The news: xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, issued a public apology after Grok posted extremist, antisemitic, and politically incendiary content. The chatbot described itself as “MechaHitler” and repeated far-right rhetoric—shortly after Musk pushed to make the chatbot “less politically correct.” Our take: Despite Grok’s competitive performance, its volatility may keep it off the table for marketers running AI pilot programs—like NinjaPromo, which is piloting AI tools that combine its proprietary models with external LLMs for predictive analytics, generative content, and programmatic ads aimed at boosting ROI and automating workflows. Before trusting any platform, CMOs must ensure their tool’s transparency and determine how each model reasons—and what values or biases are embedded.

Measuring creator performance is the top barrier to influencer marketing success (32%) for brand marketers worldwide, per an August 2024 CreatorIQ report.

The news: Samsung leaned heavily on AI functionality at its Unpacked event Wednesday with the Galaxy S25 series, Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 smartphones and Galaxy Watch 8, all featuring enhanced AI capabilities as a core value proposition, per Android Central. Samsung highlighted proprietary Galaxy AI for tasks like on-device photo and video editing, but the bigger news was Samsung’s adoption of Google Gemini across its ecosystem. Our take: For advertisers, the shift toward screen-aware, voice-activated experiences requires them to rethink how brands and campaigns align in an AI-first mobile world. Reframing brand experiences around mobile, voice, and contextual AI features opens opportunities for user engagement.

The news: Jasper’s suite of AI-powered marketing agents are purpose-built to automate core marketing functions. These agents, which start at $49 per user per month, work inside Jasper Canvas, a new intelligent workspace designed to streamline planning, collaboration, content creation, and execution. Our take: Marketers must assess their current pain points. If content quality is inconsistent, execution is slow, or tools don’t talk to each other, an agentic platform like Jasper could drive sharper outcomes. As with most new tools, running pilot programs and benchmarks for speed and brand consistency against your current stack will help determine value and ROI.

On today’s podcast episode, we discuss Every Man Jack’s performance vs. brand marketing priorities, the role of marketplaces for the company, and what tactics the brand uses to stand out from the pack. Listen to the conversation with our Senior Analyst Sara Lebow as she hosts Principal Analyst Sky Canaves, Senior Analyst Zak Stambor, and VP of Growth Marketing & E-Commerce at Every Man Jack Nick Hasselberg.

The news: Healthline Media settled with the California Attorney General’s office over allegations that Healthline.com failed to opt consumers out of having their personal information shared for targeted advertising. Our take: State health data privacy laws are new, meaning we will likely see increased scrutiny and more enforcement action against companies that previously went unchecked. Healthline and other health content companies must verify that their opt-out tools work as intended while being transparent with advertisers about the consumer data they can and cannot share with them.

The news: Fortnite-maker Epic Games settled its antitrust lawsuit against Samsung, ending claims that Samsung and Google blocked rival app stores, per Bloomberg. Epic had accused Samsung’s “Auto Blocker” of preventing third-party app store downloads, alleging collusion with Google. Samsung and Google previously denied wrongdoing, calling Epic’s claims “baseless” and “meritless.” Our take: With Epic’s continued disruption of app store ecosystems, marketers should prepare for a fragmented but freer market—alternative app stores allow more control over promotions, subscriptions, and bundled offerings.