “What sort of screwdriver does this say to use for installation?” You get the idea. 5. Create your own personal podcast On the flip side of that last item, if you’ve got a dense document that you need to digest and you think you’d do better hearing it as a conversation, try uploading the doc into Gemini and asking it to “Generate a 10-minute conversational podcast between two experts discussing the findings.” You can get as nuanced as you want with your request, and Gemini should spit back out a personalized play-ready creation that’s ready for your aural consumption. 6. Skim over your emails Provided you’ve got Google’s Personal Intelligence option available and active, you can always ask Gemini to summarize your most recent incoming emails—or even get more specific. For example, you can ask it what the last email from your lawyer said, what your roofer quoted as the estimate for repairs, or anything else that might make sense for your inbox. 7. Find you a killer deal If you aren’t in a rush to make a purchase, try telling Gemini to monitor the price of a specific item and alert you if a certain kind of sale ever comes along. You can get as broad or as specific as you want with it: “Monitor the price of the Pixel 10 Pro and notify me if it goes on sale.” “Monitor the price of the Pixel 10 Pro on Amazon and notify me if it goes on sale.” “Monitor the price of the Pixel 10 Pro on Amazon and notify me if it drops below $900.” Your future self will thank you. 8. Create custom product comparisons All deal-seeking aside, Gemini can work wonders when it comes to comparing products and serving up exactly the info you need. Ask it to compare the battery life on two phone models you’re considering or to compare a series of specific refrigerators you see in a store and then tell you how they’re actually different—or even just to give you a table-style comparison of the most important differences across certain products from a purely practical perspective. 9. Decipher doctor-style handwriting Got a note that you can’t for the life of you read? Snap a pic of it and ask Gemini to decipher the writing. You’d be surprised how often it manages to interpret even the messiest script. 10. Act as your error-interpreting technician No matter the device or appliance, whenever you next encounter an error code that looks like gibberish, ask Gemini to help figure out what it means and how you can fix it. The more specific you can get, the better—telling it the manufacturer and model name of whatever’s giving you the error, for instance, or just showing it a picture—but even if you don’t know all the details, there’s a decent chance it’ll be able to point you in the right direction. 11. Serve as your handyman helper While we’re on the subject of repairs, you can show Gemini a photo of a random screw, connector, or component of any sort and ask what it’s called and where you can find a replacement—or anything else you might need to know. Whether you’re a seasoned repair pro or a befuddled homeowner with next to no handy knowledge, the answer it coughs back may be invaluable. 12. Parse an impossible document With the hopefully obvious caveat that you should absolutely consult with a lawyer for anything truly important and before making any consequential decisions, Gemini can be surprisingly helpful when it comes to going through dreadful-seeming documents filled with endless clauses and clusters of legalese. If nothing else, it can help you wrap your head around the info within and any sticking points you might want to mull over. For instance, I fed in an agreement for an upcoming bouncy-house rental for a kiddie (and, if I’m being fully honest, also adult) party we’re having in our backyard. Gemini identified a couple of potentially problematic and not-at-all-necessary sections that were easy enough to ask the vendor to remove. Similarly, I used it to compare a few vexingly similar insurance policies and translate the differences into real-world terms. For those sorts of scenarios or even as a pre-lawyer-meeting preparation, Gemini’s ability to ingest mountains of complex material and then identify and explain important points can be indispensable. 13. Become your manual magician Now that Google’s NotebookLM system is essentially integrated into Gemini, the feat I suggested in my recent collection of practical NotebookLM revelations can also apply to Gemini itself. That involves creating confined notebooks to hold specific manuals and then asking natural-language questions anytime there’s knowledge you need. I did this with the digital version of a manual for a recently acquired vehicle and was blown away by how much easier it became to find info simply by asking what a particular button does. The same strategy can work equally well with manuals for appliances, electronics, you name it. 14. Perform fast web fixes for you Human designers and developers are undeniably important when it comes to creating high-quality web work, but for those teensy little tweaks and frustrating fixes where you used to have to pester a professional, Gemini can now step in to help you come up with a correction—and help your coding-minded colleagues focus their time on higher-level concerns. Try showing Gemini a screenshot of a website you’re responsible for and then explaining what’s wrong or what you want to have changed, while providing any pertinent details about your setup—that you’re using WordPress with a particular theme, for instance—and see what it suggests. It can sometimes take several rounds of back-and-forth iteration, but if you’ve got the patience (and a solid staging site for low-risk experimentation), it can get you to the finish line much more easily than you’d expect. 15. Cook up some spreadsheet sorcery Speaking of coding chops, one area where specialized knowledge has traditionally been required is in the ever-confounding arena of spreadsheets. And while there’s certainly still a place for spreadsheet expertise, you can make your life a heck of a lot easier by letting Gemini guide you toward crafting complicated formulas. Just fire it up, explain what you want to have happen, and ask it to give you the formula you need—for Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or whatever specific program you’re using. Or, on the flip side, paste a formula you’ve found somewhere into Gemini and ask it to tell you what, exactly, it accomplishes. 16. Create custom Chrome extensions While full-fledged vibe coding can help you dream up all sorts of insanely customized complete programs, you might not be ready to take the plunge just yet. But you can dabble with the same sort of superpower and feel a sense of its addictive effects by asking Gemini to create a custom browser extension on your behalf. Unlike native applications, web-centric extensions require no compiling or separate steps beyond just taking a series of plain text files Gemini gives you and then plopping them into your browser. (It’ll even walk you through the exact process of doing that.) And with all the time you probably spend working on the web, you can accomplish some pretty spectacular stuff by doing that—like changing the appearance of web apps to better suit your preferences or giving yourself pop-up panels with simple tools you’ve never quite been able to find. It’s also incredibly fun and empowering to play around with—without requiring you to venture into exceptionally geeky waters. 17. Become your prompt-mastering guide Oftentimes, the biggest challenge with Gemini—or any AI chatbot—is figuring out the right approach for wording a request and getting the bot to do what you want. In an amusingly meta-twist, Gemini is actually quite good at advising you on the best way to phrase prompts for itself. The next time you’re struggling to get the service to do your bidding properly, consider asking it what the best prompt would be for the purpose you have in mind. It seems silly, but it often works astonishingly well. 18. Wear the hat of an AI detection agent In a similarly entertaining sense, Gemini is impressively effective at detecting images that were generated by Gemini—or another similar AI tool. It’s not foolproof, but it’s right up there with the best options we’ve got at the moment. If you’re ever trying to decide if an image is genuine or AI-generated, ask Gemini and see what it says. 19. Answer in whatever way you like Maybe you’re someone who prefers reading things in conversational paragraphs—or in short, succinct lists. Or maybe you like having a detailed, in-depth answer with a “TL;DR”-style summary at the start. Whatever the case may be, if you ask, Gemini shall oblige. Tell the service exactly how you prefer to have your info provided as part of your next prompt—or, if you want it to always follow a specific formula, tell it to always answer in that way, and it’ll adjust your account-wide preferences. You can also check any saved settings along those lines and modify them directly on the Gemini instructions page. 20. Transform into an entirely new personality Why stop at formatting? Gemini has the ability to completely adjust its personality and act in any way you want—again, either for a specific prompt or in a more generalized and ongoing sense. You could ask it to become a tough but supportive coach, for instance, or a lifelong friend who’s always brutally honest and direct with you. Or you could request it to take on the role of specific jobs, like a veteran software engineer, a travel agent, or a legal adviser—or even some combination of different identities. The possibilities are practically endless, and you never know what might resonate and prove to be useful until you try. By JR Raphael

AI Was Supposed to Replace Sales Teams. Here’s What’s Happening Instead

“Distribution is the new moat” is the hot new phrase in business circles. VCs are saying it. Consultants are saying it. Entire frameworks have been built around it. They’re right that distribution matters. They’re wrong about what distribution actually means. The popular argument goes something like this: AI has collapsed the cost of building software, so the only remaining advantage is to build an audience and get to those customers before a competitor. That’s the starting point. But it’s not a moat. Distribution is more than building an audience Anthropic, the mega-AI company behind Claude, has millions of social media followers and created one of the most viral products in history. Yet as of this writing, the most in-demand role at the company is… sales. You read that right. Anthropic is currently hiring more salespeople than engineers and product managers. The company that predicted AI would replace salespeople is now hiring hundreds of them. Here’s what Anthropic knows better than anyone: Building a viral product and massive audience is not the same as having a distribution moat. Real distribution muscle comes from the capacity to build relationships at scale, expand your footprint within organizations, and turn one-time customers into repeat business. In other words, real distribution muscle is built in the sales organization. The distribution moat is created through expansion and retention So, distribution is about landing new business? Yes, but that’s just the beginning. The real distribution moat starts to form when you have a system designed to retain and expand existing customers. Wasabi, a Boston-based cloud storage company, is a case study I’ve taught at Harvard Business School for years (full disclosure: I’m also on the board). They scaled from a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue to hundreds of millions. Their strategy? Good ol’ fashioned channel sales. Working with resellers is not sexy or on trend, but it’s one of the most durable distribution channels around. Resellers have relationships with the end users you want. You are creating essentially two layers of lock-in: One with the resellers and one with the resellers’ customers. Today, over 14,000 channel partners work hard to sell and expand Wasabi’s install base. But making this channel a success was not easy. Wasabi made two key changes: First, they aligned sales incentives to compensate their own salespeople for selling through channel partners. They created a special version of their product to encourage channel salespeople to sell Wasabi cloud storage over competing cloud and on premises storage. Channels sales reps started pushing Wasabi over Amazon cloud storage or EMC on premises storage. Second, they changed how they measured success. Onboarding channel partners is one thing. But could they actually sell the product? Wasabi decided on a KPI of “Time to Second Sale,” to measure and incentivize their top partners. Anyone can make one sale. The second sale is proof of a relationship. And relationships, not features, are what competitors can’t copy. Relationships—not distribution—are the real moat In the age of AI, everyone can build. But not everyone can sell, expand, and retain. Founders who treat distribution as audience-building are playing a different, shallower game than founders who treat it as relationship-building at scale. The moat isn’t how many people have heard of you. It’s how many people can’t imagine operating without you, because someone at your company took the time to understand their business, earn their trust, and keep showing up. AI can help you reach people faster. It cannot replace the human judgment, persistence, and relationship-building that turn a first sale into a second, a second into an expansion, and an expansion into infrastructure. Before you hire your next engineer, ask yourself: do you have the sales and customer success capacity to actually turn your distribution into a moat? BY LOU SHIPLEY, SENIOR LECTURER, HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL