It can feel like artificial intelligence (AI) appeared overnight. One second it was Science Fiction the next its writing emails, editing photos and showing up in everyday apps.
Did we really go from zero AI to AI everywhere?
The short answer is – no. AI didn’t suddenly appear, but it does feel that way. What changed was visibility, access, being named AI, and speed of adoption.
AI didn’t appear Overnight – It has been developing for Decades and became Visible
AI has existed quietly for years before the general public noticed. AI has been used for:
- Search Engine ranking results
- Netflix and Spotify recommendations
- Spam filters in email
- Navigation apps predicting traffic
- Banking
- and more!
Before, AI was mostly invisible to everyday users. The shift happened when AI became consumer-facing instead of purely technical. In a nutshell, we didn’t go from zero to everywhere, we went from hidden AI to visible/named AI.
Generative AI
The biggest shift wasn’t that AI suddenly became intelligent. It was that it became accessible. Generative AI made AI interactive and accessible. ChatGPT, for example, made AI conversational and creative. For the first time, non-technical users could use AI directly, accelerating adoption dramatically.
That changed everything. Instead of AI being a specialist tool used by developers and analysts, it became something marketers, business owners, writers, and everyday users could use immediately.
AI adoption in organisations jumped from about 20% in 2020 to 78% in 2025
allaboutai.com
Why it Feels like AI is suddenly Everywhere
- AI is being added (visibly) to existing tools like email platforms and search engines
- The Speed of Adoption has been fast. Nearly 8 in 10 organisations now use AI (allaboutai.com)
- AI-generated content has become trendy and shareable.
- There has been an increase in Media Coverage.
Why This Moment Feels Different From Previous Tech Shifts
The Internet changed how we accessed information.
Social media changed how we communicated.
AI feels different because it touches something more personal – thinking and creativity.
AI doesn’t just help us work faster. It helps generate ideas, write, design, and analyse. That creates excitement, but also discomfort and uncertainty. For marketers and business owners, it raises real questions:
- What stays human?
- What becomes automated?
- Where does real value now come from?
Ethical Questions related to AI
As AI becomes more visible in everyday work, another conversation has started to grow alongside it – not about capability, but about responsibility. AI doesn’t exist in the cloud in the way we imagine it. It runs on physical infrastructure: servers, data centres, electricity grids, and cooling systems. And like any large-scale technology, it has an environmental footprint. One of the lesser-known parts of this discussion is water.
The ethical concern is less about whether AI uses water (almost all industries do), and more about where and how resources are used.
Some data centres are located in regions already experiencing water stress. This raises questions about whether water used for cooling infrastructure should compete with local communities, agriculture, or drinking supplies.
This is where AI moves from being a technical discussion into a social one.
- Who benefits from AI?
- Who carries the environmental cost?
- And how transparent should companies be about resource usage?
These questions – and others – governments, tech companies, and businesses are still working on.
The conversation around AI and water consumption often swings between two extremes. On one side, claims suggest AI is massively wasteful. On the other, claims suggest the impact is negligible.
The truth sits somewhere in the middle.
AI infrastructure does consume resources, and demand is growing rapidly as adoption increases. At the same time, AI can also contribute positively – improving energy efficiency, helping model climate systems, and supporting smarter infrastructure planning.
Like most technologies, the impact depends on how responsibly it is built and used.
I joke that if we are concerned about AI, are we concerned about meat or alcohol consumption? Reducing meat consumption would almost certainly have a much larger effect on global water use than reducing AI use. Alcohol generally has a much larger water footprint per unit consumed than AI image generation – but that still doesn’t mean one “cancels out” the other. It’s not that simple but it is ‘food’ for thought. In the end, we should act responsibly in everything that we do and protect the natural resources for future generations, looking at things from both sides of the coin.
The Real Marketing Question Isn’t “Should We Use AI?”
The better question is:
How do we use AI intentionally?
AI can speed up processes, improve efficiency, and support creativity. But it doesn’t replace clarity, strategy, or human understanding. The businesses that will benefit most from AI aren’t the ones using it the most – but the ones using it with purpose.
At the end of the day, marketing is still about people. AI is just another tool. A powerful one, yes. But still a tool.
