Issue #58: 1,300% More AI Traffic, New Business Brain, AI Operating Systems

Good morning.

You have to look behind today’s AI headlines about new models or smarter chatbots.

They’re signals of something bigger:

The foundation being poured for a new kind of business infrastructure.

Behind the scenes, we’re seeing real-time reasoning systems, language-adaptive content, AI-powered operating systems, and deeply integrated assistant tools that don’t just help, they operate.

The shape of the future is clear:

Business is becoming bionic, and every part of your company, from search to creative to strategy, is getting rebuilt with AI at the core.

The smartest operators aren’t waiting for things to stabilize.

They’re watching closely. Experimenting early. And designing for leverage.

This newsletter is your field report.

Let’s dive in.

So you can move before everyone else does.

—Sam

IN TODAY’S ISSUE 👨‍🚀 

• AI Is Changing How Customers Shop

• AI Models Can Make Memes (Better Than Humans)

• Potential “Brain” for Your Business: Gemini 2.5

• AI Agent Systems in Action (Types, Flows)

• The AI Operating System: Every Bionic Business Will Have One

Let’s get into it.

AI In Business: From Invisible Customer Journeys to Operational Agents

(This is a shorter version of the full issue, available to free subscribers and on the web. If you’re a Cortex subscriber, you get the full issue below—if you’re reading on the web, make sure you’re logged in).

How AI Is Changing Customer Shopping Behavior

The customer journey has fundamentally changed. Generative AI is now influencing every step of how people shop online.

• AI traffic to U.S. retail sites jumped an astonishing 1,300% during the 2023 holiday season

• Visitors from AI tools spend 8% more time on-site, view 12% more pages, and bounce 23% less

• These aren't passive users – they're high-intent shoppers arriving with AI-powered research

The most important parts of your funnel now happen invisibly, off-site. Your content gets scraped, summarized, and analyzed by AI before customers ever reach your website. By the time they hit your site, they're already 70% down the funnel. This is a paradigm shift that most marketers haven't yet recognized.

What this means for your business:

• Make your content AI-ready with clear pricing, honest comparisons, and authentic reviews

• Create value that survives summarization – ensure your key points stand out

• Track AI-driven traffic as its own distinct channel with unique behaviors

AI Co-Creation Is Reshaping Content Development

Creativity is becoming scalable. New research shows how AI collaboration is transforming content creation processes—by making memes.

• Teams working with AI assistants generate significantly more ideas in less time with less mental fatigue.

• The highest-rated content often comes from human-AI collaboration rather than either working alone.

• While AI excels at volume and broad appeal, humans still provide the edge that makes content truly resonate.

The optimal creative workflow:

• Use AI for rapid idea generation (10-20 creative angles, headlines, hooks).

• Human curation and refinement of the most promising options.

• Production with your brand's unique visual and tonal elements.

Remember to build creative ownership structures as teams may feel less connected to AI-assisted work. The smartest teams will design workflows that maintain human touches in the final product.

Gemini 2.5: A Potential "Brain" for Your Business

Google's latest model, Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, is a significant advancement in AI capabilities that can serve as a brain for business operations.

• Released March 25, 2025, it leads in benchmarks for reasoning, coding, math, and science.

• Features a 1 million token context window (expanding to 2 million) that handles text, audio, images, and video.

• Currently available in Google AI Studio and the Gemini app for Gemini Advanced users. The model's unprecedented capabilities make it suitable as a central "brain" for business operations, potentially revolutionizing how decisions are made and processes are executed.

Industry-specific applications:

• SaaS: Product feature agents, code review systems, customer support automation.

• Agencies: Strategy development, content creation, performance tracking.

• Media: Content curation, fact-checking, personalization.

• E-commerce: Inventory management, dynamic pricing, multimedia customer service.

• Freelancers: Project management, skill development, content assistance.

AI Agent Systems in Action

AI agents are fully operational systems transforming how businesses function.

• Agents work in teams with specialized roles and hierarchical structures

• They connect directly to your systems (databases, operations) to achieve goals autonomously

• Advanced agent systems feature internal feedback loops for self-correction and learning

These are goal achievers that understand deeper objectives and build pathways to reach them. 

This distinction is critical: when your competitors start replacing teams with agents that execute faster, scale instantly, and learn continuously, traditional operational models will be at a significant disadvantage.

The AI Operating System: Foundation of the Bionic Business

The future isn't about individual AI tools but comprehensive systems that integrate across your entire business.

• Platforms like Concierge and Embra demonstrate what AI operating systems look like.

• These systems connect your tools, automate actions, remember workflows, and make decisions at scale.

• They serve as connective tissue between people, tools, and organizational knowledge.

An AI OS delivers leverage on everything – the more complex your operations, the more valuable these systems become.

The businesses that thrive will be those that understand AI is a fundamental layer that runs their entire operation. The shift from "AI as tools" to "AI as operating system" is coming fast.

(If you’re a Cortex subscriber, you get the full issue with tips, details, and more below).

You don’t need more tools, you need a system.

This is the trap most companies fall into:

• They keep buying tools.

• They keep hiring people to manage those tools.

• They keep building complexity instead of systems.

An AI Agent OS flips that model on its head.

You get fewer tools, more leverage, and a single interface to run your business.

So the question isn’t whether you’ll adopt AI.

The question is:

Will your business be the one managing the chaos?

Or the one installing the operating system that runs it?

Because the businesses that get this right won’t just grow faster.

They’ll run smoother, smarter, and simpler than everyone else.

And that’s the whole game.

ONE MORE THING: 

Cortex is open again for new subscribers.  

Go here now to sign-up if you’re interested.

With Cortex, every month you get:

• 2-3x full, unrestricted email issues on various AI news, tools, automations, use cases.

• 1x Signals issue, focused on strategic use of AI in your business.

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Together, they’ll help you make moves in your business to go autonomous—and scale with AI.

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Talk soon,
Sam Woods
The Editor