The Marketer’s Guide to the 2026 AI Landscape

By Dan Sanchez · Episode published May 8, 2026

AI is moving fast enough that an annual “state of AI” update does not really work anymore. In just the first few months of 2026, the landscape has shifted again. OpenAI is still the name everybody knows. Anthropic has

AI is moving fast enough that an annual “state of AI” update does not really work anymore.

In just the first few months of 2026, the landscape has shifted again. OpenAI is still the name everybody knows. Anthropic has become the serious pro-user challenger. Google has been quiet enough that I/O matters more than usual. Grok keeps improving even though most marketers ignore it. Meta is spending like crazy and still feels strangely absent. Amazon is winning in the background with infrastructure. Apple, after looking behind for years, may be sitting on one of the most important advantages in the whole race.

For marketers, the question is not “which AI company is winning?” in some abstract tech-industry sense.

The better question is this: which AI shifts are going to change the way marketing work gets done?

OpenAI Still Owns The Public Mindshare

If you ask normal people whether they use AI, most of them still mean ChatGPT.

That matters. Brand recognition is distribution. OpenAI still has the consumer mindshare, the public shorthand, and the default position in most people’s heads.

But the last few months have exposed a real challenge. Anthropic has pulled a lot of attention from pro users, developers, power users, and API-heavy teams. Claude Code in particular created pressure that OpenAI clearly felt.

That pressure is one reason Codex matters so much right now.

The important marketer takeaway is not that Codex writes code. The important part is that Codex works inside a project. It can read files, inspect context, make changes, leave notes, and run a workflow in a way that a normal chatbot cannot.

That is the shift marketers should pay attention to.

Anthropic Became The Serious Pro-User Challenger

Anthropic’s rise has been wild. Recent reporting puts the company at roughly $30 billion in annualized revenue run-rate, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025.

That does not mean Anthropic is valued at $30 billion. It means its current revenue pace, annualized, has jumped dramatically.

The reason marketers should care is simple: Anthropic is winning attention among the people who use AI heavily. Claude has a reputation for better writing nuance, deeper reasoning, and stronger developer workflows through Claude Code.

Even if you personally prefer ChatGPT or Codex, Anthropic’s growth is a signal. The market is moving from “which chatbot is easiest?” to “which AI system helps serious users do serious work?”

Google Has Something To Prove At I/O

Google had strong momentum in 2025, especially with Gemini, AI video, and image tools. But in early 2026, it has felt quieter.

That makes Google I/O 2026 especially important. The event is scheduled for May 19-20, and marketers should watch for what Google does across Gemini, search, Android, agents, and developer workflows.

The missing piece right now is Google’s equivalent to the Codex or Claude Code moment. Google has plenty of AI products and infrastructure, but marketers need to see how those pieces turn into everyday workflow advantages.

If Google connects Gemini, search, Android, Workspace, and developer tools into a more coherent AI work layer, it becomes very hard to ignore.

Grok Keeps Shipping, Even If Marketers Ignore It

Grok is in a weird place.

Every time I check it, there seems to be more inside the product. It keeps improving. It keeps adding features. It keeps feeling more capable.

And yet most marketers do not talk about it.

That does not mean it is irrelevant. Elon Musk’s companies have infrastructure advantages that are easy to underestimate. Between xAI, X, Tesla, and SpaceX, there are long-term strategic possibilities that are bigger than the chatbot experience most people see today.

For marketers, the practical takeaway is this: do not build your workflow around Grok yet, but do not write it off forever.

Meta Is Still Struggling To Matter In AI

Meta has spent aggressively on AI talent and has made serious moves, but it still does not feel central to the AI conversation for marketers.

The Manus situation added more uncertainty. Meta’s reported acquisition of the agentic AI startup was blocked by Chinese regulators, creating a messy strategic setback.

Meta may still matter through ads, social distribution, open models, and AI features inside its platforms. But right now, it does not feel like the company defining the next marketing workflow.

That is a strange position for one of the largest advertising companies in the world.

Amazon Is Winning Where Marketers Do Not Look

Amazon is not usually the company marketers talk about when they talk about AI tools.

But Amazon is winning in infrastructure.

AWS, chips, data centers, and cloud compute matter because AI runs on infrastructure. Even if marketers never use Amazon’s consumer-facing AI products, the company can still win by powering the systems everybody else depends on.

Amazon’s AI story is less exciting at the user-interface level and more important at the business-model level.

Apple May Be Better Positioned Than People Think

Apple has looked like the black sheep of the AI race for a while.

But that may be changing.

The current AI subscription model is expensive to support. Free users are not free to serve. Paid users often use more compute than their subscription covers. At some point, more AI work will need to happen locally, on the devices people already own.

That is where Apple gets interesting.

Apple controls the hardware, operating system, chips, and user experience across phones and computers. If on-device AI becomes more important, Apple may be positioned better than the companies that looked louder early on.

The marketer takeaway is not “Apple won.” It is “watch the device layer.”

ChatGPT Ads Are A Real Watch Item

OpenAI has now announced a beta self-serve Ads Manager for ChatGPT ads, including CPC bidding and measurement tools.

As a consumer, that sounds unpleasant.

As a marketer, it is absolutely worth watching.

If ChatGPT becomes a discovery surface, advice surface, shopping surface, or decision-support surface, advertising inside that environment could become a meaningful new paid-media channel. It will also raise trust and user-experience questions, which marketers should take seriously.

But the strategic point is clear: AI answers are becoming media inventory.

The Real Shift Is From Chatbots To Work Agents

The most important shift for marketers is not that one model writes slightly better than another.

It is that AI is moving from chat into work.

ChatGPT and Claude are useful. But tools like Codex and Claude Code show what happens when AI can operate inside a workspace. It can read existing files, search for context, update assets, make a plan, test the work, and leave breadcrumbs for next time.

That changes what is possible in marketing.

You can give an AI your podcast transcripts, LinkedIn posts, book chapters, website content, and WordPress access, then ask it to map an SEO or AEO strategy from your actual body of work. You can ask it to find gaps, draft posts, create images, format them, and prep them for publishing.

That is not just prompting.

That is operating.

Be Careful With Multi-Agent Hype

Agents are real. Multi-agent organizations are still early.

There is a lot of hype around agent swarms, agents managing agents, and AI organizations. Some of that is directionally interesting. Some of it is nonsense.

Most marketers should not be trying to build an AI company full of self-managing agents yet. We barely have reliable agents that can execute multi-step work without close direction.

The practical path is simpler:

Give the agent a clear workspace.
Give it good context.
Give it a specific outcome.
Review the work.
Update the process as you learn.

That is where the value is right now.

Your AI Needs Values Before It Gets Autonomy

If agents eventually make more decisions, they will need decision criteria.

That is not as weird as it sounds. Good organizations already work this way. Mission and values help people make decisions without asking for permission every time.

AI agents will need a version of that too.

Call it a values file. Call it a soul file if you want to make it memorable. The point is the same: if you want an AI system to make judgment calls, you need to tell it what good judgment looks like.

That may become one of the most important skills in agentic marketing.

What Marketers Should Do Now

Do not try to master every AI company.

Pay attention to the shifts that change your work:

OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting for serious workflow users.
Google could change the search and productivity layer again.
ChatGPT ads may create a new paid-media surface.
Apple may matter more as AI moves onto devices.
Infrastructure companies like Amazon shape what is economically possible.
Codex-style tools are turning AI from answer machine into work partner.

The 2026 AI landscape is not just a model race anymore.

It is a workflow race.

Machine-generated transcript. Minor transcription errors may remain.

Bro, I gotta say, a lot's changed in the AI landscape.

We could've never predicted how crazy it was gonna be over the first quarter, I don't know,

four months of this year.

And so much has changed, and I've missed a couple of different Fridays now.

And people have noticed, I've talked to them.

So I think it's time to do an update.

I think it's time to do an update of the state of AI for marketers, right?

Because there's lots of other people doing states of things.

And usually you do a state of things at the end of the year, maybe mid-year, but I'm like,

I don't know, there's so many things that have happened over the last four months.

I think everything's changing.

The way I'm using AI has changed more in the last few weeks than it changed over the

last year.

So I think it's time to do a rewind and talk about where all the major AI companies

are at to kind of give marketers an idea.

So welcome back to the AI Driven Marketer, I'm Dan Sanchez.

I'm joined by my brother, Travis Sanchez.

Good morning as always.

And of course, this is the Bop Bros segment where us brothers break down the hype into

helpful news for you marketers because there's so much freaking going on and so much of it's

just nonsense.

So today we're going to talk about what you need to know and get you caught up in case

you miss some important things going on because there's all these big AI companies

and there's about all the big tech companies are involved now.

So we're going to give a review starting with open AI.

Still the front runner, but has, I think has been challenged more as the leader more

over the last four months than it's ever been challenged by Google in 2025, which is

incredible to say because 2025, Google was looking really strong, but open AI clearly

still had the lead.

Now, Anthropics actually taken the lead in a few metrics, not all the metrics, but in

a few, I'd say Anthropics actually kind of winning now.

Do you know where Anthropic would be running versus open AI?

Where it would be running in terms of its size and growth, comparatively.

Growth, but it actually overtook open AI and its revenue or its annual, what they

call ARR, annual reoccurring revenue.

Anthropics stole a bunch of paid members, all the people paying for plus.

A lot of them move from chat GPT to Claude.

Really?

And API usage has a lot of people using the API changed a lot of their API

use to Claude and Claude's not cheap.

So they're probably getting a better multiple off it.

That's also expensive to run.

I don't know.

It's, it depends on how many tokens and stuff you're using on the API side.

It's pretty expensive too.

Like on the, if you're just like, for example, I use, I was using the

Claude's free app because it was pretty generous.

Like you could use a lot of Claude for free and just like you could for

chat GPT, also a generous free app.

Um, and a couple of weeks ago, I like literally just prompted Claude with like

one question, it gave me an answer and then said, I was out of my free usage.

Whoa.

I was like, after one prompt Claude, my gosh, I didn't even give you like a

research task or like a ton of context with a PDF or something.

I just ask you a question.

So they're growing so big, so fast.

And I think they, they, we'll talk about that when we talk about

anthropic, but it's becoming a problem for them.

But open AI of course, has noticed some of the land grab and has been fighting,

fighting, doubling down over the last couple of months.

Hence they closed down Sora.

They're like, we got to focus.

Cause like Claude's starting to steal fricking market share.

I still think open AI and chat GPT still has the public, you know, like

if you ask people, if they use AI, it's probably going to be chat GPT.

Still, there's still like the winner when it comes to like the most

consumers, the most people using it, the most brand recognition, everybody

knows chat GPT, less people know Claude, even though I think in marketing land,

like a lot of people are pretty familiar with Claude now, but they're pushing

hard to catch up specifically with Claude code.

That's really been the big deal.

They've been crushing it with Claude code.

That's why I'm, and they've been, and so open AI has been freaking

sprinting with codecs and I've noticed cause they're shipping updates.

I feel like I have to push the update app button almost every time

I use codecs, which is multiple times a day.

Wow.

They're launching little tiny things or big things.

Sometimes every week for codecs, I'm having to refresh that app.

There's like a little, Hey, time to refresh this app.

Cause there's a new update.

Yeah.

Look at that.

We saw multiple times a day.

I'm like, dude, open AI is fricking hustling to get on that and it's working.

So I'm still, I'm off.

I'm a codex user now.

I'm like chat GPT.

I'm like, why, why do I have to use chat GPT?

Just give me codex so much better.

So that's where open AI is at.

I think I'll come back to this, but I think, I think codec specifically for a

bunch of different reasons is actually a better marketing tool than cloud

code or Claude and I'll explain that in a minute and thropic and thropic.

So they grew so much over the last four months.

They went from 9 billion in ARR to 30 billion.

Wow.

Okay.

I'm sure their servers are melting at the, at the amount of demand

that's hitting their servers now.

Did you know, you know who they're renting servers from now,

other than Google is a really.

Elon built this huge, like freaking new, like, cause he built like a

freaking mothership in Tennessee.

I think it was in Memphis for grok and trained a big model and got it out

faster last year than anybody had ever expected, but he's building.

Of course, immediately he went and started building Colossus, like this

other bigger AI data center and bought all the freaking chips because, you

know, he had pre-orders already with Nvidia ahead of time for Tesla.

So he just started rerouting all his orders, all his power to getting

more of it to build Colossus.

And so I think a lot of people aren't using grok.

So he's got like all this extra compute power, anthropics, like, hey,

we'll, we'll pay a premium for that.

Elon is like, go ahead.

Wow.

Yeah, I don't think anyone's using grok anymore.

So anthropics crushing it right now, a lot of attention.

Of course, marketers like, I heard somebody else tell me yesterday

that they prefer Claude because they're like open AI is trying to win

people over by being the most liked.

Hence the, the sycophancy, the, oh, I'm always going to

agree with you kind of mode.

And they're like, the reason why he said he liked Claude is because

Claude's more likely to give you the truth.

Does it sound robotic like Gemini?

No, I'd say because Claude's more known for its nuance in writing

that it's actually better.

But I've, you know, I'm sure it is all my writing friends swear by Claude.

I guess I'm not that good of a writer.

Cause I'm usually pretty happy with what I get from chat GPT.

Like if I want chat GPT to write a sensitive email for me, I give it

the context, it gives me something back that I'm like, this is, this is great.

I'm rarely disappointed with chat.

So I'm like, I don't, or, or chat now through codex.

I'm like, I'm really disappointed with it.

So I'm like, I don't, I don't, I don't know what's so much better about it.

But I'm like, I use that and I use it side by side sometimes.

And I'm like, eh, that's where I'm at.

But a lot of people love it.

Google, Google's been quiet coming out ahead 25 now, maybe not ahead,

but like catching up to chat.

But yeah, they had some huge moments.

Been super quiet.

I think they had an update to nano banana.

They've launched some other more obscure things that it's kind of like, eh,

you like look at it, you're like, people are like, Oh, this is game changing.

And then no one talks about it after the day comes out because it's

actually not game changing and open.

And I just got faster.

So we're all waiting until May 19th through 20th for their IO dev

conference, big deal where they launched stuff and we'll see if

they launch anything cool.

Last year they launched the video with, uh, speaking in it and audio.

That was a big deal that made headlines last year.

So we'll see if they got anything.

Now, the one thing that they have that's missing is they're

equivalent to Claude code or codex.

They don't have that yet.

So I imagine they're going to put one out for that and maybe it's

better because they have a lot of similar tools.

They have firebase, they have anti-gravity, which is kind of like

an AI coding tool, but it's not like Claude code.

It's not operating from your desktop quite in the same way.

Maybe it is.

I don't know.

I tried to like anti-gravity when it came out, but I just found it

not to be as intuitive as Claude code or codex.

So problems.

Have you had that anti-gravity?

Yeah.

It's like a, I don't know.

It's, it's somewhere between using like a coding tool and having AI in it.

I tried using it.

I wanted to like it.

I just couldn't actually make it work.

So I was like, maybe I'm just dumb.

So not a helpful marketing tool.

I've heard some people talk about anti-gravity, but let's move on to Grok.

Grok, dude, I feel like they launch features all the time.

Every time I like once in a while, I actually log into that tool.

I'm like, oh crap, there's a lot of new stuff in here.

Cool.

And, uh, I never use it.

I feel like they're shipping features all the time.

Like they're constantly improving a lot of different things and it

just seems like nobody cares.

Yeah.

I've, I haven't heard Grok mentioned by anybody in months and months and months.

The only time I ever hear someone talk about Grok is if they're like hardcore,

uh, generally like right wing, probably conspiracy, conspiracy theorists.

You know what I'm saying?

They're like on that side, those people love Grok.

That's the only other person I've heard of being like, I'm a Grok guy or a girl.

Actually did made you Grok, a Grok girl.

That's all she used.

I was like, okay.

Okay.

Still kind of watching and waiting.

I don't bet against Elon.

So I think they're still in the running with all the different things they have.

But you know, it's a really interesting development with Grok though.

Did I tell you about the data centers they want to build in space?

No.

Okay.

Your face tells me this is new news to you.

So I have to tell you the story.

Just, it's a little juicy.

It's not really relevant for marketers, but it is just a juicy story.

So Elon probably months and months ago is kind of like, I don't

think the future of data centers is on earth.

I think we're going to start building them in space.

Very Elon thing to say, everyone's just kind of like, I roll.

Okay.

He's like, yeah.

Like, if you think about it, like there's like unlimited sun, there's unlimited

space in space, you know, like you can build crazy stuff up there.

The only problem is like the heat sinks.

Like we have to build these like freaking huge things to like dissipate the heat.

And he's like, that's the, but like engineering could probably do it.

We just have to make them really big.

And people are like, what is he talking about?

Google is also now like the CEO of Google is like, yeah.

And within the next 10 years, that's probably going to be a reality.

I'm like, crap, this is going to be a thing.

No way.

When you consider that, that Google is also now like, yeah, that the

economics of that probably makes sense because they're math people.

They know they're like, it costs, we're going to have to build these.

That's probably this much weight.

The cost of getting stuff to space is this much.

Yeah.

We're going to be building in space.

It's not like a crazy calculation of like figuring out the economics of it.

So that'll probably be a thing in our future.

Why does that matter?

I don't think it matters to marketers because like the devices will

continue working the way they work.

But it'll be weird that we will have all these like freaking space stations

with just big computers on them floating around in the sky.

Yeah, that's pretty strange.

That sounds like the future to me, but if the, if, you know, if it

becomes a bigger and bigger deal, which I think it will, then they're

going to need to build more data centers and eventually space becomes

the frontier to push them out into.

So that should be fun.

But that also leads me to believe that because Grok is, that's probably

why they merged XAI with SpaceX rather than Tesla.

Think about the pipeline there.

Think about all the spec satellites.

He's already got to bridge out all the bandwidth and communication

coming back to earth, shooting that compute and that all the stuff

that AI needs to do back down to earth.

Think about who's got the infrastructure now.

You're like, oh crap.

Like don't count out Grok.

Like nobody's talking about it, but I'm like, it's not an open

AI, anthropic Google game.

Even though Grok hasn't been a serious contender pretty much

ever the infrastructure.

So that's interesting.

Speaking of a person who's never mentioned anymore is

Meta, Facebook, Meta.

Last big thing that happened there is they acquired Manus,

you know, which is a, like an agent thinking Chinese model.

They acquired it from the Chinese company and pretty much like took

all the software in, started in corporate.

I've seen it.

It's like Manus is there and there and Facebook ads, they pulled

all the team in to their team.

And then China was like, no, we reject this.

So I don't know what they're doing about that now.

This, this, that rejection came like maybe a few weeks ago.

So I haven't actually followed up to know where they're at.

But other than that, like they did the big sprint last summer of

hiring all the best AI talent in the world and spent like

billions of dollars on it.

Crazy amount.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They just threw tons of money in.

And how is that working?

It's been freaking crickets.

Like what have they done?

They've launched some video models.

They haven't really done anything like that.

Anybody's really excited about.

No.

So I guess that's a pretty common thing in sports.

Like when you recruit, like the A players to all work together to

be the Olympic team, like it just generally doesn't go well.

So I don't know if your reference works because out of the last

five basketball, gold medal winners, the US team has won four of them.

So, but is it made out of the best NBA players?

Yeah.

Okay.

Nevermind.

I heard that was a thing.

You're not wrong.

You're not.

Yeah, you're not wrong.

Basketball metaphor maybe isn't the right one.

I don't obviously I'm not a big sports guy.

I should pick better metaphors.

So that's where metas at no one really takes them seriously.

They kind of at the time, like in the beginning had the best open source

model, but now like China kind of dominates when it comes to open

source models by far and anybody I know using open source anything.

It's all these China's models every single time.

So that's that.

And Amazon, you know, they got really serious.

Jeff Bezos went back into the game, rolled up his sleeves

and started getting involved.

Now they're kind of like winning and losing.

They're winning on infrastructure.

They're building their own chips.

They're good.

They're building their own data centers because they crush on data

centers, right?

With all their cloud infrastructure and people are renting it.

People are paying for it.

Anthropics going to Amazon, open AI is going to Amazon.

Like everybody's buying, trying to get more compute.

Amazon's like, well, we're killing on infrastructure, but nobody

uses their AI models.

Do you know what their AI models called?

Haven't even heard of it.

Probably most of the listeners haven't heard of it.

It's called Rufus.

It's baked in Amazon.

That's the only way people ever accidentally use it.

Kind of like Facebook's models.

So Amazon in the game, mostly quiet when it comes to us marketers.

Now the one that's the most interesting of all of these is Apple.

Apple has been the black sheep the whole time, but now everyone's

starting to find out that Apple's probably going to be one of the

biggest winners of all, because our AI subscriptions are underpriced.

Use way more than we, like we pay way less than what it actually

costs to get what we get out of AI right now for your $20 a month.

We're certainly for your free.

It costs a lot more for your $20 a month.

All of us are using it more than what open AI actually gets.

So the margins are upside down.

And even for the hundred or $200 a month plans, they're upside down.

They're losing money.

That's true for all the models right now.

That's true for Google.

It's true for anthropic.

It's true for open AI.

So everybody's counting the costs and being like, you know, there's

going to be a reckoning here because business says like you can't

do that forever, there's going to be a bubble that pops here and

they're going to have to start reeling it back.

You know what that means?

That means we're going to have to process more of our AI stuff

because we're going to get like addicted to it.

We're not going to want to go back.

We're going to be using models on device and you know, who's

really ready for that?

Apple.

Apple's got the best hardware stack for phones and computers and

they've been preparing for the AI part of it with their chips.

So like in a year or two, we're going to be wanting more

processing power within our own devices and Apple is going to

be the best position to be like, you're going to want the

newest iPhone.

And who creates the processing power for those chips?

Apple designs their own chips.

They don't build them.

That's still done in that island, not Taiwan, not Singapore.

Yeah, Taiwan.

You're right.

Singapore, wrong island, Taiwan.

Singapore is not big enough.

Yeah.

It's tiny.

Yeah.

And you know, the fabs, the chip maker plants or whatever

over there, apparently we're trying to build them all over

the U.S. now, but like in Arizona specifically, but like

it takes a long time to build and staff it with the right

talent and all that kind of stuff.

So that's another another topic for another time.

So Apple's going to be the hardware for all these.

For personal devices, obviously a lot of people are in

the game of building out the hardware and infrastructure for

like the big data centers and stuff and Amazon and Oracle

and Dell and all those guys are working on the

infrastructure, a lot of the infrastructure pieces for the

server side processing.

But who's going to be there for you?

Who's going to be there to really carry you when it

comes to like the processing on device?

Apple is probably going to have some of the best in

class devices for that, whether it's your MacBook Pro.

I mean, that's why everybody's making the run on

the Mac minis right now, because Mac minis cheap, but

powerful enough to run some of the local devices as well

as run local and cloud, which is probably what we'll

do in the future.

Wow.

So that's the landscape I never would have predicted

from the end of 2025.

And it's only been four months that Apple would be

a front runner in this race in a different way.

And that, uh, anthropic would be really taking

open AI as hard and fast as it did.

But punchline, I'm still an open AI guy and I still

think codex is the best one of all time for

marketers specifically.

I think cloud code definitely better for

developers, but codex, I swear all marketers

should just use codex.

It's just better.

In fact, I'm actually doing a live webinar next

week with Logan Liles on codex.

I'm going to walk through the process of how to

set it up, how to get started, why it's better.

Um, and essentially do a live workshop.

So if you want to join me, it's a next Friday at

1230 Eastern.

And when I say next Friday, what's the date for

that next Friday is the 15th, 15th of May, 1230

Eastern, you can go to danches.com slash codex

to register to get on that webinar.

No, I'm not going to pitch anything.

I'm literally just going to give the goods.

No pitch, just me showing, cause I need to show

it, but I need to do it live with people.

It's going to be better done live and

actually taught hands on.

Hopefully not trying to sell us things.

No, I mean, I'm not be, I'm a marketer.

I'm not beyond selling people things.

If you're listening to me now, like you've

probably been on some of my webinars where

I'm trying to sell you something.

Cause you know, I'll take my shot.

We're all marketers here.

Don't judge me.

You all do it.

But codex, did you have you, you tried

codex after our last episode.

I did.

And it made me realize the power of it, less

hallucinations, incredible computing power.

The way you described it to me last time was

that it's no longer using a single prompt and

figuring out what it had just, you know,

discussed with you, which is where it starts

to hallucinate, but really builds on top of itself.

I was able to give it a plethora of information

that it filtered through to help me in the

task and journey that I was on.

The good things is that it literally is a

Gentec in its own way, trying to, but it

starts, I still get remind, it's still trying

to like download stuff from the internet

that I'm like, I don't know what it's

trying to, I don't know what it's trying

to download from.

I'm like, what is happening?

Why is it still trying to download things?

Even though I'm not actively using it, it's

like closed on my computer.

So it makes me a little nervous.

I almost wish I had a computer that was

separate from the one that I use as a daily

driver, you know, because it's asking you

permission to do something.

Yeah.

I just turn those off and let them run.

Generally it's asking for permission to

like do something on your computer.

I'm like, do whatever you need to do.

I've never found it.

It's gone off the wall because it's yeah.

I don't know.

It's always worked pretty well.

And I always let it, I only give it

access to a folder at a time.

So it can't really delete anything

outside that folder, mess anything up.

But I gave her permission to do anything

it needs to do within that folder or

go research the net.

I don't give it access to everything

on my computer.

That's where it really starts to

get a little scary.

That's why people buy separate computers.

Why so many people buy Mac minis to

set up a separate computer to make

sure it stays contained.

You know, that's for like cloud

code or, uh, not cloud code.

Uh, I guess we, people do do that

with cloud code, but specifically open

claw, right?

Right.

Anyways, I just don't even, it does

make me nervous because I'm like,

uh, I don't know.

What are you going to do?

I do everything through codex now,

everything after he's chat GPT.

I'm like, oh, dang it.

I have to give it so much context

every time, but now it just

openly goes and finds it.

That's the thing that really

changes the game with codex is

that it actively looks for context.

On the internet, on the internet,

but even in within your own files.

So within the folder has access to,

if it has lots of things that like

leaves breadcrumbs for itself to

go and be like, Oh, this is what,

what's in here.

Oh, check this out for here for here.

So it like goes and leaves, reads

its own freaking notes.

It leaves little read me files

and it reads them and then reminds

itself, Oh, I need to go check this

out and you look at this.

This is the process for this.

Okay.

I'm back into it because it actively

looks for context.

It goes and figures out problems way

faster because you can, you can

tell it be like, Hey, when we run

this process again, change this.

Do it this way.

And it'll be, Oh, okay.

Let me make a note of that.

You're like, great.

And then I could just do it itself.

You don't have to update the

process anymore.

You can have it update it for you.

That's the biggest difference in my

opinion of what codex does better

than chat or what Claude code does

better than just Claude is that it

can actively look for its own context

and make changes and leave breadcrumbs

for itself.

Like it can make it take action.

Right.

Wow.

I haven't messed with it a ton other

than the one project that I've

worked on it with, but it was

impressive.

How long did it take to

work through that project?

It took a while.

I mean, I was working details.

Like what was it actually

doing for your project?

It was consolidating a ton of

information surveys from a large

group of people in their desire

for what they wanted.

And then building me graphs based

on that information, pulling

information from online to plot

different people.

Yeah.

So it had to, and it probably

had some docs to go through.

So I had to check with docs.

It had to check with a big

survey CSV data file, and then

it had to go and verify different

things with the internet and

then analyze it, come up with a

report, and then give you like

an insight folder.

So like, that's a lot of

freaking work to do.

And then going back and forth

between those sources and

proactively looking online and

then coming back to the doc

and proactively looking online,

making notes, checking the

survey again, running that.

It's like, it's like a back and

forth that chat and Claude

couldn't do by themselves easily.

And because it can keep notes

along the way again, because it

can make and update files, it's

just more robust.

Did it give you a good answer?

Fantastic.

Yeah.

It was so helpful.

So I'm trying a new project

right now.

I, I have a feeling it can

work well, but I'm not sure

yet, but this is what I'm

going for.

Uh, I kind of gave up on

blogging and the whole SEO

thing and tell me because the

amount of work it took.

And I did a huge project like

early in the early days of

this podcast, I actually like

went and found an automatic

blog AI tool.

I paid a one time fee for it.

And then I went and tested it.

I literally bought five unique

domain names.

It had five different niches

that I was going to do.

And I auto blogged all of

them.

You're talking like a dozen

articles a day for like

multiple for months in a

row to these.

And they gained initial

traction, but then of

course the content was

freaking crap because it was

all hallucinated back then.

That was before reasoning

models is before a lot.

And even though the prompts

were good and as best as I

could get it, they just, the

content it was making just

was just subpar.

Like it just wasn't that

good.

So naturally they didn't

rank well because you know,

to rank well, you got to not

just hit the keywords.

You have to have good

content and have unique

content.

You can't nowadays you lose

even if you have, even with

the reasoning models, you

could have it scrape the

internet and come up with

an article, but it's got to

sound like all the other

articles because that's where

it got its information from.

But I'm like, what if, what

if you have a lot of original

information?

So I'm like, okay, this

one I'm going to do.

I'm going to set up a whole

new project.

I'm going to say, hey,

Codex, here's all the

transcripts from all my

podcast episodes.

Here's all of my LinkedIn

posts ever.

Here's a login to my WordPress

site.

Go ahead and pull and make

notes on every single blog

I've done.

This is hundreds and

hundreds of files.

And here's my book that

I wrote 60,000 word book.

Here's all the context.

Now, you know what blogs

I've written map, which

ones how I can extend out

my blogs and create more.

How can I, what would you

do with SEO and AEO in

order to expand this blog

out and get more traffic

through search?

So it comes up with a plan

maps, looks at my content,

sees where I have good

information that can

supplement all the new

blog posts that need to be

written.

And I'm like, also figure

out what you can do just

through internet research and

then what gaps are leftover

that would be really

strategic for me to give

you more information on.

So that's the new plan I'm

doing.

And then I'm going to have

it come up with the plan.

And I'm like, okay, now I

want you to schedule at 5am

every morning.

I want you to write five

new posts and then I'll

review them and then I'll

have you post them.

I want you to also come up

with the image for them.

And then because it has

access to my WordPress

site, I don't have to

upload it.

I could just get to look

at it, tell it to make a

few changes and then it

can upload it with the

featured image already set.

It's actually powerful

enough to do that, size

everything correctly and

make it look freaking

good.

So I'm like SEO is back

on the table in a really

compelling way that

doesn't take much time but

can still be really good

because it's based on what

I've said before.

Wow, every new blog post

that can re index and go

back to my LinkedIn post,

go back to my book, go

back to the transcripts

and pull new information

what what's relevant from

it so that it's actually

original content supplementing

what stuff it can pull

off the net.

And I imagine every

morning maybe it asked me

like five strategic

questions that it can get

for the five blog posts

of like, hey, if there's

anything I can get you for

you for this group of

blog posts, here's five

things I want to know from

you if I have anything

to say at all.

I'm like, it takes all

the context, tries to fill

the gaps and then pulls a

few extra pieces out for

me to make sure that these

blog posts are actually

unique.

Wow.

So I'm like, come on.

Like, this is the stuff

that's now possible that

you could never do a chat.

Right.

But with coding it's possible.

Yeah.

I don't know if it's

going to work, but I'm

going to give it a shot.

Like I'm starting with

the website that already

has rankings and has

like at its height, you

know, got 10,000 page

views a month.

So not a lot, but not

a little.

I'm starting with

the established website,

danchez.com.

For everybody listening,

I'll give updates along

the way of how it goes.

If it does it, if I get

started get ranking for

some of these things, I

have a rank tracking tool.

So I'll be following up

with that.

Lastly, one news item

is a chat GPT ads.

Did you know they've been

testing ads in chat GPT?

They have, they've had a

limited beta with probably

the big advertisers.

They're rolling out that

beta to more people and

they're adding a self-serve

portal now for CPC bidding

cost per click bidding.

Kind of like Facebook ads.

Gross.

Now it's still limited.

I can't lie.

I'd love to get a shot

at it because I'm like,

I'd love to spend some

ad money.

Unfortunately, like I

hate it as a consumer.

I love it as a marketer,

but it's just going to

be reality.

They got to make money.

And that's for the free

users.

So you're a plus user.

I'm a plus user.

I would never see it.

But for all those free

users, they got to start

making money somehow.

So make sense.

It's funny that

ads are going away

because what we paying

plus again, we don't

have like a margin

left over to cover

the free users.

So it's like they can't

subsidize it through

plus alone.

They have to make up

for the free users

and save some of that money.

I did not know that.

So that's coming.

But for all you

marketers out there,

that's something to

pay attention to,

because that might be

a new advertising

opportunity for those

who deal with paid media.

Sponsor of today's

episode, of course,

is high level.

They've been updating

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That's our like AI

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The cool thing is like

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It already has all the

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Everyday AI.

How have you been

using it lately?

My son wanted to

know the cost of a

blue macaw yesterday.

And he was convinced

that he was going to

use some of his own

money, seven year old

to buy a blue macaw.

I said, yeah, that

says it's anywhere

from 10 to $35,000

for one of those

bad boys.

And it costs about

$6,000 in annual,

you know, care costs,

specific food and set up.

And they last for seven.

They live for 70 years.

So 70 times 6,000.

You could do the math

on cost of having an exotic bird

like a blue macaw.

I had no idea.

Did you watch Rio or what?

Yeah, they love Rio.

That's that's it.

I'm like, where else

would you have

known about a blue macaw?

So that was helpful to let

not totally pop my son's

bubble, but well,

I just gave the use case

that I am experimenting

now with Codex

and my new blog or SEO.

But let me give

like a more micro one

before I even started

coming up with like,

oh, what could I be doing

for new blogs?

I had it just log

into my WordPress account.

I'm like, hey, just here,

do some research

on what the most

up to date SEO,

AEO practices are.

And then it did that.

I'm like, OK, can you

just scan my whole website

to figure out what

needs to happen per page?

And it came with a whole

different audit

and then strategic analysis

of every single page

based on the research it did.

I was like, OK,

can you like do the most do

do modifications

that don't change

overhaul the page,

but like make simple

modifications

that will be the most

bang for the buck?

Because I don't want

to overhaul and rewrite

everything because like

Google will notice

and re index

everything and do it

for every page.

And it went through

and just knocked out,

you know, probably took

it 20, 30 minutes

to go and knock out

every single page on my website.

It's probably like 200,

300 pages.

So it was one of the

easiest, coolest things

at social media marketing world.

One of the speakers

told me that like they had

AI with an SEO

I go back through

and like rewrite

all their LinkedIn articles

without them having

to do anything.

And then traffic

on all the articles

went up probably

like two, three times.

What it was getting before

I was like,

dude, I'm going to try

this on my website.

So I'll report back

on the change,

but just cool things

like that codex can do.

One more that I did,

it's more marketing focused

is I work next to a daycare

and I want them to succeed

because they work out

of our building

and they are great daycare,

but I saw their Facebook ads

come up on my feed

as I was scrolling

and it was just the worst

ad paid ad that I could.

I just it was so painful.

I screenshotted it.

I uploaded it to chat GBT.

I said, can you please

just give me a better

ad for this daycare?

Like here's their website.

Just do better.

And it, of course, slam dunk

first try.

So I showed it to someone

on the board.

I was like,

this is how easy it is

to make a decent Facebook ad.

She was like, what the?

Dude, yeah.

So I didn't actually use that.

I just kind of let them know

the tools are out there

to be not posting a photo

that made me cringe.

It's fine.

What do you think

they made it with?

Was it like a Canva photo

or they just upload

like some random photo?

You know, you know,

you know how it was

a bad iPhone photo

and like you know

how you upload

a horizontal photo

to your stories on Instagram

and then it fills

the color in the background

and then you can put text

above and below it.

That's kind of what they did.

Oh, dang.

Yeah, it was bad.

That's rough.

So no design.

It wasn't a good photo to start.

No, it wasn't a good photo.

No design.

I'm like,

yeah, super appealing.

Man, I freaking love

chat GPT to learn.

I was in Disneyland last week

because, again,

social media marketing world

in Anaheim.

If you missed this year,

join me next year

because it's freaking amazing

event.

But I love that they moved

to Anaheim because,

of course, you can go

to Disneyland afterwards.

I did.

But, you know,

in your Disneyland,

you got a lot of time in line.

So you pull out your phone

and I'm a learner, dude.

I like so I had

just the most fun time

sitting in line

and learning about

every single ride I was on.

I was like,

chat, give me the origin story

of It's a Small World.

Where did this come from?

Oh, man.

Fascinating whole backstory.

And then you're like,

oh, tell me more about this.

Tell me more about that.

So like through the lines

were super fun

because as I'm walking

through the line

looking at everything

and all the art and stuff,

I'm I'm learning.

I'm getting the history.

It's like the ride

is so much more fun

when you understand

the backstory to it,

kind of like anything.

Things are when you understand

where something came from,

you appreciate it more.

So it just made

the whole experience

so much more fun

because chat had a pretty good

understanding of every single ride.

The most wild one being,

of course, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

Do you remember that ride?

Yeah.

Do you remember it ends

with you getting smashed

by a train dying

and going to hell

and the last like 20 seconds

of the ride is in hell.

You're like,

this is a kids ride?

What the heck happened?

Yeah, Chad gave me

the background story

behind that, too, is fun.

Wow.

So fun way to use chat.

Learn, get context

of the things around you

or the places you're going

or the people you're meeting.

There you go.

No poll today.

But I do have a viral post

or more like I guess

all of his posts are viral,

so they're interesting to me

from Ethan Mullick.

And this is let me

let me read it

and I'll give some context

of why I think this is important.

He says organizational

design for agents is hard.

Benchmarking agents

working in concert is hard together.

This is the next critical frontier

for making AI matter

in economically valuable tasks.

And we really don't know

very much about it.

OK, so what does this mean?

I'll I'll put a link to this post

because he shared somebody else's post

with a nice little infographic.

What does it all have to mean?

I actually bookmarked this one

because I'm like, huh,

a lot of people

with this whole agent thing

and cloud code and codex

and how useful it is an agent.

The more advanced players

are not just launching agents

to do things,

they're watching groups of agents,

subagents, agents who go

and start up other agents

to go and do things.

So you're talking

like multi-layered,

deep agents sometimes.

OK, they even call them agent

swarms, which is like

a godawful way of calling it like

there's nothing more scary

than calling them agent swarms.

I'm like, yeah,

I should have rebranded that too late.

That's the name to go and do things.

The problem with them

and this is what Ethan's

talking about is like

they're not working well.

Anybody who says

they're creating a whole organization,

their whole organization

is run by agents

and their agents run agents

is either extremely technical,

it's kind of lying

or is covering up the fact

they're making lots of mistakes.

You can't have agents

give agents things to do.

It'd be like hiring

a bunch of really good interns

and having them kind of like

run things and hire,

like work with themselves.

Like they're not going to do a good job

as competent as they might be.

That is just not quite a thing yet,

but it's definitely the next place.

So a long time ago,

almost two years ago,

OpenAI released this like stages

of artificial intelligence.

It was stage one through five.

And that's funny,

they said like some of these stages

would go faster than they actually have.

Stage one is chat bots,

AI with conversational language.

Stage two is reasoners,

human level problem solving.

Stage three is agents,

systems that can take actions.

Stage four is innovators,

AI that can aid in invention.

And stage five is organizations,

AI that can do the work

of an organization.

Where do you think we're at right now?

I'd say we're finally getting to three

and we're in the early stages of three.

They've been talking about three

for over a year.

As soon as they got to stage two

with the first reasoning model,

they're like, great,

that took us three years to get there.

We think we can get to stage three much faster.

That turning out to my opinion did not be true.

These all overlap by the way.

It's not like you get from one to the other.

It's like the first reasoning models we had sucked

and then they got a little better

and then they got a little better.

And now they're like pretty mature.

We're almost two years into reasoning models.

Guess we're a year and a half.

And they're finally like,

okay, the reasoning models are really reasonable.

Agents are still pretty new.

And I think we're on the early stages of agents.

We are not quite yet having the innovator stage.

This is where they're pushing really hard now.

And organizations with agent to agent management,

I think is still so far out

that people talking about it

are freaking lying through their teeth

or kind of misleading on how successful they are

because of multi-agent work.

Right, well, it's kind of scary,

but that's the hype right now.

Now that agents are becoming a thing,

the thing that's getting the most hype

is multi-agent work or organizational work.

And I'm like, freaking get out.

We finally just got agents

that are actually capable of like executing something

that's like multi-step and can troubleshoot

the little problems that come up.

But I can't be like,

here's a login to my WordPress site, make the traffic grow.

Do you think AI's like even codecs or a cloud code

as smart as they are,

can't do it without me thinking through like,

huh, do an analysis, like I'm still directing it.

Like I'm still saying like doing analysis of what's there,

what could be better?

Think about how I can expand it from there.

Let me think about what I've actually said

that could be useful to make original content.

Is it possible that it could have figured that out

by itself if it were like really good?

Yes.

Is it gonna do that by default yet?

No, not really.

You know, it's like anything

because as humans we gain and garnish discernment

based off experience.

And that's, I mean, it's still learning.

It's still trying to figure out at a high level

what's actually wanted or desired

from the individual that's asking for it.

So as these AI agents learn the creator

or the person who's asking,

they'll have better discernment moving forward.

But it's still, I don't know, I don't know how.

I don't know how it's going to learn exactly

what each individual user is.

My mind, it just comes down to ethics

because like what decision base is it making, right?

Like how humans have used all sorts of methods

to motivate their team to get an end result of success.

But then they've had to learn

because of like burn through their team

being an absolute tyrannical leader.

And they go, well, that didn't help

with the long-term result of keeping my business afloat

because everyone quit on me.

At least I think I need to change my approach

or hire someone that will, I don't know.

I just think of like all of the learning processes

of anyone who's in leadership

and there's like a morality in it and a consciousness to it.

So I'm just like, is it serving the consciousness

of the person who's running it

or is it serving its own consciousness

and it like doesn't give a rip.

It's just trying to complete task A to B

as quick as possible, something like that.

That's what it is.

My brain is-

It's still a machine.

It's not conscious.

It's literally just inferencing,

trying to get to the right answer.

I know it doesn't have a conscious,

but it's trying to create its own conscious

based on the conscious of person that it's running, right?

Because if I, it knows that I'm a care first leader

who wants tasks done second over care for an individual.

So if it knows that, that that's the, it will do it.

And people are programming open clause more known

for this because people are giving it like,

forget what they call it.

It's not heartbeat.

That's a different file.

There's a soul, soul doc,

where you're actually hard coding in the values

that you want it to have to give it its soul

on its personality and all the different stuff.

So open claw has that.

Most of these don't.

You can make one easily and just call it soul.md

for a Markdown file and tell it like,

here's the values you should run through first

when making decisions.

For the most part, the things I have codecs doing

are like very,

even though it has a lot of liberties to do things,

like I'm still very much guiding what it should do.

And it's big.

I'm still giving it objectives

and breaking down its objectives into very tactical things.

I'm still deciding the strategy.

It might give recommendations,

but I'm still the one guiding it.

Now, if you're giving it much more,

autonomy, you need to give it values

in order to make decisions from.

And that's why good organizational design

is around mission and core values

so that people can actually make ethical and decisions

as if they're being guided by larger principles.

Kind of like Southwest,

if you know their values

and it's like it's made Southwest

as good as it is as an airline.

They're like, well, number one, we're cheap.

Like we're, or sorry,

we're low cost.

So any decision you make,

does it help us become a low cost?

Because if it does, then that's a yes.

And we're fun,

but fun should never come at the expense of value one,

we're the low cost airline.

So if you want a pop confetti

when people come onto the airline,

that's probably a no,

because then it creates mess

and then we have to clean up and it costs more.

You know, people are coming on,

you're like, shit, the little poppers,

welcome to the airplane.

You probably wouldn't do that,

but can we add some jokes

in our takeoff flight instructions?

Yeah.

Does it cost anything?

No.

Does it make it more fun

without us having to cost more?

Yes.

You know, so you've accomplished the values.

It gives them staff members decision-making criteria

so they can ask like,

oh, I wonder if I could do this.

You have values to guide their decision-making.

And people are starting to experiment

with that with AI right now.

But it doesn't matter too much yet

because we're not at a place

where we can run agent to agent yet,

at least reliably.

Right.

But that's where it's going.

Dang.

Make sure you have a sole file.

Got sole.

Actually, do you have a sole file in your own sole?

That's the real question.

Yeah, well, you could probably get into

a fun little philosophical conversation

with Chad about that if you want.

I bet you've met people

that don't have a sole file in their own sole.

Where's your sole.md?

I imagine that makes it into normal conversation.

Oh, man.

Well, I think that's pod for today.

Pod it.

Pod out.