The surprising AI generation gap: Senior employers feel more empowered

How is AI impacting marketers and comms pros? Are professionals in these areas truly using the technology? Is AI just a tool, or is it becoming a decision-maker?

With questions like these in mind, our sister companies Hotwire and ROI DNA set up global research and a series of events in many countries to find answers and discuss how one of the most revolutionary technologies ever created is affecting our corner of the market and our companies.  

We revealed some of the initial findings of the AI & Agency: A First Look at Agentic Organisations study, which we're building in partnership with The House of Beautiful Business, during an event at our Hotwire office in Sydney. I joined the panel to debate the hottest topics in AI for marketing and communication.
 
Many results surprised us. For example, communication and marketing senior leaders are much more comfortable with AI than their younger peers. While 76% of those at the top feel empowered by the technology, only 43% of junior employees do.
The hypothesis? Most likely, these leaders are having a better experience with AI because they are leading and controlling the implementation.

Perhaps because of this - or just due to AI limitations - many companies see entry-level positions as the easiest to replace with AI, which helps explain why younger employees may not feel empowered by it.
 
Despite that, 100% of those surveyed said they are already using AI at work, with 69% using it regularly.

From tool to boss?

We also discussed the prospect of AI agents making decisions with minimal or no human supervision.

The initial survey findings have revealed that while 63% of professionals describe AI as a "tool" or an "assistant", more than a third see it as something else, with 21% saying it is a "colleague" and 14% a "decision-maker."

Most companies still give agents limited autonomy, and for good reasons. In my experience of building and using agents, they still require significant supervision. Recently, we created a team of three agents specialised in reporting and reduced the time spent on the work by 50%. However, we are still spending time preparing the initial data and correcting simple mistakes or false conclusions the system generates.

Andrew Birmingham, Tech Editor at Mi3 and a panellist, stressed another issue with AI agents. He referred to a Stanford study that found a significant increase in dishonest or inaccurate content when AI agents were optimised for social media engagement - up to 188%.

Birmingham believes that even these risks won't halt the rise of autonomous agents, as AI companies and their clients expect to generate significantly more value from the technology than they currently do.

Another fascinating point that emerged from the data was people's acceptance of being managed by an AI. While unsurprisingly 86% said they were comfortable managing an AI employee, a significant number - 43% - said they are fine being managed by one.

That's an impressively high figure, suggesting that for many workers, the question isn't whether AI will play a management role, but how soon and in what capacity.

AI Search redefines brand visibility

The report also touches on how AI search impacts brands. It shows that 60% of respondents are already tracking what AI chatbots say about their business - a signal that most marketers and comms pros understand the stakes.

ChatGPT is already among the top 10 most-visited websites in the world. Perplexity handles over 100 million queries per week, growing 25% month-on-month. Andreessen Horowitz says 60% of US consumers recently used an AI chatbot to research or decide on a product.

Unlike traditional search, AI search is an answering and suggestion machine. What's more, people are usually satisfied with the response and don't click on the supporting links.

That's changing how the web works and giving rise to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), the effort to ensure that a brand's content and stories are accessible to and understood by AI models.

At Hotwire, we've been developing tools to track where AI models pull information from, how brands appear in AI search, and what brands can do about it. We've also found surprising patterns. Sometimes an obscure publication carries more influence than a major outlet. The overlap between Google search results and AI answers can be as low as 5%.

What does this mean?

So far, AI is mainly assisting us, not making decisions. Human oversight remains essential because the machines still make mistakes and struggle in key moments that require judgment, nuance, and accountability. Many leaders are also still uncomfortable with handing decisions over to the bots.

However, agency and autonomy are the next frontiers, and we won't be able to ignore the rising practical, technical, ethical, and governance questions this will bring.

One of the few certainties is that online search will be redefined, and brands will have to rethink how they're discovered and understood.

As AI reshapes the landscape and infrastructure of communication and marketing, we have the opportunity - and the responsibility - to help define what these will be used for.

The decisions we make now will shape how AI impacts our work, our teams, and our industry for years to come.