--- title: The AI train is leaving the station – don’t miss it description: The media industry needs to build new AI products or someone else will --- [![logo (2)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/hubfs/Assets%20HBM%20Theme/Images/logo%20(2).svg)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/) [![logo (3)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/hubfs/Assets%20HBM%20Theme/Images/logo%20(3).svg)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/) - [Home](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/en-gb/) - [Advisory](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/advisory) - [121 Consulting](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/121-consulting) - [Content Review](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/contentreview) - [Testimonials](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/testimonial) - [Contact](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/contact-us) # The AI train is leaving the station – don’t miss it [Alan Hunter](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/author/alan-hunter) 09 October 2026 7 min read **The media industry needs to build new AI products or someone else will** The world changes slowly – and then it transforms very quickly indeed. The disappearance of cash from our lives is just the latest shift you might not have seen happening until bang, it’s here. I’ve done trips to America, Europe and India in the past year and have not had to use actual money in any of them\*. I think we are nearing a similar place with AI. Speak to people who are heavily invested in it and use it on a daily basis and they will tell you that it has had a distinct glow-up recently. It is now not only capable of doing things that make them shake their head with wonder, but is doing them unprompted. Understandably we focus on how AI might go rogue and kill us all, but in the meantime it is doing mind-blowing things in the margins. [Peter Stuart](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterstuartcreative/?isSelfProfile=false), the co-founder of [Velora](https://veloracycling.com/), a AI-powered cycling publication, wrote about one of these moments last week. To demonstrate a new tool, he had asked Claude to produce a magazine supplement about the cycling world championships, which took place in Canada recently. He pointed Claude at the Velora site and went off to do something else. He said that when he came back he expected to see a “crudely designed set of spreads with dummy copy”. Instead, he was dumbstruck by what the LLM had done. “Claude had pulled our logo and fonts, adapted stories from our website and selected pictures that matched them,” he wrote. “The design was convincingly on brand. It had even created a numbers feature, calculating some figures independently from time gaps and average speeds \[in the championships\].” He continued: “I worked for magazines for nearly 10 years, including titles that won multiple national awards. If, 10 years ago, this was sent around the team to proof \[read\] as an event or sponsored supplement, no one would have batted an eyelid, I'd wager we'd even have said it was surprisingly good.” Peter points out that just a few months ago, Claude wouldn’t have been able to do this without involved and time-consuming prompting. But now it can, almost instantly – while at the same time other people are working for days or weeks to accomplish the same results. He acknowledged that the ramifications of this alarmed him. “We’ve spent years discussing which jobs AI might eventually be able to do,” he wrote. “Last week, I realised how far behind its actual capabilities my own assumptions had fallen. How quickly businesses will act on those capabilities, and how much time people will have to adapt, is the part that terrifies me.” I recount this tale because it is interesting in itself. But also because this should be a rallying cry for everyone in the publishing industry. By this I do not mean it in the “wow, look at what AI can do” sense, but more “you’d bet get involved”. Put simply, publishers cannot afford to let others find the amazing AI use cases that are out there. It is incumbent on all of us to immerse ourselves in the available tools to find them. If you didn’t “believe the hype” around AI before, you should now. There are many opportunities for publishers out there, as well as threats. But we need to find them, not wait for them to come to us. I think many people are willing to do so and the thing stopping them finding the new use cases is a (perceived) lack of time. There are always more pressing things to do than get to grips with a new technology, especially when your calendar is so full. Stepping away from a corporate job made me realise quite how much time is wasted on routine meetings. Because of this I reckon I now do more productive work by Monday lunchtime than I used to do in a whole week. Nobody is going to change the meeting culture any time soon, so you need to actively schedule time for AI exploration. Block off time in your diary for it. I guarantee it will not be wasted. Last week alone I redesigned [HBM Advisory’s website](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/en-gb/) and Michael, my business partner, rebuilt it, using a combination of tools. The best thing about it was that we learnt stuff throughout the process: how to prompt, how to deal with glitches, how the LLMs integrate with other tools, what they can’t do… and on and on. This will make us better both at using AI and thinking about it. Last month I heard about a CEO of a major publishing house who is vibe-coding an app in their not-very-abundant spare time. This is fantastic and an example everyone reading this newsletter and all of their colleagues should follow. Do it now before the change sneaks up on you. \* I did use cash to tip bar and hotel staff, but that’s probably because I haven’t worked out how to do that electronically yet. ## Next blog post ## [The challenge for our Gen X leaders](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/the-challenge-for-our-gen-x-leaders) [Read more](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/media-hunter/the-challenge-for-our-gen-x-leaders) ![logo (2)](https://www.hbmadvisory.com/hubfs/Assets%20HBM%20Theme/Images/logo%20(2).svg) Hunter Brunt Media Ltd. 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