2025: AI in Marketing – Optimisation or Automation of Flawed Decisions?

The transition between the old and the new year offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on recent developments and reassess dominant assumptions. In the context of marketing, 2025 stands out as a year in which artificial intelligence fundamentally reshaped not only tools and processes, but also the competency profile of marketing professionals.

During this period, AI systems moved beyond operational support and became active participants in marketing decision-making processes – recommending content, optimising campaigns in real time, and scaling communication to unprecedented levels.

At the same time, 2025 revealed a fundamental challenge: AI without reflective competencies does not optimise marketing – it automates flawed assumptions and decisions. The rapid diffusion of AI tools exposed a growing gap between technological capabilities and the preparedness of organisations to use them responsibly and critically.

In many organisations, marketers increasingly shifted from being decision-makers to validators – or, in less mature contexts, executors – of algorithmic recommendations. This led to three critical tensions observed throughout 2025:

• automation without understanding, where AI systems were implemented without sufficient insight into their limitations,
• scale over meaning, particularly in the case of generative content that increased volume while risking cognitive and strategic dilution,
• speed over responsibility, as decision-making accelerated while accountability remained firmly human.

As a result, 2025 confirmed that the core challenge of AI-driven marketing is not access to technology, but the competencies required to maintain control over algorithmic processes. These include the ability to critically interpret AI outputs, understand model logic and data bias, recognise ethical and organisational risks, and design effective human–algorithm collaboration.

Looking ahead, this shifts the strategic question from “Which AI tools should we implement?” to “Which competencies do marketers need to work effectively and responsibly in an algorithmic environment?”

This post is part of the project “People and Algorithms in Organisations: Competences to Work in the Digital Environment” (DIGIT_People and algorithms), funded by the NAWA – Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej (Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange).