/It’s difficult for communications staff to keep up with the pace of change in AI. Here are some recent highlights from Marketing Profs:
- Discoverability is shifting. Google’s AI Overviews and other generative search tools are changing how organizations get found. Visibility now depends less on keyword matching and more on clear, intent-focused content — alongside the invisible signals embedded in your site (structured data, tags, and other machine-readable cues) that help AI systems navigate and understand what you publish.
- Audiences can tell. Canva’s State of Marketing and AI 2026 found that 70% of consumers say they can usually recognize AI-generated ads — they feel emotionally empty or “missing their soul.” Emotional resonance still matters.
- Disclosure norms are arriving. YouTube will now automatically label videos containing significant photorealistic AI-generated or AI-altered content, even when creators don’t disclose it themselves. Labels will appear below long-form videos and as overlays on Shorts.
- A moral voice enters the conversation. In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV called for rigorous ethical constraints on AI development — particularly around warfare, labour displacement, and economic inequality. He criticized the “culture of power” shaping the field and argued that AI systems should remain “human-friendly,” accessible, and subject to broad public oversight rather than controlled by governments or corporations alone.
For Your Reading List: Managing Mortal Time
A few years ago we recommended Oliver Burkeman’s philosophical but practical Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. More recently we found ourselves in a peer leadership group where a third were reading his latest — Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. It takes up similar issues: the finite limit of a lifetime, the pull of distractions, and the impossibility of doing anything perfectly. Burkeman calls his framework “imperfectionism” and asks us to reflect on what can become possible when we stop trying to have everything under control before beginning to live.
Closing Thought: No Matter What We Say
“Reality is a stubborn thing.”
— Tamara Keith on NPR, discussing the war of words about the Strait of Hormuz.