Throughout 2025 the terms AI and AI Agents will be everywhere, but what do they mean to us, and where do we start? Elton Boocock, managing director of Business Pilot and now founder of thinkivity, a new business that aims to deliver AI consultancy and training exclusively for the UK glazing industry, is here to help.

AI is a word that covers so much and is so easily mis-represented. Some think AI is ChatGPT whilst others think it is Skynet and it’s coming to kill us off. Neither are in fact correct.

ChatGPT is an LLM (Large Language Model) and LLMs do form part of what AI is, but by adding in just one more acronym, you can see how it all becomes confusing and even more threatening to the uninitiated. Let’s ditch the fancy terms and talk about what AI can do, and how AI affects your marketing.

AI, in whatever form, excels at patterns. And as it turns out, almost everything, even seemingly random things, can be boiled down to a pattern. Musicians will say that ‘it’s only 7 notes’, and this is true. It’s just how we rearrange them – the pattern.

Our alphabet is only 26 letters. Same thing, it’s how we rearrange them. Of course, the same is true for every article you are reading today. For every SEO campaign, every social media post, every marketing email in your inbox, you don’t have to look for long before you see the pattern.

Humans are good at patterns too. We learnt that way back when the patterns may just have been the markings on the other animals that wanted to eat us, or we wanted to eat. We are pattern matching machines! And now you see why it’s called AI. AI is just like human intelligence, but it’s not human, it’s artificial.

Of course, even the human ‘pattern matching machine’ needs training. Your marketing apprentice shouldn’t be let loose on your important marketing tasks. However, over time, the apprentice skills up and given the right brief, can produce stunning marketing outcomes.

That might mean text, images or videos. They have the core skills and now rely on a good brief to work their magic. This is where AI is right now. It is highly skilled but still requires a solid brief. We call this ‘prompting’. And whilst I am oversimplifying, it’s not a lot more than that!

So, where are we now in terms of AI and your marketing? We still need human intelligence controlling the outcome. These humans are now the managers of an unlimited, and highly skilled set of specialists, that will allow you to do far more, for far less. Importantly, this does not mean churning out masses of rubbish onto the internet and social media platforms. The core marketing principals remain, but the efficiency at which content can be created has changed forever.

During the year ahead, we will see traditional marketers defending their positions, laggards refusing to acknowledge what is happening, and early adopters gaining competitive advantage, just as with any adoption cycle. Remember, AI isn’t about taking away jobs. It is about helping every human to do more, with less.

If you would like to know more about how AI is changing our sector, especially in marketing, thinkivity.co.uk has a wealth of information and free resources to help you get up to speed quickly.