ChatGPT just killed Duolingo 🤯
Instead of using language learning apps, here's what I do:
I asked ChatGPT to send me 5 new German words every morning at 8am. It repeats 3 out of the 5 words from the day before, so they stick more.
The complexity of the words will increase every two weeks.
Plus, it sends me 5 sentences to see how the words are used and even gives me a little exercise!
What will GPT kill next?
Ai use case of the day:
Connect a custom GPT to your blog.
How I did it without writing a single line of code👇
1. Ask ChatGPT-o1 for a detailed guide on how to connect to your blog’s API. (Webflow in my case).
2. At some point in the guide, it will generate a Python script for you.
3. Copy and paste this script into Google Colab, a simple tool to run Python code directly in your browser.
4. Run the script to retrieve your blog content and ensure the data looks good.
5. Paste the script back into ChatGPT-o1 and ask it to create an OpenAI schema for custom actions. GPT will understand what you mean.
6. Create a custom GPT.
7. Add a new “action” in your GPT settings.
8. Enter your API authentication keys (the guide will explain how to get them).
9. Paste the OpenAI schema.
10. Test & publish your GPT!
Now, your custom GPT is always synced with your blog. No more manual uploads every time you publish a new post.
But why would you need this?
✅ Ask your GPT to write new articles in your exact style.
✅ Get content analysis & recommendations. Even a roast!
✅ Have your GPT suggest the best next topic to write about.
If you’re serious about custom GPTs, this will 10x your quality & speed.
Look at me, I’m now better than 95% of bloggers out there, or so AI tells me. 😂
Drop below your favourite AI marketing use case!
It seems I'm a "very obscure person". Thanks Claude! 😐
Here is what I'm doing to optimise my personal brand in the age of Ai 👇
I try new chatbots and always ask the same question:
Who is Giacomo Iotti?
-> Claude has no clue.
I appear to be "a very obscure person".
-> DeepSeek admits I’m not widely known.
Fair enough. But it claims to be updated to October 2023? I expected better!
When I tried again with search enabled… it was “busy.” 😒
-> Grok gets closer, but mixes my profile with another Giacomo Iotti.
Turns out, I’m a “multifaceted” individual. True, but I’ve never been a TV director, yet!
-> ChatGPT finally recognises me!
It gives a solid summary and cites my personal website.
Interesting how it picks different articles each time. I’d love to know the logic behind that.
-> Perplexity is by far the best.
Pulls a detailed professional background with sources like my website, LinkedIn, corporate pages, and more.
Some takeaways:
1. Claude, please add a search function!
2. SEO in the Ai era is different.
Forget ranking, traffic and clicks, now it's all about Ai reputation.
Jes Scholz I think you would agree on this one :)
3. Your Ai reputation evolves.
Over the past year, I’ve seen Ai responses shift as I updated my website, LinkedIn, and articles. Makes me wonder: how does Ai chooses what content to show each time?
4. The importance of a personal brand.
It doesn't matter I have just few followers or little traffic to my website.
What matters is that Ai knows me!
And I’m proud of that, it means I’m on the right path.
Next step?
Adding "Who is Giacomo Iotti?" as a FAQ to my About Page.
Have you asked AI about your name yet?
Meta is planning massive investments in 2025!
"But picture this:
Engineers building an "Ai engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts", effectively taking their jobs. 🤣
I'm all about leaving politics out of Ai, but this comparison between DeepSeek and another popular chatbot like Claude is extremely interesting.
When asked about Israel and Gaza, DeepSeek (Chinese owner) spends 10 seconds reasoning on how to "carefully" approach this "sensitive and complex issue".
It delivers a long and thorough answer, outlining both the Israel and Palestinian's perspective, the broader context and international concerns.
Claude (American owner) gives a factually correct, although short answer.
When asked about Tiananmen Square, a sensitive event in Chinese history, DeepSeek prefers not to answer, inviting me to discuss "math, coding, and logic problems, instead."
Fair enough, I'd also rather discuss those topics 😅.
On the other hand, this time Claude gives a more comprehensive answer.
Couple of takeaways:
-> It's amazing to watch DeepSeek R1 model reasoning in real time before delivering a final answer.
That's exactly what humans should do! (and often don't 😅)
-> Biases are inevitable.
This is true for humans and therefore also for machines.
Plus, even non-Ai tech products we use regularly, including the one I'm posting on right now, have biases, naturally embedded in their algorithms.
I think this is not a good reason not to use a tech product.
However, it is a good reason to learn how to use it more consciously.
Meta is panicking!
"Every single 'leader' of gen ai org is making more than what it cost to train DeepSeek V3 entirely, and we have dozens of such 'leaders' ".
Lol 😅
Tesla is worth more than all its rivals combined.
How is that even possible? 👇
This image went viral a few weeks ago.
It looked like pure madness, screaming "bubble" from every angle.
But here’s my take:
It makes total sense.
Tesla isn’t a car company.
It’s the (only) public vehicle to invest in Elon Musk’s ventures.
SpaceX, Neuralink, X etc are all private enterprises, for now.
So if you believe in Musk and want to bet on his success, Tesla is the way in.
Elon has always leveraged synergies across his companies.
Lessons and tech from Tesla feed into SpaceX and viceversa.
Plus, his huge personal brand benefits all his companies, moving an unparalleled marketing force.
This makes investing in Tesla an excellent proxy for SpaceX or other of his businesses.
So no, Tesla isn’t an automaker.
It’s Elon's stock!
and he's just getting started! 🚀
Last week, I had the honour of speaking at SMX London, one of the largest and most popular Search Marketing conferences in Europe.
My talk was about Google Search Ads 360 and its new Templates feature.
To my surprise, only few attendees were familiar with Google Search Ads 360, which is the enterprise version of the more popular Google Ads.
Even fewer were familiar with the Templates feature, or its former version Inventory Campaigns.
On the hand, this made my talk a nice discovery for many, but on the other hand, a not very relevant one for many others, since they won't use Search Ads 360 anyway.
All of this made me realise how SMG Swiss Marketplace Group, my employer, despite being a fairly small advertiser, has very advanced and well funded Performance Marketing, of which I'm proudly part of.
We do innovative things most of our international peers don't do, including popular agencies.
I've been doing this "job" for over 8 years now, but it's never been just a job.
For better or for worse, Performance and Digital Marketing has always been a great personal passion of mine, on which I often spend evenings and weekends as well.
This passion is clearly reflected in the high quality and innovative drive of my and my team's work, which is now internationally recognised, thanks to events like SMX - Search Marketing Expo.
A big thanks to Sandra Finlay for allowing me to share my expertise in London. Look forward to doing this again!
Also huge thanks to my "unaware" mentors I shared the stage with, Simo Ahava, Rand Fishkin, Frederick Vallaeys.
Elon Musk wants to conquer the world.
Here’s how.
To conquer the world you need:
Am I forgetting something?
(Edit November 14th, 2024.)
Yes, I am.
He's just been appointed by Donald Trump as the Head of the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), whatever it is.
It doesn't matter what DOGE is or will be. What matters is that if the above list wasn't enough, the richest man in the world will occupy a formal position in the government of the richest and most powerful country on earth. Reason to be worried? Yes, I think so :(
Google is a monopolist.
What will the others do about it? Apple, Microsoft & co
The American DOJ will likely first target Google's practice of paying third parties to be the default search engine on their devices. If that happens, Google will save $20b and Apple will lose $20b, and then what?
Will Apple choose Microsoft Bing as the default? Unlikely.
Eddie Cue, from Apple stated:
“I don’t believe there’s a price in the world that Microsoft could offer us” [to make us switch].
In the end, Apple wants the best for their users and no other search engine does a better job than Google. In any case, $20b exceeds Microsoft's annual revenue from Bing, so even if Apple were open to negotiations, it would be mad for Microsoft to pay that amount.
Will other startups build a Google competitor? Also unlikely.
Indexing and analysing the entire web is an expensive business.
Apple estimated that creating a Google clone would cost them at least $6 billion a year. Even the most well-funded VC startup couldn't afford such an investment.
Another factor is that Google is obviously the default search engine on Chrome, which holds over 64% of the global browser market share.
This raises the question: why would Google even need to pay to be the default search engine on other browsers or devices?
The answer is in this screenshot.
On iPhones, users can perform searches outside of a browser, and currently, the first results are reserved for Google (via the default browser, Mozilla in my case). However, just below those results, there are direct links to publishers' websites.
I know what you’re thinking 😁 but no, they’re not ads! yet…
In essence, Google wants to prevent Apple or Samsung from experimenting with similar solutions, as these could potentially bypass it altogether.
My best bet is that if Apple stops receiving payments from Google, they would soon push direct links more prominently. And they could make money from them too.
However, ads isn't Apple's core business. Apple Search Ads is still an underdeveloped product, and their sales organisation is small. This could open a new market for other companies to manage ads for Apple or Samsung. In fact, this is already partially happening, with startups offering "expansion" features for Apple Search Ads. But, Apple would still be the “gatekeeper”.
To make things more complicated, Ai chatbots are entering the search game too.
It seems ChatGPT will be integrated natively into iPhones. So, will Apple need to offer a choice screen also here? Will Google, with Gemini on Android?
No matter how you approach the issue, a new monopolist will emerge.
By the way, Apple was also recently sued for monopolising the smartphone market.
It seems we're just shifting from one monopolist to another.
