You probably saw this amazing ad created by PJ Ace for Kalshi during the NBA Finals. It was a massive success for the Kalshi brand and generated a ton of buzz.
And it was created completely by AI.
For small companies and less well-known brands, generative AI offers an amazing tool if used propoerly with the assistance of creatives like PJ Ace, who has built an ad agancy that makes AI commercials for clients.
As businesses make more investments in AI, we’re going to start seeing more “custom AI” builds. “Custom AI” is the practice of taking a general foundation or large-language model (LLM) and adapting it so that it better reflects a particular organization’s needs. It all start with using that organization’s date, and then emplying tactics such as fine-tuning, continued pre-training, model-distillation, domain‐specific training, etc. to provide the most relevant and useful output. Think of a law firm using their own contracts to train their proprietary model, or a company using all of their own product specifications in the AI used for customer services.
Amazon AWS details this in a recent release: “Custom Intelligence: Building AI that matches your business DNA.” It outlines how they help customers create custom models and how these models can be fine-tuned over time.
Job losses tied to AI are accelerating.
In a move that underscores the relentless pace of technological disruption, Amazon announced on October 31, 2025, plans to eliminate approximately 14,000 roles across its corporate workforce. This latest round of reductions, detailed in an internal memo from HR SVP Beth Galetti, continues the e-commerce giant’s efforts to streamline operations amid explosive growth in artificial intelligence. While Amazon frames the changes as necessary for agility and customer focus, they highlight a stark reality: AI is not just augmenting jobs—it’s eliminating them in the short term, forcing companies to rethink workforce structures in ways that prioritize speed over scale.
The latest news from Chipotle is crushing the company’s stock, but it’s even worse news for the economy. Here’s a quote from the CEO:
“Earlier this year, as consumer sentiment declined sharply, we saw a broad-based pullback in frequency across all income cohorts. Since then, the gap has widened, with low to middle-income guests further reducing frequency. We believe that this guest, with household income below $100,000, represents about 40% of our total sales, and based on our data, is dining out less often due to concerns about the economy and inflation. A particularly challenged cohort is the 25 to 35-year-old age group. We believe that this trend is not unique to Chipotle and is occurring across all restaurants, as well as many discretionary categories.”
We’re hearing this from many companies, but here it’s even more explicit. The middle and lower classes are getting hurt by inflation and a slowing economy. And this suggests that it’s going to get worse. We’ll see if this leads to a recession.
Now we do have to put this in context. Chipotle has its own problems as it doesn’t seem to know how to cater to this younger demo in this environment. One use on X put it simply:
i could fix chipotle in 1 day as ceo. You just introduce a half priced burrito that isn’t the size of a newborn. Instead of 1500 calories, maybe you only eat 700. It’s under $10. There would lines would be out the door
This hit’s home.
So we may have a combination of factors here, but it’s difficult to deny the economic slowdown. We’ll be posting more examples.
There are plenty of warning signs for the U.S. economy, but the slowdown in Las Vegas might be the ultimate “canary in the coal mine.”
Las Vegas relies heavily on tourism, gaming, and hospitality, which account for about 40% of the local economy and support over 300,000 jobs. In 2025, the city has experienced a noticeable slowdown, with visitor numbers down approximately 7.3% through the first half of the year compared to 2024. This marks the steepest decline in over 50 years, surpassing drops during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Hotel occupancy has fallen by nearly 6% and food and beverage sales dropped 1.6% (equating to a $191 million loss). While gaming revenue has held up—rising 5.5% in August 2025 to $1.22 billion—overall consumer spending on non-gaming activities like dining and shopping is down significantly.
© 2026 American Business Blog
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑