2025 Predictions, AI Market Penetration, & Agents

Use predictions as a planning exercise

Predictions are useful when they help me prepare, not when they let me perform certainty. Looking back at my previous predictions is part of the process because the pace of AI has made confident forecasts fragile. AI video and AI music moved from distant possibilities to usable creative tools faster than I expected. That is a reminder to build plans that can adapt.

The Bot Bros series had already run 65 episodes and reached 25,000 downloads before the break. That gave me enough history to see both the value of consistency and the need to pause. A sustainable publishing system has to survive real life, not just a burst of enthusiasm in January.

Expect adoption to happen unevenly

Large companies will keep making bets on AI, but market penetration will not look like one overnight switch. Some teams will build workflows around agents early. Others will wait for a packaged product with clear instructions. The gap creates an opportunity for marketers who can test new capabilities and translate them into a useful process for everyone else.

Agents are especially important because they move AI from answering questions toward completing tasks. That creates new leverage, but it also creates new oversight problems. An agent needs access, boundaries, a definition of done, and a human owner. The more work it can perform, the more carefully I need to monitor what it is doing.

Build a flexible career

My practical prediction is that AI fluency will become expected, while distinctly human strengths will become more valuable. Learn the tools, but also improve judgment, communication, creativity, and the ability to lead change. If a model can produce the first draft of a plan, the marketer who can choose the right problem and persuade a team to act will remain useful.

Treat each prediction as a trigger for an experiment. Try one AI workflow, document what happened, and revise your assumptions. That habit is more durable than guessing the exact date an agent will arrive. The future will keep moving, but prepared marketers can move with it.

are you ready for what's coming in 2025 when it comes to AI in marketing I can tell you I made predictions last year about what was going to happen and I was way off this technology is developing at a pace that's hard to Fathom last year AI video and AI music weren't even on the radar now they're here and we can produce quality albums and publish them onto Spotify and apple like who would have thought about that as a possibility at this time last year yet in this episode I want to talk about all the predictions that I got wrong some I got right and the predictions for this next year so stay tuned so that you can be prepared for what's to come and take your career into the future welcome back to the bot bro Series in the AI driven marketer I'm Dan Sanchez and I'm here with my bro Travis Sanchez in this series we turn the AI hype into help for marketers today is the first episode back we've almost gone a Whole 30 days without making an episode on this show because you know what sometimes you just got to take a break or went hard for a year okay 65 episodes and 25,000 downloads so something's working people are listening and it's fun to be back and it's always fun to start a new episode in the beginning of the year because you know it's it's that time of year and if you didn't do it in December then you definitely have to do it in January true and that is focusing on predictions predictions for the next year everybody wants to know what's GNA happen but first before we get into predictions for the next year on what's going on in AI marketing got to cover the predictions from last year which I did solo so I'm going to review some of my own and then nice and uh we we'll see we'll see how well I did but that was back when nobody was listening but I'm going to bring it back For Your Entertainment entertainment purposes here we'll see how well I did I made a number of predictions made a little short episode about it and I made prediction one I I figured that some big companies were going to make some big bets on AI buy a big software package invest a lot and uh that some of them were gonna like fall hard and then that there was going to be people in the crowd being like see AI marketing doesn't work because you know they overcommit and I'm like C how it was a safe bet because like how often have we seen big companies do something big and it doesn't work but you know I have not heard a single story happen so I'm gonna call this prediction failed because I haven't seen a big case study where that some somebody went all in and uh and it didn't work out for them there were some companies that did some you can't call it Allin but like you know some companies invested in chat GPT licenses across the board right and for the most part everybody's liking that I'm sure there's some people that bought co-pilot for everybody you know Microsoft co-pilot and they don't leverage it at all but it's not that big of a hit didn't really hurt so I think that's probably what's happening more you know who did fail though it ended up being the AI companies all the hype every tech company went all in on AI and not all of them made it in fact you know like some of the wearable companies man failed hard right and that doesn't really matter so much for business and marketing but like they're just like the wearables like the rabbit and the whatever the heck the other ones were you can't even remember there was a number of AI consumer companies that just went under immediately because they produce bad stuff but the same thing happened in in the marketing in Tool World because they were like oh this is AI tool but everybody did it and therefore nobody bought because it was just flooded with every everybody was doing the same thing so that prediction failed prediction number two was that small companies ended up automating their whole business with AI or some small companies did I'm going to say kind of but not really like small companies are definitely crushing with AI but I don't haven't heard of any case studies any of any small businesses like doing like having a standout year because of AI I haven't I haven't heard anything it's more of like hey yeah they got a lot more productive and you know smaller teams did better work but it's I thought we'd see that this year no maybe next year uh prediction three is AI companies will build deeper Integrations are actually useful because in the year 2023 they were all like just the the layo AI tools which is like summarize make it sound friendly like everybody did that and nobody was like really using that maybe a little bit but it was just wasn't that helpful and of course that was a safe bet that one actually did happen because HubSpot Android Apple kind of maybe not yet maybe it's more for next year for Apple but like a big bunch of big Temp Tech companies started rolling out AI features that were really actually helpful and you could build more into your your workflows right uh prediction four is people will start getting confused about what's Ai and what's human um like not I feel like every time I see something AI most of the comments underneath it are like this is AI this is AI this is AI whether it was an image or a comment so I feel like most people know it's AI this this last year so I'm gonna call this prediction wrong unless do you see a lot of people falling for AI content so it was something that I was going to bring up especially in the marketing world is what age demographic is actually falling for AI more because I've heard from a friend of mine that when his kids who are older you know 16 18 20 22 when they get an email from school or from some marketing company they're like AI it was written by Ai and I'm like really they can spot the written emails they're like he's like absolutely but then there are some people depending on what age you are you fall for it much heavier whether it's written or video and photos like so yes I've seen it depends on what demographic you are in and what from what generation you are if you're the old are you saying like the older deos are getting fooled by AI more often I'm saying the older you are the more likely you are to be fooled by AI this is all for my own personal survey looking on Facebook and Instagram posts of like who is commenting wow I've never seen giraffes scale a cliff that large I'm like oh my gosh it's missing two legs clearly that's not a real giraffe you know it's just well of all the marketers that I interact with on LinkedIn and I interact a lot with like marketers and tech companies so there're are a little bit more on the Leading Edge like we're all aware of when someone comments and it's Ai and I I had a guy comment on my post recently he's like oh yeah and I didn't write this this was Ai and I was like AI never says that I'm like I know it's you bro but because right now it's just it's just obvious because they just don't write in a way that's natural and and it's usually some generic fluff statement that just you're like what okay you showing up every time writing a generic fluff piece AI oh and there's always wait there's there's too many emojis and they're the wrong emojis right you know what I'm saying like AI chat gbt particular is like wrong emojis way too many so I'm going to call this one mostly at least in the marketing Community I'm gonna say it's predict prediction didn't come true that might change this year we'll see and I predicted that we would have I knew at the end of next last year I was like you know there's probably going to be some new AI things a couple actually that I think are just no one predicted that it was going to be here and it's it's it's going to be a normal thing a couple of them and I'm going to call this one right because I I don't think anybody really predicted that AI video was going to be where it was at towards the end of the year to the point where I'm now using Runway ml like somewhat regularly like every other week maybe now um or Sora or something like it and AI music like I I didn't even think about it last year wasn't even on the radar and then bam like sun's out there and then the other one whatever it's called I can't even remember now I used to use it but there's AI music stuff out there and it's like if you would have told me at the end of last year like hey Dan you're going to be paying for a monthly software that produces AI music for your marketing materials and you're G to put out a whole album that you actually like listening to and it's going to be on Apple and Spotify you're I would have been like whoa what the heck yeah so I'm gonna call that prediction a win but that's enough of last year let's talk about what's gonna happen this year I got three predictions you got any predictions you want to go first I would say I think the first thing that's going to be huge is like personalized experiences you know how we've done so much experience we've done so much um questioning of chat gbt of our own persona it's like hey if I had core values what would they be what are the things I'm focusing on right now what are the difficulties and weaknesses you see in my life I think companies and marketers will be able to utilize chaty BT uh or not even Chach BT just AI in general to really hone in on their customers or their leads and know so much information about them where it's it's going to give you a leg up versus you just taking personalized notes has a dog here's their birthday here's their anniversary here's their last purchase here's what they've purchased here's the price point here's how much they make all that stuff I think AI is going to be a super um I don't helpful like type a person on the team when it comes to that custom customization for leads or for customers man I hope you're right but I don't think marketers are ready for it no no I don't I think it's I think it's too I think it's too advanced for most marketers and I'm I like a bunch of people are listening to this and like I hope I hope the one who's nodding either mad at me for saying that or is nodding their head being like yeah like like be the person that makes the customized experiences because I think we all want it I think we all need it I think it'll make our marketing way better if you want an example I did one thing this year that I think is a good representation of what hyper-personalized experiences can be go to take my AI course at Aid driven marketer.com course anybody can do this I'm essentially just taking the transcript there's five videos and five emails but I essentially just take the transcript of the video and kind of engineer it is overstatement but I just essentially prompted in the marketing automation system that goes to chat TPT and be like hey here's the transcript for the course and three pieces of information about the student send me customize this lesson based on what you know about the student now it sends it back it injects that one to one piece of content into their email with the course video that's hyper personalized anybody can do it it's not super fancy yeah it takes some work to build it but dang it's it hits harder than a normal course 100% because it's customized for them and I think a lot of people could be doing that I was about to do it for uh a client that I had who had was in the health and health and wellness space I ended up having to pass that project pass that project on but we were going to go back through their course catalog and just start building personalized experiences via email really simple just get it customized fill out this form and go through the personalized Journey on this I wasn't even going to use the word AI because for their demo AI was going to be a negative right you know AI was going to be like oh I don't trust it and I'm like and I told them I was like don't even call it AI just call it a personalized Journey that's all it is and they will love it they will love it you don't have to tell them it's AI under the hood just deliver the content personalize for them and uh everybody loves personalization that's why we buy monogrammed stuff it's true that's really smart it's really smart but I man I hope I'm wrong I think because I think it's a really good thing I think because content marketing is such a big part of marketing if you could start enhancing it with Hyper personalization I'm like yes let's do it wow one of my predictions this is the prediction that everybody's making but I think everybody's right so it's worth predicting I'm also predicting this later than almost everybody else on their predictions so I've heard everybody else's predictions but I'm like this is this is a thing this year is AI agents so I got to get that one out of the way because that one's like obviously like everyone's already talking about it but I think here's a nuanced answer to like this prediction I don't think we're going to get walk away from 2025 and be like whoa like yeah yeah agents can handle so much freaking stuff right I can't believe I can't I can't find enough for them to do they're so productive no right they're gonna it's G to mostly just be intelligent automation you're gonna have to craft what they're doing and really engineer these things in order to work they'll get better but the the I think the lines will start blurring between intelligent Automation and what I think of as agents because when I think of Agents I don't think of delegating to an entry-level person I think of delegating to like a pretty good manager or a director right that's kind of what I have in my mind with agents what about you I think because a director level person you could hand an ambiguous goal and be like make it happen I don't want to care I don't care about the details here's the parameters go make it go make it a thing and then a director will go off and autonomously go and get it done but that's hard directors are directors because they have the experience to fill in the blanks if need be and to set a assignments and not be told what those assignments need to be where I don't think AI agents are at that point and honestly if AI agents get to the point where they have that fluidity to start making those kind of decisions to have the experience to know what will be suitable but not too risky and or or it's risky enough that starts getting into scary control territory where people I think people will be terrified of how much AI is processing and is completing so I don't think 2025 will be the year maybe 2026 I I it just takes the hard there's three things things that are slowing that down one it just costs a lot all the building blocks are there to do it now because these new reasoning models like we have the capability but like the 03 model the re the big reasoning model from chat GPD came out and it's ability to like reasons through the roof like it's doing math that only like Fields medalists can do in two days you're like like dang it's beyond my comprehension what it can what it compute now but it costs like a$ thousand dollar or more to run it so I'm like yeah obviously because cost to compute has to come down yeah to make it a thing and then it has to be like developers have to go and bake it into their products to make it useful with with access to the right things but also not too much access so they don't go off the rails and cause liabilities for people like for companies like Google so it's kind of be like this we're building it out we're slowly increasing the scope by the time we get to the end of the year the scope will have increased enough to where we can say like okay this is really cool now because I can assign it a blog post and it's smart enough to go and do the research write the post fact check it embed some media into it and then get the draft ready in WordPress for me oo that's cool like I'm like I you could almost engineer that to do it now but not very well you would have to engineer the crap out of it to do that now but it it it would be okay but agents they'll be able to do this that kind of a workflow much better next year wow um so that's that's one of my predictions we'll we'll kind of see the beginnings to agents by by the end of the year we don't have them now everything they call agents Now isn't an agent in my I would say a prediction for 2025 is I think 2025 will still be a lull for the masses people will start people more and more will start using AI as a Google tool to Google information and potentially continue to change text messages I think that group of people is just going to increase huge in 2025 which will then create more conversation more hype and more reason for tech companies to continue to drive ahead but I don't think people are going to be utiliz utilizing even if they do come out with agents I mean 0.00001% of people will be utilizing agents Someone Like You Dan would do it just because you're you love to Tinker and get into the the depths of what it's capable of doing but even someone like me I love more of the simple what's the fastest way that I can utilize AI to help me right now not plan out future plan figure it out build it out so that's a huge prediction for me is that you're just going to have a huge increase of people using it as Google the tinkerers will continue to build and utilize it in a massive way so people should really keep their ear to the ground to see what's capable now but we're in the early ear we're still in the early early stages of AI crazy people don't even understand how early we are have you you've heard of the the uh the crossing the chasm metaphor with like the adoption bell curve I think it's it's called early adopters and then yeah late adopters lers all that kind of stuff I think for marketers particularly because this this generative AI has been like one of the most useful tools for marketing marketers hence marketers have been like one of the earliest to adopt this tool because it's so useful because we're coming up with content and trying to do it cheaply for good Roi right like yeah um so I think it actually crosses the chasm for the group of marketers in general not even just Tech marketers but marketers in 2025 by the end of the year it just it hops the chasm but hasn't gone to the top of the bell curve it's like that the beginning of the early majority by the end of next year for marketers as in like more than 50% marketers are using I'm going to Define it as using like an AI tool whether it's chat GPT or just AI regularly in their CRM on a daily basis in a meaningful way that's how I'm defining like adoption but it's almost impossible to measure it I guess I don't know I'll have to get social media examiner to do a survey we'll probably do a survey again and then we'll find out but it's still super early and marketers are on the Leading Edge but I think you're right most the general consumers of the world won't be using AI they will probably like they'll be using it in Siri it's going to be baked into Siri now more but other than that not so much uh here's my here's my final prediction and I pride myself on seeing video content and knowing if it's grade A Grade B grade C and so on I have been waiting for AI to get to the point where I can upload some videos give it a a little bit of a description and it create an edited video whether it's a short video 30 seconds 90 seconds that I'm like that is what I'm talking about that has yet to happen and I'm hoping by the end of 2025 we will be closer to the bgrade edit we're kind of like C+ if you get it just right but the AI edits for your videos and I'm not even talking about generative AI creation I'm just talking about pre-existing editing it puts some music Some Cuts grabs the interesting part of the clips we're not there yet and I'm so pumped for that moment when the editing can be decent maybe not for long form because that that takes a real producer it I mean and that's where the you know the reasoning of AI will do a really good job when they start understanding the emotional Parts the emotional entertainment of long form videos but I think in shortterm trailers promotional that's a good prediction I think you're right I think it's right on the edge because like it's all right there because right now the way it edits just kind of cuts out AZ and obvious foer words and stuff looks jumpty it doesn't really edit for Content at all and I'm like but the tech is there it can even 40 can like but they don't they haven't applied it yet yeah I think I wonder cap cut might do it I feel like cap Cut's really leading the way in AI video right I did a you know how an adob and I I tried this in a Premiere recently you can you can slow down footage artificially right you shoot it in 24 frames a second and you you want to make it I don't know 60 frames a second or something slow it down I did it in Premiere and it was choppy even at just double I did it in cap cut and it was smooth wow but it led me go farther I did it to 240 frames a second wow and it was freaking smooth as butter I was like what the heck if like you it that means it had to inject like four four Clips within every within every real frame there had to be four individual frames to trans to make that transition and it was smooth which is they had to have used AI to create all the in between Clips because it looked really good I don't know how they made it that smoo I think I think the only way that some like cap cut or another you know even Adobe they're going to be able to do this is if they create something for video but for like notebook LM where you can put information in or videos but it only grabs necessarily the information but they do it for video editing hey don't worry about the content of what's in this video but I want you to edit my video like upload 10 Mr Beast videos and say I want my video edited just like this or do a collab with two people and say Hey I want a mixture of Mr Beast and Casey neistat and I want my video to kind of look like both of these and then it can process and go yeah let me provide you an edit that looks like this that that's what we need yeah and then you have the ability to go back and tweak it uhhuh that'd be next level but I think you're right I think by the end of next year we could see a tool that does autoedits and it's actually like thinking about it in a way that's smart will it be like really will they be Bangers by the end H I don't know about that but it'll be it'll start getting there I think it's safe to say it'll start getting there we'll see if making bangers but at the same time like like Google notebook LM put out the podcast feature so cool and I'd say those are so freaking good that I'm like like it left me speechless the first time I heard a Google notebook LM podcast yeah because the timing was so good and there was consistently good like I've heard some where it messes up it injects some wrong information or it just stutters weird or something but it's pretty rare like it's usually pretty spot on so could be you never know my last prediction is that we're finally going to see chat gbt jat gbt 5 I'm calling I'm like this is the year we finally get chat TPT 5 could be this month you don't we don't know yeah but for some reason I think there's something holding them back from getting it and no one's released this model yet because I think there's something wrong with it or it's hard or maybe it just goes off the rails and they can't get it or maybe it's just harder they're like not getting quite the quality they're hoping from it I don't know there's lots of speculation around this but when it comes it'll be the next big breakthrough and we'll power everything we do but right now I'm pretty pretty dang freaking happy with 40 4 is like remarkably better than it was a year ago even if they just keep making little improvements to that I'm like I'm be happy as a clam cuz honestly there isn't much that foro can't do right I don't really get frustrated with foro often of like H it's it doesn't get it right it gets it most of the time so I'm like okay but that's a prediction chd5 I like it moving on to the poll results I I I do a poll sometimes I do multiple polls because sometimes that's the only way to get reach on LinkedIn right now engagement bait uh but I ask people how often do you use AI for work the results are in and we had 181 votes and we are at daily use 74% wow it's pretty good but of course again I'm in the marketing Tech Community so I think it's in this particular Community it's definitely cross the casm people are using it pretty regularly now right uh 19% weekly 1% monthly 6% less than monthly or none so it's kind of interesting so you you you either figure it out and are using it regularly right or you you just haven't used it yet which is interesting for the six the 1% this bottom s% I'm like I wonder what's keeping them from doing it I should go back to the poll and just start dming all the people who voted one one uh the monthly or than monthly or none and be like I think I bet most about a bunch of these people are like have a um like a contention with AI I'm getting a lot of people in the comment showing up being like just essentially arguing with me about Ai and it's how good it is or how ethical it is or that we're losing Humanity on it that's pretty I get hecklers pretty regularly on my AI post now and it's usually the same three four or five people so you saying that I have have some friends that are blue collar workers and they do not like AI they don't like the thought of it they don't probably because they don't understand it and they're not they're not um creating they their systems are just more physical so obviously they use technology to advance their businesses to advance their own personal life but they're not utilizing it and they are I don't know if they're afraid or if they just I I think it's a matter of not understanding and what you don't understand you tend to push away so I'm curious with the group and demographic that you have on that poll like how many people are you have a such a high percentage of 74 percenters I don't think you have a lot of bluecollar workers following you uh who aren't into marketing or trying to get their own leads or running their own business so it would be fun to do a poll like that for do a poll about why don't you use AI a larger demographic a larger demographic following you know and see what what well let's let's do a poll for the next episode and we'll I'll post it on LinkedIn but we'll also do one on your Facebook page my Facebook page to kind of capture a different demo where there's not a lot of marketers I I don't know can Facebook do polls great question chat gbt ask chat I'll ask right now you should have asked it on audio yes Facebook allows you to create polls though the specific features and options can vary depending on the platform but I just asked you we specifi the platform Jeff GPT ran ran into ground this time is go to the group where you want to post a poll I want to do it in a group stories Facebook pages yeah you probably I'm sure you can whether through stories we'll find out next week we'll revisit this question of why don't people use Ai and I'll specifically word this question in such a way like why don't you or people who you know who are anti- AI like not use it like what's the most common reasons you're getting and then I'll try to give the most common ones good so we'll and F wrapping up this this podcast I usually try to find like what's a viral post on AI and let's let's break it down so I'll find a v a viral post on AI that I think is interesting from Johnny Miller and he posted my fave chat GPT prompt so far is this he said based on all of our interactions so it's one of these prompts based on all of our interactions what is the question that I should be asking but I'm not have you tried this prompt no unfortunately I lost all of my data on my you got that's right you got kic kicked out of your account I used my work email which was a mistake and I could not recover it so I am starting over from scratch today my my subscription got cancelled on January 10th and uh I'm starting over today luckily I I had access for a minute and I saved all of the memories of what it has in a long PDF so I'm just going to upload that and say hey put this all in your memory so hopefully I can yeah regain some of the knowledge B that's good U because man it takes a while to build that up oh just go back to this the the super prompt that I talked about a few months ago right y like hey based on all of our interactions or all the things you've learned about me if anything what ask me questions B uh to get to know me to help me with my long-term goals not short-term things but you know I crafted it specifically so I'll have to link back to that episode in the show notes but I did craft this like super prompt to help chat GPT get to know y not just what you want now but what you want long term and who you are and how you process so that it knows all the things and then can act accordingly it also is really helpful for it to know all those things if you're asking it questions like based on all of our interactions what what's the question I did run this prompt and it was okay usually these questions are actually really insightful because AI will look at all the interactions and memories it has of you and be like oh here's what I found share are you going to share what the question it said you should be asking yeah actually let me pull it up just going to leave the hangers just gatekeep the answer I've literally been up early so I already have like seven interactions I've had with chat chii just this morning like where is it he said that's a fantastic prompt based on our interaction so far here's what I believe you should be asking what foundational mindset or habit should I develop now to ensure long-term success of my vision for AI marketing education and Consulting it's actually a great question so that question was good and then I was like that's a great question any ideas on what what that should be the question was great it's answered to this question yeah it's like mindset Embrace iterative Mastery I was like essentially ask yourself daily what is the one small experimental refinement I can make today that moves me closer to my vision and then kind of gave me like a general guide that I was like I was at first I was not in my head saying like yeah and then I was like this is the most general advice ever and I told it so and then it gave me back something that was a little bit more specific like oh you should develop more Frameworks for helping marketers okay but that's still not the most specific thing so it was a a really good question but it didn't it didn't have a really good answer so maybe I just need to throw the question into 01 or something and see if it can do better a good idea but still try it out let me know what if you try test out this prompt we'd love to hear from you uh you can find me at linkedin.com ndigital marketing Dan I love connecting with people from the podcast Travis are you on LinkedIn yet yeah I signed up but since I was living in Israel and moved back it's all like out of sync and it's not verifying me it's complicated I'm working on it relationship status it's complicated yeah literally it is complicated they're like we can't verify you but goodbye and it like kicks me off I'm like okay okay I'll figure it out so thanks for joining us for another episode of the AI driven marketer remember like I said earlier there's that free course you got to go check it out and I've heard from multiple people that it is I labeled it like a foundations course and a lot of people have told me like hey I thought I was pretty good at Ai and then I took your course and it took me up a level so if you're already it's probably not a 101 course like I thought it's actually maybe a 202 or a 303 if you want to level up your AI game in a substantial way go find it it's at Aiden marketer.com