Bad AI: Bristol Beef

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Let's help you understand the WTF of AI and how it helps YOU and your organisation grow. Ready, set, agent.

This week:

• 😱 Bad AI: Bristol Beef
• 🔥 AI Playbook: Sales & Marketing Agents
• 💭 AI Privacy: Claude Updates
• ✨ Voice Agents: GPT-Realtime
• 💡 News, Trends & Insights
  

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  BAD AI: Bristol Beef

  Artists* impression

  Bristol City Council got into some AI hot water this week.

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  Go on: They proudly printed 72,000 adult learning creative course guides.

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  Guessing they stuffed up something? Well, the beautifully illustrated cover featured a woman with a mutant hand-foot combo of missing fingers and misshapen limbs, reminiscent of Cronenberg at his finest.

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  They used AI for it? AI, my lover (Note: West Country joke alert).

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  How did it go down? Really well. People loved that they used rubbish AI instead of a local illustrator on the cover - devaluing their humanity, while highlighting the creative chasm of doom as learning dissolves into pixel sludge.

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  The council owned up though? They said it was 'experimental'. Translation: they saved £200 on an illustrator and accidentally birthed a Substance-esque cover star.

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  And the message to residents? Your fingers may be many, but we really value your council tax payments, and willingness to clap like trained seals while we undermine creative learning with mutated clip-art.

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Your sales and marketing engine isn’t broken, it’s manual, disconnected and quite likely driving you (and your exec) crazy - why does everything take so long?

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Marketing teams lose over 5 hours a week per person to slow research, scattered content that could be reused more effectively and campaigns that take longer to brief than execute.

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We’ve put together a playbook on where AI agents can help.

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You can download it here.

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✅ The 5 areas AI agents work best in sales & marketing
✅ The typical tool stack companies use
✅ What a modular AI marketing system looks like

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We build AI sales & marketing agents that plug directly into your pipeline. If you need to scale growth without adding headcount, get in touch.

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Anthropic is changing its data stance - Claude users need to make a choice of opting out, or have their data used to train its AI models with five-year retention.

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Key points:

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• The change: All Free, Pro, Max and Claude Code consumer accounts must decide by 28 September 2025 whether to share chats and code for training.
• Defaults shift: Until now, data was auto-deleted after 30 days. Now it’s retained for years unless you opt out.
• User flow: New users are shown the choice at signup; existing users see a pop-up or go into privacy settings and switch off. (See above image)
• Exemptions: API, business, education and government customers aren’t affected. This is consumer-only, for now.
• No reversal: Once opted in, your data is in the training set permanently, even if you later withdraw.

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What it means for businesses:​
Enterprise and API customers are exempt from this shift, but the move is a warning. Vendors will keep nudging data defaults. Businesses need to check contract terms, consider enterprise channels, and educate teams on privacy choices.

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Wider context:​
Anthropic’s shift aligns with the industry’s moves towards data-by-default. Opt-out consent is back. Their 'we're privacy first' line collapses fast when ownership of inputs becomes ammunition in the training data wars.

VOICE AGENTS: OpenAI GPT-Realtime

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OpenAI has launched its voice agent, gpt-realtime, into the wild - it can hold natural conversations, interpret screenshots, and plug directly into business tools without heavy custom integration.

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Key points:

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• Realtime API moves to production: Available globally with new features like phone calling, MCP tool support, and image input.
• One model: gpt‑realtime handles audio in and out directly, so conversations keep laughter, pauses, tone nuance intact.
• Smarter, smoother reasoning: Audio accuracy jumps to 82% from 65%; instruction following improves to around 30%.
• Multimodal and modular: Agents can see what you see (thanks to image input) and tap into tools via MCP servers - no custom plumbing required.

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Why it matters:

This consolidates what used to be three or four brittle steps (speech-to-text, LLM, text-to-speech, plus custom plumbing) into one model. That means lower latency, fewer integration headaches, and agents that don’t sound like they’ve swallowed a fax machine. For call centres and the like, the quality bar rises. Useful.

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Wider context:

Voice interfaces are becoming infrastructure, expect competitors to follow and customers to stop tolerating broken IVR menus when a natural agent is possible.

WHAT'S NEW - News, Insights & Trends

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> OpenAI rolling out parental controls​

> AI could help trusted news

> Can artificial intelligence suffer?​

> AI language is seeping into the everyday​

> The Anguilla AI domain boom​

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> OpenAI rolling out parental controls​

> AI could help trusted news

> Can artificial intelligence suffer?​

> AI language is seeping into the everyday​

> The Anguilla AI domain boom​

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened with Bristol City Council's AI art disaster?

Bristol City Council printed 72,000 adult learning creative course guides featuring AI-generated cover art with a woman having mutant hand-foot combinations with missing fingers and misshapen limbs. They called it 'experimental' after public backlash for using AI instead of local illustrators.

What are Claude's new data retention changes?

Anthropic requires Claude Free, Pro, Max and Code users to decide by September 28, 2025 whether to share chats for training. Data is now retained for 5 years unless users opt out (previously auto-deleted after 30 days). Once opted in, data remains in training sets permanently even if users later withdraw consent.

What is OpenAI's GPT-Realtime and why does it matter?

GPT-Realtime is OpenAI's production-ready voice agent API that handles audio in/out directly in one model, maintaining natural conversation with laughter, pauses, and tone. It improves audio accuracy from 65% to 82% and consolidates what used to be 3-4 brittle steps into one, reducing latency and integration complexity.

How much time do marketing teams waste on manual processes?

Marketing teams lose over 5 hours per week per person to slow research, scattered content that could be reused more effectively, and campaigns that take longer to brief than execute. This inefficiency is driving rapid adoption of AI sales and marketing agents.

What are the 5 key areas where AI agents excel in sales and marketing?

AI agents work best in: 1) Lead qualification and scoring, 2) Content creation and personalisation, 3) Campaign optimisation and A/B testing, 4) Customer research and competitive analysis, and 5) Sales process automation including follow-up sequences and proposal generation.