AI Vendors Would Rather You Not Ask Questions, CX Teams Hit 90% Adoption With No Real Plan, TikTok's Feed Is Mostly AI Slop, and IBM Is Using Wimbledon as a Trojan Horse

Jul 10

In today’s brief: Everyone says they're doing AI. Fewer people can tell you what that actually means once you look closer.

Today's stories:

1. The questions you should be asking before you buy any AI tool

2. AI adoption in CX just hit 90%, but deployment tells a different story

3. Nearly 60% of what TikTok shows new users is AI slop

4. IBM is using Wimbledon and Formula One as a Trojan horse for enterprise AI

The Questions You Should Be Asking Before You Buy Any AI Tool

AI vendors are having a moment, which means so is the sales pitch that comes with it. Laura Schiele at Search Engine Land put together a list of questions worth asking before you sign anything, and honestly, they're just basic due diligence that somehow keeps getting skipped the second "AI" shows up in the pitch deck.

Start with the question nobody says out loud. What business problem does this actually solve, and what does ROI look like in real numbers, not vague productivity promises? From there, ask how your data gets used and stored, and push for actual customer proof instead of a logo slide. Implementation matters too, since a tool that eats six months of engineering time isn't the quick win the demo made it look like.

None of this is exotic advice. It's just the stuff that's easy to forget to ask when a sales rep says the magic word, and the whole room stops thinking like buyers.

AI Adoption in CX Hit 90%, and Deployment Is a Different Story

AI adoption in customer service just crossed 90%, according to Five9's 2026 Business Leaders CX Report, which sounds like a done deal until you see how differently everyone's actually doing it. Respondents are nearly evenly split between end-to-end platforms, hybrid environments, and best-of-breed tools, meaning nobody's converged on a standard playbook yet. Infrastructure tells the same story, with 84% of organizations still migrating from on-premises systems to the cloud and most settling into hybrid setups instead of rushing to finish the move.

Data security is the top concern at 31%, and reliability, scalability, and customer consent each worry 27% of respondents, with only 4% saying they haven't hit a significant implementation snag. That caution shows up in where AI actually gets deployed, with internal, operational use cases like self-service automation and quality management leading the way while customer-facing applications like personalization sit closer to a quarter of respondents.

The ROI argument is already settled. Nine in 10 respondents report positive returns across every AI use case measured, so the conversation has shifted from whether AI is worth it to how carefully you deploy it. Organizations are proving the technology works quietly on the back end before they trust it in front of a customer, which is a pretty reasonable way to build confidence.

Nearly 60% of What TikTok Shows New Users Is AI Slop

Nearly 60% of the videos TikTok shows brand-new users are AI slop, according to a new Kapwing report covered in MarketingProfs. Kapwing built a fresh TikTok account and tracked the first 500 videos in the For You feed. 59% were AI-generated junk, roughly three times the rate Kapwing found running the same test on YouTube Shorts.

Kids' content gets it worst. Kapwing manually reviewed 10,742 TikTok videos across 20 categories and found the Kids category topped the list at 57.4% AI slop, with the hashtag #cartoonkids hitting a jaw-dropping 97%. Science and Education, Health, and History weren't far behind, all sitting around one-third AI slop.

Fashion, Music, and Fitness stayed almost entirely human-made, all under 2%. If you're a B2B marketer wondering why "authentic content" keeps showing up as a buzzword in every strategy deck, this is why.

IBM Is Using Wimbledon as a Trojan Horse for Enterprise AI

IBM's chief communications and brand officer, Sarah Bruning Meron, has a phrase for how the company demos its AI and quantum technology these days. She calls it the most obvious Trojan horse strategy ever. Instead of leading with spec sheets, IBM leans on sponsorships like Wimbledon and Formula One to get people talking about the brand first and the technology second.

"When you go to a cocktail party, many of the technologies we're talking about aren't necessarily what people want to discuss," she told Marketing Week. "They want to talk about Wimbledon or Formula One. So we use those sports properties as a way to demo the technology."

Her bigger point is that B2B buyers are just people who happen to sit on a buying committee, not a different species that responds to different rules. She's also blunt about AI's role in content. "AI has made it very easy for brands to scale content," she said, "but it hasn't necessarily made it easy to scale the content people actually want."

That's it for today.

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FAQs

How high is AI adoption in customer experience?

AI adoption in customer service has crossed 90%, according to Five9's 2026 Business Leaders CX Report. However, organizations remain divided on deployment architecture, with respondents nearly evenly split between end-to-end platforms, hybrid environments, and best-of-breed tools.

How much AI-generated content is on TikTok?

A Kapwing study found 59% of the first 500 videos shown to a new TikTok account were AI slop, about three times the rate Kapwing found on YouTube Shorts. Kids' content had the highest concentration at 57.4%, with the hashtag #cartoonkids reaching 97%.

What is IBM's Trojan horse marketing strategy?

IBM uses high-profile sponsorships like Wimbledon and Formula One to demonstrate its AI and quantum technology in contexts customers already care about, rather than leading with product specifications. IBM's brand chief Sarah Bruning Meron describes the approach as a way to build interest in the technology through experiences people already want to engage with.

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Greg Zakowicz