AI Field Notes – Issue No. 10

By Len Ward | Managing Partner, Commexis

Your inside track on where AI is really reshaping business—and how to act on it.

1. Workflow Over Tools: The Real Starting Point

If you’re just getting into AI—or even a year into the journey—here’s the hard truth: AI isn’t just about speed. It’s about structure.

Too many teams bolt tools onto their old workflows and call it transformation. That’s not it. The real shift is in rebuilding your workflows from the ground up with AI as the core engine—especially in marketing.

• Don’t drop ChatGPT into your old copy process.
• Don’t bolt Jasper onto your blog system.
• Instead, design an AI-first process that runs the full stack: planning → writing → editing → deploying → reporting.

Marketing is the easiest place to start, and arguably the most urgent.

2. Clicks Still Falling: The Decoupling Continues

We flagged it in Issue No. 9—now it’s accelerating. Google search results are showing more impressions than ever, but clicks are in freefall.

Recent data from Ahrefs, BrightEdge, and Seer Interactive confirms: AI Overviews and other SERP features are eating clicks.
And it’s not just an SEO problem—it’s a lead-gen issue, a business risk, and a wake-up call for anyone relying heavily on inbound.

This trend deserves ongoing attention, not just a one-time alarm.
Search isn’t “search and retrieve” anymore. It’s becoming “solve my problem.” And if your site isn’t the solution, the click never happens.

3. Law Firms and Lead-Gen Businesses: Time to Rethink

Some of the first wave of job loss from AI won’t be from AI itself—it’ll be from vanishing pipelines.
When leads from search dry up, teams shrink.

Quote from Len:

“Job loss may not come from AI to start. It may come from the people who fill the role as lead gen dries up. As search-and-retrieve shifts to solve-my-problem, this will become more evident. Then AI will go after roles—but this is where it starts. Pay attention to that metric.”

4. Big Tech’s Ad Tools Will Shrink Agencies

Meta, Google, and Amazon are rolling out AI-driven tools that generate full campaigns—ads, images, copy—with a single click.
Wall Street is already reacting. Large agency stocks (WPP, Publicis) dipped 3–4% as news broke.

These tools threaten not just the big shops, but the entire performance marketing layer. If ad creation and targeting are automated, what’s left?

Answer: Strategy. Concepts. Storytelling.
But even then, teams will be smaller. A five-person AI-native agency can do the work of 50. And those who rebuild their delivery with AI will thrive.

5. ChatGPT-5 = The iPhone Moment?

LLMs keep improving—quietly but radically. Reasoning is sharper. Intelligence is more contextual. And GPT‑5 is rumored to unify multi-modal inputs into one interface.

Expect an iPhone-like moment soon: the first time everything just works. And with that, entire workflows across marketing, ops, and client services will get rebuilt in a matter of months, not years.

Final Thought:

Transformation starts with how you work, not what you use. AI is your new operating system—not just a faster app.