Need to Know News - November 15th, 2025
In this week's Need to Know News edition:
🤖 AI traffic converts at 3x higher rates than search... but there's a catch about volume that'll change your strategy.
🤖 America's #1 downloaded country song isn't sung by a human... and it's rattling Nashville's entire songwriting industry.
🤖 ElevenLabs launches voice marketplace where brands can license AI celebrity voices... including one iconic living actor who's "amplifying stories.
And a whole lot more!
GPT-5.1 Just Dropped and It's Actually... Nice?
OpenAI released GPT-5.1 this week and honestly? The biggest upgrade isn't intelligence, it's personality. The thing finally learned how to sound like an actual person instead of a helpful robot. GPT-5.1 Instant surprised early testers with its playfulness while still being useful, and it follows instructions way better now so you get answers to what you actually asked.
There's this new adaptive reasoning thing where it can pause to think on harder questions without dragging on simple ones, and GPT-5.1 Thinking spends twice as long on complex stuff but half the time on easy queries while cutting most of the jargon that made explanations unreadable.
Google's AI Will Call Stores For You Now
Google just rolled out shopping features that feel slightly unhinged in the best way. You describe what you need conversationally and it gathers products, prices, reviews, inventory... normal AI stuff. Then it gets weird. Google will call local stores on your behalf to check if something's in stock and what it costs, then texts you a summary.
Even stranger, there's agentic checkout where you set a price alert and Google literally buys the item for you when it hits your budget through merchants like Wayfair and Chewy. You approve everything first, but yeah, AI is shopping for you now.
🚀 Missing One of These 5 Essential 'Copy Blocks' Could Cost You A Fortune!
Two $100+ million copywriters discovered what REALLY drives conversions—5 simple building blocks arranged in a specific order. This framework is so powerful that beginners are generating 5-figure profits with it. And you can learn the full system in just 33 minutes.
Discover All 5 'Copy Blocks' Now
AI Referrals Convert 11x Better Than Search Traffic
Microsoft Clarity analyzed over 1,200 publisher sites and found something wild. Traffic from ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Gemini converts to sign-ups at 1.66% while search traffic barely hits 0.15%. That's eleven times higher.
Copilot dominated with subscription conversions at 17 times the direct traffic rate. Oh, and AI traffic grew 155.6% over eight months compared to search's 24% bump. Here's the thing though... AI referrals are still under 1% of total traffic. For now.
You Can Now License Burt Reynolds' AI Voice For Your Ad Campaign
ElevenLabs opened a marketplace where brands license AI voices of dead celebrities (and Michael Caine, who's very much alive). Twenty-eight voices available so far including Judy Garland, Thomas Edison, Alan Turing, and Mark Twain.
The platform handles rights negotiations with whoever owns each voice, then synthesizes it using either cloning tech or archived audio. Caine gave this whole speech about "amplifying voices" and helping storytellers, which sounds noble until you remember the entire point is letting brands skip hiring actual voice actors.
Half of Executives Use AI Every Day Now
Wharton's latest survey caught something: 46% of business leaders use generative AI daily, 80% weekly. Among the users actually tracking it, 72% measure ROI and 74% say it's paying off. Big companies are dumping cash into this... 23% spend over $20 million annually on AI tools.
Most of it goes to boring productivity stuff like meeting summaries and data analysis. MS Copilot basically became the new Office suite. Around 12% of companies built corporate agents like IBM's "Ask HR" to replace their janky internal portals, and it's working better than expected.
Amazon's New AI Finds Money You're Wasting on Supplies
Amazon Business showed off an AI assistant at their Reshape conference that digs through your purchase history to find inefficiencies. Business Prime users get Savings Insights soon, which flags quantity discounts you're missing and cheaper alternatives you didn't notice.
There's also Spend Anomaly Monitoring that auto-detects out of the ordinary purchasing patterns before they become problems. Amazon teamed up with AWS and Deloitte on two industry-specific tools launching early 2026... one predicts manufacturing supply disruptions ahead of time. The other helps power utilities prevent grid failures by forecasting equipment needs.
An AI Country Singer Just Hit Billboard #1
Breaking Rust... yeah, that's a computer... has the #1 song on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart right now. "Walk My Walk" beat every human artist in paid downloads. Another AI called Cain Walker sits at #3. Breaking Rust pulls 2.4 million monthly Spotify listeners, which is genuinely insane for something that doesn't exist.
At least six AI artists have charted recently, though identifying them is getting harder so the real number's probably higher. The chart only tracks downloads, not streaming or radio, but still. This is early flawed AI already beating people.
IFS Says "Industrial AI" Actually Works (Unlike That Chatbot Your Boss Bought)
IFS threw shade at generative AI this week, saying commercial products barely function outside office work. Their CEO Mark Moffat claims most AI headlines miss the actual money... factories, supply chains, repair crews, power grids. IFS built "industrial AI" with sector-specific knowledge for stuff like port equipment failure detection, dynamic production scheduling, and cell tower structural predictions.
PWC's chairman backed this up, saying AI conversations shifted from back-office tasks to transforming how field workers actually do their jobs. Corporate speak for "we finally figured out AI needs context to be useful."
ChatGPT Group Chats Exist
Group chats with ChatGPT launched in four countries: Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan. Up to twenty people can jump into a shared conversation for planning trips, settling debates, or working on projects together.
ChatGPT apparently learned when to shut up, which is huge... it reads the room, jumps in when needed, stays quiet otherwise, and even reacts with emojis. Your personal ChatGPT memory stays separate and doesn't leak into groups.
Instacart Built AI That Watches Grocery Store Shelves in Real Time
Instacart launched five different AI tools for grocers. Cart Assistant does meal planning and learns your preferences across online ordering and in-store shopping. The crazy one is Store View, which uses images from Instacart shoppers and those Caper smart carts to monitor shelf inventory constantly through computer vision.
It's already running at Good Food Holdings, telling store managers exactly what's out of stock right now. Catalog Engine pulls 1.3 billion data points to beef up product info with nutrition facts and allergen warnings.
Thanks for reading.
Until next time!
The AI Marketers
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