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A Billion-Dollar Question Hangs Over the New AI Search Marketing Industry
Plus: Adobe hit with proposed class-action, accused of misusing authors’ work in AI training
Hafizur Rahman
December 18, 2025
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Today's Newsletter Highlights:
A Billion-Dollar Question Hangs Over the New AI Search Marketing Industry
Adobe hit with proposed class-action, accused of misusing authors’ work in AI training
Best AI Tools
🎇AI NEWS TODAY🎇
Shoppers are adding to cart for the holidays
Over the next year, Roku predicts that 100% of the streaming audience will see ads. For growth marketers in 2026, CTV will remain an important “safe space” as AI creates widespread disruption in the search and social channels. Plus, easier access to self-serve CTV ad buying tools and targeting options will lead to a surge in locally-targeted streaming campaigns.
Read our guide to find out why growth marketers should make sure CTV is part of their 2026 media mix.
A Billion-Dollar Question Hangs Over the New AI Search Marketing Industry
A billion-dollar question looms over the new AI search marketing industry
AI search tools like ChatGPT and Google’s generative search are becoming popular. They serve as alternatives to traditional search engines or as helpful supplements. This shift opens a new frontier in search marketing. It also poses a big challenge for brands and advertisers: should you try a new approach or just improve classic SEO?
During busy times like Black Friday 2025, AI search brought in a lot of visitors for top retailers. However, it was still not as much as traditional search engines. This suggests AI search is growing rapidly but isn’t yet dominant.
📈 The core debate
🟡 New AI-focused optimisation vs traditional SEO: Some marketers now emphasise Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). They create content aimed at appearing in AI-generated answers. Startups are also securing funding to create tools for this new process. Some argue that trusted, high-quality content and user value are crucial. The risk of content farming or quality dilution is a real concern.
The industry is still trying to decide if AI search will replace traditional SEO, improve it, or build a new marketing stack. This uncertainty is the “billion-dollar question” hanging over the space.
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Adobe hit with proposed class-action, accused of misusing authors’ work in AI training
Adobe, known for its creative tools and AI like Firefly, is facing a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. An author from Oregon claims the company used pirated books to train its language model. The suit was filed for Elizabeth Lyon in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It aims to represent authors whose copyrighted works may have ended up in Adobe’s AI training data.
Key Points:
The lawsuit concerns SlimLM, Adobe’s lightweight language model series. It assists with documents on devices. Lyon claims her guidebooks were used in the dataset for pre-training SlimLM without her consent. This dataset is a version of the SlimPajama-627B dataset. It is said to include material from the controversial Books3 collection, which is tied to other AI copyright disputes.
This case is part of a growing trend of AI copyright disputes. It includes important actions against other tech companies and a big settlement from Anthropic this year. These issues bring up new questions about the legal limits for training data. They also challenge the meaning of “fair use” when AI systems use copyrighted material.
Roblox is adding AI tools to Roblox Studio. These tools will help creators make games faster and more efficiently. The aim is to combine advanced AI support with Studio’s current workflows. This will help creators turn ideas into playable games faster.
Key points:
They can cut out repetitive tasks and focus more on creativity and design.
Roblox is linking these AI upgrades to monetisation systems. This includes price optimisation and regional pricing. This links quicker creation to potential creator earnings and revenue flow. It encourages developers to see AI tools as essential to their work rather than just optional experiments.
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