It’s fair to say that one of my closest work colleagues is AI.
I don’t type much anymore. I talk. Constantly.
Emails, Slack messages, notes, drafts, thinking itself — all spoken, all mediated through AI. Thanks to Monologue from Every, voice has replaced the keyboard almost entirely. And it’s easily been the biggest productivity gain I’ve had this year.
Not “10% better”. Not “nice-to-have”. Transformational.
Once you stop typing, you realise how much of modern work is still stuck in an outdated bottleneck: fingers, screens, and meetings that exist mostly to justify themselves. Voice removes friction. AI turns speech into structure. And suddenly, work moves at the speed of thought rather than bureaucracy.
This is where AI actually wins in the short term. Not sentient agents. Not world models. Not whatever hype deck is doing the rounds this week. But brutally practical time savings.
Which is why the biggest AI productivity gains we’ll see next won’t come from startups or tech bros — they’ll come from governments, healthcare, councils, and public services. Police officers writing reports. Doctors typing notes. NHS administrators drowning in documentation. Entire industries wasting human life on admin.
AI plus voice fixes that.
See more people. Spend less time typing. That’s the breakthrough.
But here’s the uncomfortable part.
Once AI removes friction everywhere… once code becomes cheap… once tools can be built by anyone with an idea and a voice… what actually matters anymore?
When everything becomes code, code stops mattering
Scroll LinkedIn for five minutes and you’ll see it: founders proudly posting their monthly recurring revenue. £5k MRR. £10k MRR. £50k MRR. All built with a tiny AI tool, shipped fast, monetised faster.
And genuinely — good for them. Some of these numbers are life-changing. People are earning in months what they’d once need years of education and debt to reach.
But here’s the thing no one wants to say out loud.
This model is not sustainable.
We’re heading into a world where anyone can build almost anything. Not perfectly polished, maybe. Not enterprise-grade. But functionally good enough.
LinkedIn writing tools are the perfect example. There are dozens of them. Then LinkedIn shipped its own. Then reach collapsed anyway. And finally, people realised they could just… build their own with AI.
When software can be created instantly, cheaply, and endlessly, software itself stops being the moat.
Features don’t protect you. UX barely protects you. Even speed doesn’t protect you.
Because copying is now trivial.
I’ve seen my own images lifted, reposted, stripped of credit, thrown into engagement pods — and outperform the original. At first, it’s annoying. Then it’s enlightening.
This is what abundance looks like.
Welcome to the attention economy (for real this time)
We’ve talked about the “idea economy” for years. James Altucher popularised it. And he was right — ideas matter more than credentials.
But ideas alone don’t win.
Attention does.
In a world where creation is frictionless, distribution becomes the battlefield. Platforms are already reacting. LinkedIn reach is down. TikTok throttles visibility. Facebook has been doing this for a decade. As AI increases content supply, algorithms must restrict reach.
Which means we’re entering an era where the hardest thing isn’t building the thing — it’s getting anyone to care that it exists.
And that’s where marketing stops being “promotion” and starts becoming infrastructure.
Code is free. Being thought of is not.
Most software products were never top-of-mind.
They survived by buying attention — ads, PR, partnerships. That only becomes more extreme from here.
When code is cheap, brand becomes the only defensible moat.
Brand isn’t a logo. It isn’t vibes. It’s not a colour palette or a founder’s personality cosplay.
Brand is being thought of in buying situations.
And that’s the part AI cannot copy easily.
AI decentralises creation. Marketing decides who survives.
AI is going to decentralise software creation faster than most people realise. Tools like Lovable already let you go from idea to product frighteningly quickly. Soon it’ll be games. Films. Books. Entire companies.
Anyone with a halfway decent idea can build.
Which means the real question becomes: what’s worth building — and who notices?
This is why marketing and AI are about to fuse.
Not in the “AI marketing tools” sense. But in the sense that marketing becomes the fuel that turns creation into relevance.
The best marketers won’t just promote products. They’ll create them.
Distribution-first. Attention-native. Built with monetisation in mind from day one.
As Seth Godin once said, the problem with good marketing is that once people learn it, they go off and do it for themselves.
That’s exactly what’s happening.
Fame is no longer accidental
Look at the modern case studies.
MrBeast didn’t build a media empire by accident. He engineered attention, then turned it into products, brands, and businesses.
Jake Paul built enough cultural gravity to launch a global drinks brand — and then step into a boxing ring with a former heavyweight champion like Anthony Joshua.
That sounds absurd. And it is.
But it’s also the clearest signal of where we’re heading.
Attention first. Products second.
Copying is easy. Breakthrough is rare.
People love to believe talent rises naturally. It doesn’t.
J. K. Rowling was rejected repeatedly. Her books as Robert Galbraith were dismissed until her identity was revealed. One agent even told her to take a writing class.
Talent didn’t change. Attention did.
This is why “fitness signals” matter — those rare, unpredictable combinations of timing, taste, personality, and cultural resonance. AI will amplify this dynamic, not flatten it.
The best creators will be copied instantly. The best ideas will be cloned. The winners won’t be the ones who built first — they’ll be the ones who stayed visible.
Marketing is about to get violent (strategically)
We’re entering a marketing war zone.
Budgets will matter again. Strategy will matter again. The ability to manufacture attention — ethically or otherwise — will separate winners from noise.
Profitability will matter earlier. Not because AI is expensive, but because attention is. Paid reach will be unavoidable. Organic reach will be rationed. And brands that don’t invest in marketing will simply vanish under the flood.
This is great news for marketers. Terrifying news for builders who think “great product” is enough.
Because in the AI era, marketing isn’t the wrapper around value — it’s the delivery system for it.
The future belongs to those who can be noticed
AI can copy almost anything.
It cannot guarantee attention.
The next decade will reward people who understand fame, distribution, narrative, and reach. Personal brands. Company brands. Movements. Symbols people care about.
The idea economy is real — but ideas without attention die quietly.
AI will give everyone the ability to create.
Marketing will decide who matters.
And that’s the uncomfortable truth: most people are still trying to code their way around.
Personal brands will become even more powerful as they lead to physical brands.
Physical brands will have to spend more on PR and advertising.
Being noticed is going to be everything.
Marketers need to get ready… you’re going to be busy.
Andrew Holland
Originally published on LinkedIn on 23 December 2025.