A monthly look at AI from the point of view of someone running a business rather than someone following the industry. Most months, the honest summary is that two things changed and one of them matters.
What each issue covers
Releases that matter. New models and features get filtered by one question: does this change anything for a small business this month. Most do not, and the issue says so.
AI in search. AI Overviews, AI Mode and assistants, covered in more depth than the weekly roundup has room for.
AI for marketing. What the tools are actually good at now, where they still produce confident nonsense, and where the risk sits.
Regulation, policy and trust. Anything that changes what you can and cannot do, or what you have to disclose.
What I’m using and testing. The tools that survived contact with real work, and the ones that did not.
How it’s written
Adoption over announcement. A demo is not a capability. Things get covered when they can be used, not when they are launched.
The small business filter. Every item ends at what it means for a business without an AI budget or an engineering team.
No hype, and no reflexive scepticism either. Both are easy positions and neither is useful.
Where I am wrong, later issues say so. A monthly stream accumulates a record, which is the point of writing it down.
Who it’s for
Business owners and marketers who want to know which of this month’s noise is real, without either the breathless version or the dismissive one.
The archive
[PAUL TO ADD: the issue list, once the first few are published.]
The other regulars
State of Search runs weekly, Content Marketing fortnightly, Direction monthly, and the tests run continuously. Everything sits on the writing page.