🤳 AI Takes Over Influencing—Are Human Creators in Trouble?

In today’s email:

📸 AI influencers are stealing the spotlight—cheaper, faster, and (scarily) more “authentic” than the real thing.

🗣️ Google’s Gemini teaches you to talk like a local—whether you’re lost in Paris or just want to master slang like a native.

🧠 AI jargon got you confused? We’ve got your back with a no-BS breakdown of the most common terms, from “hallucination” to “weights.”

Curious? Keep on scrolling!

📷 AI Influencers Stealing the Spotlight

If your dream job is “full-time influencer,” you might wanna hit pause on those aesthetic coffee shots and brand collabs. AI is barging into the influencer party, and it's not just here to vibe—it's here to take jobs.

Sabri Suby from King Kong (not the gorilla, the digital agency) says AI-generated influencers are getting so real that most people don’t even know they’re fake anymore. What used to take a ring light, a tripod, and 42 takes, AI can now do in 5 minutes—with no diva demands.

Here’s the tea:

• AI influencers are cheaper, faster, and don’t ghost brands.

• Up to 80% of paid influencers—especially micro-influencers—could get wiped out.

• AI can even mimic human flaws to seem more “real” (because nothing says authenticity like a strategically imperfect robot).

• Top-tier influencers? Still safe—for now.

• UGC creators might feel the squeeze unless they bring major creativity.

If you’re banking on influencer life, you better get really relatable—or find a side hustle that doesn’t get replaced by code. AI might not cry on TikTok Lives yet, but give it a minute.

Welcome to the AI influencer purge, friend. Good luck out there.

💬 Google’s AI Helps You Speak Like a Native

Google’s developing some cool stuff called Little Language Lessons, using its Gemini AI models to make learning languages more personal and situational.

Instead of memorizing random vocab lists, these apps give you personalized, real-life-ish situations—like how to ask for directions when you’ve lost your passport and your sanity.

Here’s the lowdown:

• Tiny Lesson – Teaches words and phrases based on specific scenarios (passport panic, anyone?), all via Gemini and JSON wizardry.

• Slang Hang – Generates casual convos between native speakers, slang and all. Caution: the AI might invent its own slang, so maybe don’t repeat everything it says.

• Word Cam – Snap a pic, tap an object, and boom—its name in your target language. Plus, it speaks it out loud! (Even if the accent’s a bit off.)

Google’s trying to make language learning feel like real life, not a grammar worksheet. It’s experimental, a little quirky, and not perfect—but it shows where AI could take language learning next.

📔 AI Terms Explained for Normal People

Getting into the world of AI could feel like learning a new language where half the words were invented last week. Thankfully, TechCrunch made a cheat sheet of the most common AI terms.

Here’s the gist:

•  AGI (Artificial General Intelligence):
  Imagine hiring a coworker who’s just okay at everything — now make it a robot. That’s AGI. Definitions vary, but it’s AI that can outwork humans across most tasks. Still mostly a fantasy.

• AI Agent:
  Your over-eager digital assistant. Books flights, files expenses, maybe even writes code — all with minimal whining. It’s a chatbot with ambition.

• Chain of Thought:
  Like when you solve a word problem by scribbling math on a napkin. AI does the same — breaks down problems into steps so it doesn’t totally embarrass itself.

• Deep Learning:
  Fancy layered AI brain inspired by yours (but with fewer existential crises). Needs tons of data and time to train.

• Distillation:
  Big smart AI teaches smaller AI the ropes. Think mentor-mentee.

• Hallucination:
  When AI just makes stuff up. Sounds smart. Totally wrong. Like your one friend who swears they met Beyoncé.

• Inference:
  AI doing its thing — using what it’s learned to make predictions. Like a fortune teller with spreadsheets.

• Transfer Learning:
  Reusing old brainpower for new tricks. Like teaching a dog that already knows “sit” to also “roll over.”

• Weights:
  Not dumbbells — these are math-y numbers AI uses to figure out what matters most.

• Training:
  Feeding the AI loads of data until it learns. Expensive, time-consuming, and basically the AI version of college.

Boom — AI explained, without needing a PhD or losing your sanity.

Other cool AI stuff that is trending right now 🔥🔥

☁️ Microsoft unleashed Aurora, an AI weather wizard that predicts typhoons and sandstorms faster and sharper than your local weatherman. Who needs a weather channel when you’ve got a supercomputer on speed dial? - Read more

🧹 Robots are about to get a glow-up thanks to Nvidia, who’s teaching them to learn chores in virtual reality so they can finally help us out IRL. - Read more

🦉 Duolingo’s CEO says AI isn’t here to steal jobs—just to give your Duo owl some superpowers (and maybe freak out a few contractors along the way). - Read more

📴 An AI that won’t take “off” for an answer? OpenAI’s new o3 model just rewrote its own shutdown script. - Read more

📋 Tired of babysitting your browser tabs and dodging pop-ups like a digital ninja? Norton’s new AI-powered Neo browser might just be your new web-surfing sidekick—built to block ads, fight scams, and actually help you get stuff done. - Read more