Why AI Is Google Gemini's To Lose

In this episode of The AI Moment, Jonathan and I unpack why Google’s slow start to the AI race was actually a strategic masterstroke.

We discuss how they are leveraging a 25-year search index to build a "data moat" that competitors simply cannot replicate. This isn't just about chatbots; it’s about a fundamental shift from an advertising giant to a subscription-based, AI-first ecosystem that integrates seamlessly into your daily workflow.

1. The Data Advantage: Google’s 25+ years of indexed history gives Gemini a massive "truth" advantage, reducing hallucinations compared to rivals.

2. Integration is King: The real win isn't a new LLM; it's AI baked into Docs, Sheets, and Gmail where you already work.

3. The Business Pivot: Managing the transition from ad revenue to AI subscriptions is a leadership feat that Google is navigating surprisingly well.

4. Unbeatable Free Utility: Tools like NotebookLM offer incredible value for free, often outperforming paid standalone tools.

5. The Agentic Future: We are moving to "Agent-to-Agent" commerce, where AI will soon buy products for you when prices drop.

6. Strategic Patience: Leadership didn't panic; they rebuilt from the ground up to ensure safety and utility before scaling.

   
   

   Top Tools

• Google Gemini

• Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Gmail)

• NotebookLM

• Riverside & Descript (What we use for podcasting workflows)

1. "Gemini has access to a whole load of stuff that Claude and ChatGPT are busily scrambling to learn." — Jonathan Wagstaffe

2. "They've really worked it out to shift from an advertising-based company into an AI-first company." — Danny Denhard

3. "I do think out of all the really big companies, they've been the most thoughtful and frugal." — Danny Denhard

Google is proving that utility beats novelty.

1. Trust the Data: Use Gemini for research-heavy tasks where "truth" and sourcing matter more than creativity.

2. Prepare for Agents: Start thinking now about how "Agentic Commerce" will impact your business model.

3. Steal My Workflow: I save two hours a week by using Riverside, Descript, and Gemini to automate these very show notes.

Get in touch if you liked to discuss AI

ai@dannydenhard.com

The 2x2: Four Mindset Shifts for AI Success

Hello everyone, Danny Denhard here, and welcome back to The AI Moment!

In this episode, Jonathan and I break down the four essential mindset shifts, what we call the 2x2 Input and Outputs for AI Success that we’ve been discussing with leaders since the summer.

The biggest revelation is this: you don't need to be a technical whizz to succeed with AI; you just need to change the way you think about it.

The first two shifts are all about how you input information. Stop treating the LLM like a piece of software or a Google keyword search, and start treating it like a smart, high-performing intern.

1. Embrace Natural Language Dialogue: We’ve been trained by search engines to use short, disjointed keywords. This doesn't work with LLMs. They thrive on context and conversation. Tell it who you want it to be (the 'actor') and what you want it to do (the 'director's' command). Better yet, use voice! I've found that conversational voice inputs often lead to much better, more natural outputs.

2. Ask the AI How to Prompt It (Meta-Prompting): If you're stuck, remember this: the AI can teach you how to use it. Ask it for a step-by-step guide on how to complete a complex task. My personal recommendation? Give it three to five bullet points of context first. That small effort on your part gives the model enough to generate a perfect starting prompt for you to tweak.

The next two shifts are vital for managing the output. Without them, you're at the mercy of generic advice and, worse, hallucination.

1. Challenge its Confidence: Always remember that the big models still sometimes 'hallucinate' or give highly generic advice masquerading as specific analysis. Jonathan shared a fantastic example where an AI reviewed a website without ever actually looking at the live site! If an output seems too generic or unexpected, you absolutely must challenge it. Ask it: "Did you actually perform that action?"

2. Clarify the Logic: If the answer is unexpected but potentially real (like an odd list of competitors), don't dismiss it—question the logic. Dialogue with it and ask it why it reached that specific conclusion. I also advise asking the AI to "Explain it to me like a 10-year-old" to force it to simplify its logic, which often validates or invalidates its reasoning. Furthermore, always demand the sources it used, especially when searching the web.

This 2x2 framework should be your cheat sheet for every new AI project. Have a listen to the full episode and let us know what you think!

The Input Shift: Dialogue Over Software The Output Shift: Challenge and Verify

The AI Browser Wars: Utility vs. Security

Jonathan and I dived into what I’m calling the ‘AI Browser Wars’—the quiet but vital strategic shift happening right now. For years, browsers like Chrome and Safari were essentially afterthoughts for tech giants, slowing down innovation.

I believe that’s over. The browser is now the crucial ‘marketing moment’ where you choose your LLM ecosystem.

I’ve tested the main contenders: Dia (Atlassian), Comet (Perplexity), and Atlas (ChatGPT) and the innovation is staggering.

These new, Chromium-based tools are introducing agentic features.

This means they go beyond simple search; they act as your assistant. I use Dia to tag my calendar and instruct it, in natural language, to schedule invites without fumbling with multiple tabs. Even better, I've created a custom skill (Dia /50) that can instantly summarise a one-hour podcast, giving me the exec summary and key takeaways so I know if it’s worth my time. This is true time-saving utility.

Our Key Takeaways & Recommendations:

1. Embrace the Utility: These agentic features are genuinely boosting productivity. If you want to find working discount codes instantly or delegate repetitive tasks, these tools are built for it.

2. Beware the Hardware Barrier: Jonathan rightly flagged that many cutting-edge AI features, like those in ChatGPT Atlas, currently require an M-class chip, which means some Windows and older Mac users are currently locked out.

3. The New Traffic Paradigm: For business leaders, you must adapt. Your website traffic is no longer just ‘human’ or ‘bad bot.’ It’s now ‘human,’ ‘AI assistant,’ ‘AI agent,’ and ‘bot.’ You need a strategy to define what counts as 'good' traffic and how to enable or disable access for these different entities.

4. 🛑 Security Warning is Critical: This is our most important recommendation. Since these AI browsers have the agency to touch your sensitive data (bank, calendar, company assets), the security and privacy risks are enormous. My advice is clear: Do not use these new browsers with your company’s sensitive assets until your internal IT or security teams have completed thorough, independent reviews. Enthusiasm for the tech is great, but caution around data integrity is paramount.

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Hello and welcome back to The AI Moment. In today's episode, Jonathan and I dive deep into a topic that's critical for every leader right now:

How AI is reshaping our teams, departments, and overall organizational design

It’s not a question of if this will happen; my belief is that it's already underway.

We're entering a period where department leaders will have to reorganize based on new AI tools and workflows.

This pressure isn't just coming from the top—from leadership or investors—but also from the ground up, as teams discover what these tools can do.

If you got to newsletter aimoment.co.uk there is a template you can fill out for your company or drop me an email ai@dannydenhard.com I will send you a personal copy.

As Jonathan rightly points out, it's not that AI will replace jobs, but it will absolutely replace tasks. This means we must use AI to "supercharge" and augment what our teams do

One major takeaway from this shift, as I see it, is that many specialists will need to become generalists. And this is an opportunity for the company but also for team members.

To help you get practical, I shared a few exercises I use with leadership teams to future-proof their strategy:

• The 'Circles' Model: This involves drawing concentric circles to map which teams will be 'Powered by AI' (in the centre), 'Assisted by AI', 'Using AI', or have 'Limited AI' impact (on the outer ring).

  
  

• User Journey Mapping: I also recommend mapping your customer's complete journey and then identifying every single point where an AI agent or bot could assist them.

  
  

• To help you properly visualise these frameworks, I've included diagrams and visuals in our supporting newsletter.

  
  

  Please subscribe for free at aimoment.co.uk.

  You'll get the visuals from this episode and deeper insights delivered twice a week.

  
  

  As always, if you have questions or topics you want us to cover, please get in touch

  And if you enjoyed the episode, we'd be so grateful if you could leave us a rating and review.

  
  

  Thanks for listening!

  📣 Danny & Jonathan

Hello and welcome to The AI Moment! I’m (Danny Denhard) back with Jonathan for episode #31 on this episode we tackle one of the biggest challenges in AI right now: moving from hype to practical, safe adoption.

In my workshops with large companies, I see a major gap. Leaders are pushing a top-down mandate to "go optimise with AI," but teams haven't been given the guardrails. This leads to "shadow AI," where sensitive data is being uploaded to public tools without oversight.

To fix this, I introduced my "3 T's" framework, a simple model for anyone to evaluate AI tools and outputs.

1. TIME: This is the obvious one. Does it save you time or free you up for more important work? It's what draws us all in, but it's also a trap.

2. TRUTH: Is the output truthful? We all know AI hallucinates. If you just copy and paste without checking, you’re creating what Jonathan brilliantly calls "AI slop." You must be the human-in-the-loop.

3. TRUST: This is a two-part, critical question. First, do you trust the output enough to put your own name and reputation on it? Second, do you trust the tool with your private or company data?

The core takeaway is that this framework helps you move from being an "AI sheep" someone who just uses AI for speed, to an "AI lion," using it to critically augment your skills.

Your Call to Action:Think about the last AI tool you used. Run it through the 3 T's. Did it pass?

For a deeper dive and more frameworks like my "Two V's" (Verify and Validate), make sure you subscribe to our supporting newsletter, which comes out every Monday and Friday. You can find it at aimoment.co.uk.

And finally, if you found this episode useful, please leave us a rating and review on your podcast player.

It makes a huge difference. Thanks for listening!

Danny Denhard

Our Daily AI Tools & AI Tool Stack

Ever wondered which AI tools we actually use every day?

It's a question Jonathan and I get all the time, so in this week's episode, we're pulling back the curtain and walking you through our personal AI stacks.

I share my Google-heavy workflow 👀, explaining how I lean on Gemini for everything from deep research to drafting these very show notes.

I also discuss a tool that's been a complete game-changer for me personally: Elevenlabs. As someone with dyslexia, the ability to listen back to my writing to catch errors and check the flow has been transformational for my productivity and confidence.

Jonathan offers a different perspective, diving into his go-to tools like ChatGPT and Descript. He shares an incredible example of how Descript allowed him to turn raw video footage into a fully polished, captioned piece of content in just one hour, a job that would have previously taken a couple of days.

But our biggest takeaway for you is this: don't feel you need to use every tool out there.

We explain why it’s more effective to pick one primary large language model, whether it's Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude, and really master it for your own workflow.

AI Tools Mentioned:

• Google Gemini

• Claude (Anthropic)

• Comet (Perplexity AI Browser) - here’s my personal invite for you

• Dia (AI Browser) - here’s my personal invite for you

• NotebookLM (Google)

• Elevenlabs

• Grammarly

• Google AI Studio

  • I have two apps you can try out yourself - (1) dannydenhard.co.uk/aistudio to mock up ads in 6 different environments like bus stops, Times Square, football stadiums etc and (2) 6x frame storyboard dannydenhard.co.uk/aistudio2

• Riverside

• Descript

• ChatGPT (OpenAI)

• HeyGen

• Copilot (Microsoft)

For a deeper dive and a complete list of all the tools mentioned, make sure you subscribe to our supporting newsletter at aimoment.co.uk. It goes out every Monday and Friday with the pod.

And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd be incredibly grateful if you could leave us a rating and review on your podcast player of choice. It truly helps us reach more people.

Cheers, Danny

Here's a quick explainer of a small but positive change of how Jonathan and I are going to be introducing 30-45 minute episodes to interview and learn from AI experts and leading minds working with AI to help you on your AI journey.

In this week's episode of The AI Moment, Jonathan and I tackle a term that's been unavoidable lately: "AI slop."

We're all seeing it, the endless stream of low-quality, inaccurate, and uninspired content flooding our feeds. But this isn't just about digital noise; it's a serious risk to your brand's reputation and the trust you've built with your audience. We discuss how easily the pressure to produce content at scale can lead to a "good enough" mindset, which simply isn't good enough anymore.

So, how do you fight back?

We explore the crucial mindset shift from chasing volume to delivering value. It's about using AI to augment your intelligence, not replace it. Jonathan introduces a brilliant analogy that cuts right to the heart of the matter: are you an "AI Sheep," merely outsourcing your thinking, or an "AI Lion," using these powerful tools to sharpen your ideas and deepen your expertise?

I also share a practical look into my own workflow, demonstrating how you can repurpose high-value content into different formats to reach your audience where they are, without sacrificing quality.

AI Tools Mentioned:

• Sora 2 - OpenAI’s new app that dominated the US app store for over a week

• NotebookLM - Both of our favourite tool by Google

Our core takeaway for leaders: In a world drowning in digital slop, your commitment to quality, authenticity, and verifiable authority is your greatest differentiator.

If you found this episode useful, please subscribe to our supporting newsletter for a deeper dive at aimoment.co.uk. And if you could take a moment to leave us a rating and review on your podcast player of choice, we'd be incredibly grateful. It truly helps us reach more listeners.