5 Things 17.04.26

Guardian AI apps launched | Clothing brand rejects AI | Are you using 'risk free bias'? | Mark Ritson's shocking survey stats | Quallies hit back at Anthropic's 'qual' study

Author

Gideon Barker
April 17, 2026

5 Things

From Gideon Barker, founder of Customer iQ. View the newsletter archive.

Hi reader

I’m certainly getting into the groove of this bi-monthly newsletter thing. Imho, and in many others, consistency is the key to success. Add in a dollop of persistence (consistency + persistence = ‘persistency’) and you’re likely to fly.

But that’s not what I had in mind to talk about today.

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Your selection of 5 Things for this week:

  1. ‘Guardian’ AI apps are being developed by firms to tackle rogue AI agents. You can read more about this via The Information. Sounds like we’re moving fast into a world of Autobots vs Decepticons? Industry self-regulation in the absence of any real government regulation?

  1. Following its pledge not to retouch images over 10 years ago, clothing brand Aerie (owned by American Eagle) has publicly committed not to use AI in any of its advertising images. Read more via Marketing Brew. Brave decision for others to follow, or expensive mistake?

  1. Are you making the most of ‘risk free bias’ that customers will often show? Why We Buy uncovers more about this and offers some useful applications of it - like Hubspot’s never-ending free trial, or the ‘cancel anytime’ subscriptions.

  1. Have you seen Mark Ritson’s survey results of Marketers? Do you want to? It’s a fairly damning 14m 30s of video, highlighting the lack of knowledge about marketing among Marketers. But bear in mind this is all done to promote his MiniMBA course, of course!

  1. Don’t piss off qual researchers. Or, they may write a letter to the MRS. Their main gripe being Anthropic’s recent claim to have run the largest qual study ever conducted (80k participants). In short, this study is NOT qual (don’t get me started 😡). But it’s also not quant - not sure what it is really but it raises some interesting debate.

Never mind Ritson’s survey of Marketers’ knowledge - what you really need to know is your Customer iQ score!

2 mins of your time to discover some genuine value in your current approach to customer-centricity.

What are you waiting for?

Thanks for reading 🖖