By Adam Mills
AI Editor
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Editor's note: This is AI Impact, Newsweek's weekly newsletter where each week, we will explore how business leaders are unlocking real value through artificial intelligence.
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Core Intelligence
Is AI Making Marketing Too Efficient?
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Modern marketing has become exceptionally good at finding the right customer. But it may be missing the next one.
That tension is starting to reshape how growth actually happens. The same tools that improve targeting and conversion rates are trained on existing data—patterns of behavior that reflect a company’s existing customer base. Over time, that can create a subtle but important shift in how growth happens.
“AI looks backward to move forward,” said Hannah Swanson, vice president of marketing at Intentsify. “Humans generate the signal; AI amplifies it.”
That dynamic is what makes AI so effective at optimization. Campaigns can be refined continuously, zeroing in on audiences most likely to click, convert or engage. But the more those systems improve, the more they tend to reinforce the same patterns.
“The better AI gets at finding your existing audience, the less reason it has to show your brand to anyone new,” Ross Palmer, CEO of Aloa Agency, said.
That creates a trade-off that isn’t always visible in performance metrics. Optimization improves efficiency, but it can also narrow the field of potential customers. Growth, however, often depends on reaching people who do not yet behave like existing audiences.
John B. Johnson, co-founder and principal at A Small Studio, pointed to the limits of precision. “The more precisely you target, the tighter the loop gets, and cultural relevance rarely lives inside a tight loop,” he said. “AI can narrow your aim, but it can’t tell you who’s worth aiming at.”
In that sense, the challenge is not simply about targeting. It is about how companies define success. Over time, marketing has been redefined around what can be measured—clicks, conversions and return on ad spend. AI simply accelerates that logic. But those signals tend to reflect existing demand more than they capture how new demand is created.
That distinction matters because brand growth rarely follows a linear path. It depends on expanding reach, building cultural relevance and creating connections that are difficult to quantify.
“The brands building real community are treating AI as a new instrument, not the composer,” Palmer said.
For some leaders, the issue is less about the technology itself and more about how it is used. “This isn’t an AI problem; it’s a mismatch between business goals and how the technology is applied,” said Mike Rousselle, senior vice president of artificial intelligence at OptimizeRx. “AI will amplify whatever goal you give it.”
That may be the central lesson emerging from AI-driven marketing. The tools are becoming more powerful, but they are also more dependent on the objectives they are given. Systems designed to optimize for efficiency will continue to get better at it. Whether they also support long-term growth depends on how companies define success in the first place.
For marketers, that raises a new kind of decision. Not whether to use AI, but where optimization should stop and strategy needs to take over.
You can read the full article here: AI Can Optimize Marketing. But Can It Build Belonging?
Upcoming Webinars
Is the IT Services Industry Going Extinct?
Join Dr. Ranjit Tinaikar, host of Newsweek’s AI Impact Forum series, and Francisco D’Souza, co-founder and managing partner of Recognize and former CEO of Cognizant, on April 9 at 10 a.m. Eastern for a strategic conversation on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the IT services industry—and whether recent market signals point to deeper structural changes in productivity, competitiveness and the future business models of the sector.
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Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape not just how work gets done, but what “work” means in the first place. In this session of Newsweek’s AI Impact Forum, taking place April 30 at 11 a.m. Eastern, Dr. Ranjit Tinaikar, host of the series, sits down with Tiger Tyagarajan, former CEO of Genpact and now a senior advisor and board member, for a strategic conversation on how AI is blurring the boundaries between software and services—and what that shift means for business models and the future of work.
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AI Impact Awards & Summit
The Newsweek AI Impact Awards seek to identify and recognize uniquely innovative AI solutions that solve critical business problems in different industry segments, or significantly advance capabilities. Recognition comes not from ideas, but from measurable IMPACT on business operations.
Prompt Injection
What’s one recent insight you’ve learned about AI?
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"AI is not merely a technology investment; it represents a fundamental strategic challenge that is redesigning the operating model of work. It’s becoming clear to me now that legacy organizational structures that were designed for human-paced processes are simply unprepared for the hyper-speed of the human + AI partnership. As organizations deploy AI agents and transition the technology from pilot into enterprise-wide workflows, the pressure on traditional roles, incentives, and management structures is becoming a critical competitive risk.
It’s time for a rapid and intentional pivot to strategic organizational design—thoughtful evaluation and re-architecture of jobs, teams, and leadership models for a unified human + AI future. The imperative is clear: we must move beyond simply increasing the number of AI-skilled employees and anchor our strategies in a people-first approach. AI is a powerful tool, with high potential to drive transformative value, efficiency, and business growth—but its true power is unlocked only when purposefully integrated to augment our human workforce."
Have your own lesson to share? Email us at: ai.newsletter@newsweek.com
Run Log
AI use case of the week
By Adam Mills
In high-stakes environments, better data has not necessarily meant better decisions. Intelligence still tends to arrive as qualitative analysis—briefings, reports and expert opinions delivered at discrete moments in time, even as the underlying risks continue to evolve.
That mismatch became the starting point for Vico. The company built a system that combines large language models with traditional data science and quantitative forecasting to provide decision support rather than additional analysis. Users can run iterative scenarios, model alternative trajectories and assess the potential impact of a decision before it is made.
Rather than producing a single forecast, the system allows users to compare multiple possible outcomes under different conditions. That approach shifts the focus from static analysis toward evaluating how decisions may play out under different conditions.
According to the company, the model has outperformed prediction markets in specific geopolitical cases, including modeling leadership risk in Iran and anticipating disruptions tied to the Strait of Hormuz. Those results suggest that combining AI with established statistical methods can produce more competitive forecasts than either approach alone.
The experience also clarified the limits of AI on its own. “AI can outperform human judgment, but only when it’s not working alone,” said Anthony Vinci, chief executive officer of Vico. “Traditional statistics, data science, and rigorous software engineering aren’t legacy constraints—they’re what make AI-driven forecasting actually reliable.”
In that sense, the system is designed to support decision-making by shifting analysis earlier in the process—before a decision is actually made—particularly in environments where uncertainty is high and conditions can shift quickly.
Have an AI use case to share with us? Email us at: ai.newsletter@newsweek.com
Context Window
■ Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into major tech companies over plans to power AI data centers with natural gas, signaling growing scrutiny of the environmental and public health impact tied to AI infrastructure expansion. [Latitude Media]
■ A surge in AI-driven data center demand is pushing energy companies to develop massive new power projects, including gas-fired plants in Texas, as infrastructure constraints begin to shape how quickly AI can scale. [Reuters]
■ New startups are redesigning enterprise software around AI prompts instead of traditional dashboards, pointing to a shift in how employees may interact with business tools as AI becomes the primary interface. [TechCrunch]
■ The U.S. Labor Department has launched a free AI literacy course for workers, marking a broader push to prepare the workforce for changes driven by automation and generative AI. [Axios]
■ Researchers studying AI development tools have identified prompt injection as a leading vulnerability capable of triggering unauthorized actions or exposing sensitive data, pointing to persistent security gaps as adoption accelerates. [arXiv]
■ China’s tightly controlled internet ecosystem is emerging as a defining factor in the global AI race, highlighting how state control, data access and regulation could shape the trajectory of AI development across competing systems. [Bloomberg]
Transfer Protocol
Chris McClellen, a technology leader with experience across enterprise software, data platforms and regulated environments, has been appointed senior vice president, group head of AI at Finastra, where he will lead the company’s new centralized AI Center of Excellence.
Venu Mallarapu, previously executive vice president of global operations at eClinical Solutions, has been appointed chief transformation and AI officer at the company, where he will drive its AI-first strategy and ensure technology and processes optimize AI and automation to support workforce transformation and customer experience.
David Dugan, formerly vice president, global clients and agencies at Meta, has been appointed vice president and head of global ads solutions at OpenAI, where he will lead the company’s push to build AI-native advertising products within the ChatGPT consumer experience as it develops its advertising business.
Eugene Tsyrklevich, previously general manager of Arrive’s Automotive & Data business unit, has been appointed chief AI officer at Arrive, where he will lead the company’s shift to an AI-first mobility platform, using artificial intelligence to unify real-time and historical data across urban transportation systems.
David Rice, previously chief operating officer for corporate and institutional banking at HSBC, has been appointed chief AI officer at the bank, where he will lead the deployment of artificial intelligence at scale across operations, including the rollout of generative AI tools to employees and customer-facing systems.
Magic Moment
What’s the most fun or unexpected way you’ve used AI lately?
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“I built an AI operations agent that runs my own agency. It checks emails, manages client content calendars, drafts outreach, monitors our services—and one morning it messaged me to say a client's website SSL cert was expiring in 48 hours before anyone on the team noticed. It fixed the issue before I finished my coffee.
What stood out is the shift from AI as a tool you use to AI as a teammate that watches your blind spots.”
Experience some AI magic? Tell us about it at ai.newsletter@newsweek.com
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