The Emperor's New AI: How to Spot Marketing's Latest Magic Trick

Stanford lecturer Jehangir Amjad poses a deliciously provocative question to his students: Was the 1969 moon landing a product of artificial intelligence? The answer reveals everything wrong with how we talk about AI today—because by the loosest possible definition, sure, those guidance algorithms were AI precursors. But by that logic, my microwave is basically HAL 9000.

We're drowning in AI washing, and it's time to call it what it is: the latest chapter in tech marketing's long history of turning ordinary tools into revolutionary breakthroughs. Remember when every company had to be "in the cloud"? Or when blockchain was going to save democracy? AI is having its moment as the marketing department's favorite fairy dust, and the results are about as magical as you'd expect.

When "AI-Powered" Means "Human-Powered with Extra Steps"

The poster child for AI washing has to be Amazon's Just Walk Out technology. For years, Amazon marketed this as a triumph of computer vision and deep learning—shopping's frictionless future powered by artificial intelligence. The reality? More than 1,000 workers in India were manually reviewing shopping footage and creating receipts, with 700 out of every 1,000 transactions requiring human verification as of 2022. That's not AI; that's outsourced labor with really expensive cameras.

Customers complained about waiting hours for receipts while offshore workers rewatched recordings to figure out what they'd purchased. Amazon's internal target was fewer than 50 manual reviews per 1,000 purchases—they hit 700. The technology was so "successful" that Amazon is now phasing it out of grocery stores entirely.

This isn't innovation; it's an elaborate shell game where the magic happens somewhere else, performed by people whose labor costs less than the marketing budget spent promoting the "AI breakthrough."

The Anatomy of AI Theater

AI washing involves "misleading and deceptive behavior, typically in the form of false or exaggerated claims about the use of AI or algorithmic systems in business products or services". But unlike greenwashing, AI washing is harder to detect because most people—including many experts—don't fully understand what AI actually does.

Here's how to spot the theater:

The Buzzword Bingo: Companies throw around "machine learning," "deep learning," and "neural networks" like seasoning on overpriced fusion cuisine. If the marketing copy reads like it was written by someone who learned about AI from a TED Talk, you're probably looking at a traditional algorithm with a marketing makeover.

The Originality Trap: As Stanford's Amjad warns, "We should doubt wherever we start seeing claims of originality coming from AI because originality is a very human trait". AI excels at pattern recognition and regurgitation, not genuine creativity. When you see claims about AI "creating" or "innovating," ask what it's actually doing versus what humans are doing behind the curtain.

The Opacity Defense: Real AI systems should be able to explain their capabilities and limitations clearly. Vague descriptions about "proprietary algorithms" or "advanced machine learning" often hide the fact that there's not much intelligence—artificial or otherwise—happening.

The Stakes Are Higher Than Your Click-Through Rate

The SEC charged two investment advisers with making false AI claims and fined them $400,000 in civil penalties. The FTC launched "Operation AI Comply" to crack down on AI-related deception. Regulators in the UK, Canada, and Australia are all tightening rules around AI marketing claims.

This isn't just about truth in advertising—though that matters. AI washing distorts markets by making genuinely innovative companies compete with elaborate marketing stunts. McKinsey research shows that only 1% of executives describe their generative AI rollouts as "mature," and most haven't seen organization-wide bottom-line impact. When the hype exceeds the reality by such margins, it creates dangerous expectations gaps.

More fundamentally, AI washing erodes trust in a technology that actually has significant potential when applied correctly. Every overpromotied chatbot wrapper and every "AI-powered" rebrand of basic automation makes it harder for legitimate AI applications to earn the credibility they need.

How to Navigate the AI Marketplace Without Getting Played

Ask the Right Questions: How exactly does the AI function? What data sets were used for training? What percentage of the system's decisions require human intervention? If vendors can't answer these questions clearly, that's your answer.

Demand Specificity: "AI-enhanced" and "AI-powered" are marketing terms, not technical specifications. Push for concrete descriptions of what the technology actually does, not what it aspires to become.

Look for the Humans: Every AI system has humans somewhere in the loop—for training, oversight, error correction, or operation. Companies that are transparent about human involvement are usually more honest about their technology's actual capabilities.

The irony is that many legitimately useful AI applications don't need to be oversold. When Unilever uses digital twins to streamline product photography, they don't claim to have revolutionized creativity—they just solved a specific operational problem more efficiently. That's the difference between using AI and using AI as a marketing strategy.

We're still in the early innings of AI's impact on business and society. But we'll never reach the technology's genuine potential if we can't distinguish between real progress and expensive puppet shows. The emperor's new AI isn't just naked—it's performing human tasks while claiming to be superhuman.

Time to demand better from both our technology and our marketing.

Ready to implement AI strategies based on substance, not hype? Contact Winsome Marketing's growth experts to discover how practical AI applications can deliver measurable results without the marketing theater.