The 2025 Pocket Guide to AI Speak
Terms That Define (and Deride) Our New Reality
As we step into 2025, another year of mind-boggling generative AI breakthroughs and disruptions awaits. AI not only assists us but also perplexes and occasionally surpasses us. This lexicon, covering both personal and work applications of AI, captures the quirks, challenges, and humor of navigating our AI-driven reality.
Identity & Truth
AI is reshaping how we present ourselves, blurring the lines between human ingenuity and algorithmic assistance. Can you tell what's real and what's enhanced? (Spoiler: it’s harder than you think.)
Bot-spotting – The art of catching and calling out someone's excessive AI assistance by identifying telltale digital breadcrumbs.
Attribution Anxiety – Uncertainty about whether to credit AI or humans for creative works.
Reflection Distortion – When an AI system becomes so attuned to your personal inputs that it reflects your biases rather than truth.
Bias Baiting - Crafting prompts to skew AI responses (a.k.a. “Prompt Poisoning”).
Synthetic Sophistication - Using AI to appear more cultured or knowledgeable than one actually is.
Psychological & Creative Responses
AI is inspiring, unnerving, and occasionally infuriating, forcing us to redefine creativity and confront our deepest fears about obsolescence.
Narrative Nesting - When AI-generated stories reference other AI-generated content
Innovation Infirmity – The gradual atrophy of original creative thinking due to AI dependence.
Algorithmic Anxiety – The fear of being replaced or outperformed by AI systems.
Inspiration Inflation – The overwhelming flood of AI-generated creative possibilities leading to decision paralysis.
Algorithm Attachment – Emotional connection to specific AI models or outputs.
Ideation Inversion – When AI becomes the primary creative force, with humans simply curating outputs.
Prompting Patterns & Interaction Styles
Mastering prompts is the secret to unlocking AI’s potential—but it’s also a minefield of trial, error, and occasionally hilarious mishaps.
Prompt Override: Forcing an AI to retry or reconsider a rejected command by reformulating or insisting on the request. “Try again, dammit!”
Prompt Purgatory – The endless cycle of refining prompts without reaching satisfaction.
Voice Voodoo - The art of getting AI to understand nuanced speech patterns or accents, often requiring users to adopt strange new speaking habits.
Prompt Karma – The consequences of poorly framed prompts coming back to haunt you with unexpected or unhelpful outputs.
Citation Circularity - When AI-generated research references itself
Workflow Dynamics & Collaboration
In the AI-powered workplace, efficiency and chaos are two sides of the same coin. Collaboration thrives—unless someone gets stuck waiting for an AI-generated summary.
Automation Apathy – Losing motivation or engagement in tasks because AI handles the bulk of the work
Summary Surfer – Someone who glides over detailed content, relying on AI-generated summaries to grasp the essentials.
Generative Gaps – When team members operating at different AI capability levels struggle to collaborate effectively.
Prompt Privilege – The power dynamics created by varying levels of AI tool access and expertise.
Generative Dependence – The inability to start a task without AI assistance.
The Answer Economy
The future of marketing is not just about flashy campaigns—it’s about answering questions clearly, authentically, and efficiently. (See my recent Ad Age column.) Brand win in the “Answer Economy” by mastering FAQs, transparency, and clarity to meet both human and AI expectations.
FAQ Gap – A brand or company that poorly answers questions on its website, negatively influencing how answer engines replay information.
Algorithmic Anchor – Content that disproportionately shape a brand's AI search results, including FAQs, product pages, and other digital assets. (Source: BrandRank.AI).
Answer Arthritis: Inability of brands to adapt site search or FAQs to relevant questions even on obvious topics (product safety, basic “how to,” sustainability).
Answer Divide – The gap between a brand’s ability to answer questions and how LLMs answer questions. (Spoiler alert: it’s getting wider every day.)
Transparency Threshold – The rising expectation of younger, tech-savvy consumers for detailed, credible answers.
Echo Error - When AI voice assistants misinterpret or repeat back user commands in a way that's comically off-target
Citation Circularity - When AI-generated research references itself
Multimodal Manifestations
AI is turning data into wonders and weirdness, sometimes with surprising (and hilarious) results. Brace yourself for the beauty, chaos, and occasional extra limbs.
Appendage Bingo – The unpredictable and often humorous results of AI-generated characters ending up with extra limbs or missing body parts.
Graphic Glitch - Where AI image creators produce visually appealing but contextually nonsensical images, like a cat with butterfly wings.
Prompt Paupers – When you've blown through your AI credits (e.g. Sora) and have to wait for refresh.
Drone Attack – The tendency of AI image generators to add ominous swarms of drones to any future scenario.
Prompt Tripping – Using AI as a real-time tour guide, getting location-based history, facts, and stories through voice prompts while driving.
Hallucination Hunting – The process of fact-checking AI-generated content for accuracy.
Minimalist Modeling – The obsessive use of AI to strip all writing or design down to its barest essence.
Synthetic Serenader – Someone who constantly shares AI-generated songs (Guilty as charged!)
Ghost Hosting: The temptation to sacrifice your own voice for the delightful banter of synthetic hosts via
Notebook LLM.
Good luck in 2025!
About “The Answer Economy”
The Answer Economy demystifies marketing's AI revolution, where mastering customer questions has become more valuable than traditional advertising. Written by Pete Blackshaw, consumer trust pioneer and CEO of BrandRank.AI, this newsletter explores how AI is reshaping brand-consumer relationships and raising the stakes for transparency. Drawing on Pete’s decades of marketing leadership at Nestle, P&G, and Nielsen, it delivers practical insights into winning strategies for an era where straight answers beat marketing spin and authentic response drives growth.
Read Other Relevant Articles By Pete
Advertising Age: The Answer Economy: Why Brands Must Improve the Way They Answer Questions in the AI Era (October 2024)
Advertising Age: AI AI Realities Marketers Can't Ignore (2024)
Advertising Age: Why Marketers Must Align Strategies to Consumer Norms and Values in 2024
Advertising Age: How AI Would Judge Cannes Entries
Advertising Age: How AI’s Digital Memory Can Debunk Brand Narratives
Advertising Age: Postcard from Cannes: Simplicity Conquers Technology
Advertising Age: Want to be a Better Leader: Start by Managing Digital Dualisms
Advertising Age: Marketers, Get Back to Boring
Perfect post for where we are in the AI revolution!