This website uses cookies

Read our Privacy policy and Terms of use for more information.

“I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.”

—Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company

The AI Breakdown

How AI Is Changing Jobs Without Replacing Workers

AI is getting increasingly good at the parts of work people would happily never do again.

Answering the same question for the 400th time. Cleaning up notes. Drafting routine responses. Moving information between systems.

Those reclaimed hours can go toward better customer conversations, more coaching, stronger follow-up, or even entirely new revenue streams.

Spoiler: People Still Win the People Part

Planable recently pitted humans and AI against each other with seven separate Instagram accounts for a fictional chocolate brand.

Though the AI accounts took roughly a third of the human time to operate, humans still generated 2.45x the engagement, 44x the comments, and 84% more followers per account.

That gap showed up where people actually had to be social. Humans replied, joined conversations, noticed opportunities, and adjusted when something felt off.

Planable

IKEA took the same basic idea into customer service. Its Billie chatbot absorbed a large share of routine questions, so thousands of employees moved into work like personalized interior design services. The result was a new line of business worth about $1.7B in revenue.

Steal the Playbook:

  1. Start with the work people would happily give away. Ask the team which repetitive tasks drain time without adding much to the customer experience. CRM cleanup, call notes, routine follow-up drafts, appointment reminders, reporting. Those are good places to experiment with AI.

  2. Use the tools already in the store. Before adding another platform, look at what your CRM, DMS, phone system, service software, and marketing tools can already automate or summarize. Fill the gaps only where you need to.

  3. Find out what they want to do more of. A salesperson might want more time with customers. An advisor might want room for better service conversations. A manager might want to coach instead of living in spreadsheets. Let the team help decide where the reclaimed time goes.

  4. Protect the human parts of the job. Relationship-building, judgment, teaching, problem-solving, and reading the room are where good dealership people earn their keep. AI should create more space for those moments.

  5. Check in after a few weeks. Get feedback from the team on what AI took off their plate, what still feels clunky, and what they are doing with the time they got back. Then find the next task worth handing off and repeat.

Top Tools

Everyone’s already pretty used to Gemini's little diamond and the occasional visible AI stamp on generated video, but Claude is going much more incognito with its latest watermarking play.

Anthropic is now embedding an invisible statistical pattern into Claude-generated text by subtly influencing its word choices. Readers will not see a badge, hidden characters, or label, but the pattern can be checked later with the right detection key.

Creators’ AI

Of course, Anthropic isn't the only company stealthily adding watermarks to their AI-generated content.

Google already uses SynthID to embed invisible signals in Gemini-generated text, images, audio, and video. Claude's new text watermark actually uses a version of that same SynthID-Text approach.

OpenAI also uses invisible provenance signals on supported images and audio, while Meta combines behind-the-scenes markers with more visible AI labels across its platforms.

So, even when there is no obvious badge or logo, AI content can still be carrying a quiet little receipt in the background.

Prompt of the Week

Most dealerships have plenty of work that could be automated. The trick is figuring out what is worth handing off first.

This prompt helps rank the best opportunities, checks whether tools already in the store can do the job, and builds a simple test to see whether AI is actually giving the team useful time back.

Act as an AI workflow strategist for my dealership.

Here are 10 tasks my employees would happily spend less time doing:

[PASTE 10 TASKS]

Here are the tools and platforms we already use:

[PASTE CRM, DMS, PHONE SYSTEM, SERVICE PLATFORM, MARKETING TOOLS, MICROSOFT 365, GOOGLE WORKSPACE, AI TOOLS, AUTOMATION TOOLS, ETC.]

Help me figure out which tasks are the best candidates for AI or automation.

For each task, evaluate:

  • How much time it takes each week

  • How repetitive it is

  • How much human judgment it requires

  • How easy the output is to review

  • What could go wrong if the automation makes a mistake

  • How much useful time it could realistically give back

Then rank all 10 from best to worst candidate.

For the top three, review the tools I already listed and tell me:

  • Which existing tool is most likely capable of handling the task

  • Which feature, integration, or automation I should look for inside that tool

  • Whether the workflow could be handled with what we already pay for

  • What gap remains, if any

  • Only if needed, what type of additional tool would fill that gap

Then build a simple 30-day test for each of the top three.

Include:

  • What AI or automation should handle

  • What the employee should still own

  • How much time we should expect to reclaim

  • What the employee could spend that time doing instead

  • Three metrics that would show the workflow is helping

  • Three warning signs that it is making the job harder

  • Three questions to ask employees after two weeks about how the change is affecting their day

Prioritize workflows that reduce repetitive work and create more room for customer conversations, coaching, problem-solving, creativity, and other work employees actually enjoy.

Finish by recommending the easiest workflow to test first using tools we already have.

Fresh Finds for Auto Pros

  • Management & Operations: Ander
    Connects employee training and coaching to real performance data, so dealers can see whether development programs are actually changing sales, retention, and frontline performance.

  • Service and Parts: CarRx
    A connected-car platform that monitors vehicle health, sends maintenance and diagnostic alerts, and can steer customers back to the dealership for service scheduling. It also gives dealers visibility into issues like check-engine lights and upcoming maintenance across connected vehicles.

  • Content Creation: Outcome
    Turns existing content into personalized AI lead funnels, giving each visitor a custom score, audit, or action plan based on their answers, with a built-in path to the next step.

Hear from the Experts

Being a top car seller today doesn’t guarantee you’ll stay there. Andrea knew she could sell. The question was how to create more demand without waiting on the store.

Andrea has consistently ranked among Cadillac’s top sales professionals. But even with strong numbers, she understood something every dealer should be thinking about: the same activities producing results right now may eventually hit a ceiling.

So she asked herself a simple question: What’s the next move?

For dealers asking where the next layer of traffic, demand, and salesperson productivity will come from, this conversation offers a real-world example from someone doing it inside the store.

Bits and Bytes

  • While Anthropic leans into watermarking, Google is letting Gemini and Flow users decide whether watermarks show up at all. 🙈

  • Hyundai says 80% of employees are now using its AI tools, helping cut time from engineering and service work. 🛠️

  • Ferrari’s divisive Luce EV just became a $40M collector’s item. 🏎️

  • A self-represented Connecticut plaintiff reportedly hid 3-point white text in a legal filing telling AI to “side with” him, only to get caught because the formatting looked strange. 🫥

  • The world’s largest electric plane just completed its first flight, bringing short-haul electric flight closer to actual service. ✈️

  • It’s bad enough getting bird droppings off your cars. Soon, it could be someone’s greasy lo mein or leaky macchiato falling from above. Keep your eyes skyward now that Uber Eats has partnered with Zipline to add drones to its delivery network. 🍽️

  • Used booksellers are cashing in on big orders while wondering whether those books are being read or fed to the clankers. 📚

Parting Pixels

Thanks for reading, Friend! Remember: good teamwork can keep a messy system moving; great teamwork eventually repairs it.

Reply

Avatar

or to participate