AI Reshapes Creativity, Funds, Cells
· The Fluency Briefing
The Fluency Briefing
Your Guide to What's Happening in AI and Why It Matters to You
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
A luxury fashion house, a Harvard finance study, and an AI note-taking app walk into your Wednesday inbox - and they're all telling the same story. This week, AI stopped asking for permission and started showing up in places where human craft was supposed to be non-negotiable: Gucci's runway promos, mutual fund trading floors, and your meeting notes. Whether that's progress or a problem depends entirely on who's holding the steering wheel.
Today in AI:
- Gucci Trades Photographers for Pixels, Fans Trade Loyalty for Outrage - Gucci posted AI-generated images to promote its Milan Fashion Week show and got roasted for undermining its own brand promise of Italian craftsmanship. Critics called it "AI slop" and questioned why a house selling $850 handbags needs to cut corners on marketing. BBC
- Harvard Says AI Can Predict 71% of Fund Manager Trades - A Harvard Business School working paper found that AI can mimic most mutual fund managers' trading decisions using historical data alone. The twist: the most predictable managers significantly underperform, while harder-to-replicate ones beat the market - suggesting AI replaces the mediocre first. Fast Company
- Adobe Firefly Gets a "Quick Cut" That Edits Your Video for You - Adobe's Firefly video editor now lets users describe a video in plain English, and it assembles a rough cut from uploaded footage and B-roll automatically. Adobe is clear this produces a first draft, not a finished product - editors still need to refine the output. TechCrunch
- Granola Raises $67M to Be the Steering Wheel for AI Meetings - London-based Granola doesn't record audio or send bots into your calls. Instead, it transcribes in real time while you jot notes alongside it, building a personal knowledge base rather than a raw transcript dump. The company grew from 4 to 35 employees in a year. Fast Company
- MIT and ETH Zurich Build an AI Framework That Sees Cells Whole - Researchers developed an AI system that identifies which biological data comes from which part of a cell across multiple measurement types. The tool could help scientists track cancer progression and neurodegenerative diseases by combining information that used to be analyzed in silos. MIT News
- Comp Wants to Replace Your HR Consultants With AI Agents - Backed by Keith Rabois at Khosla Ventures, Brazil-focused startup Comp deploys former HR executives who do the work manually first, then use that work to train AI agents. The end goal: not software that helps HR teams, but AI that becomes the HR team. TechCrunch
- Talk to a Hologram of Isaac Newton (for a Few Thousand Pounds) - UK company Ailias offers conversational 3D hologram avatars of 70-plus historical figures, from Beethoven to Henry VIII, designed for museums and events. The holograms can juggle, do squats, and breakdance - because apparently that's what education looks like now. Wired
- Xbox Shakes Up Leadership, Installs AI Executive as CEO - Phil Spencer is retiring and Sarah Bond is resigning from Microsoft's gaming division. Their replacement as CEO: Asha Sharma, who comes directly from Microsoft's CoreAI product division - a signal that AI strategy is now steering Xbox's creative future. The Guardian
Today's Takeaway:
Here's the thing about today's stories: they're not about whether AI can do the work. They're about what happens when AI does the work in places where the whole point was that a human did it. Gucci's backlash is the clearest example. The images were labeled, the tech was capable, and the output looked... fine. But "fine" is the enemy of luxury. As BBC reported, critics didn't complain that the images were ugly - they complained that a brand built on Italian craftsmanship just told the world it doesn't need Italian craftspeople. The brand estimated at $11.6 billion may have saved a few thousand dollars on a photo shoot while torching something harder to quantify.
Now stack that against the Harvard trading study. Fast Company notes the research found AI replicates 71% of fund manager trades - but the predictable managers underperform. Translation: AI is best at copying the people who weren't adding much value in the first place. Meanwhile, Adobe's Quick Cut and Granola both position AI as the rough-draft machine, not the finished product. The pattern is consistent: AI thrives on the commodity layer of skilled work and struggles - or actively damages - the parts where human judgment, taste, and reputation matter most.
💡 Fluency Moment - Building your AI fluency, one term at a time.
"Generative AI"
In plain English: AI that creates new content - images, video, text - instead of just analyzing existing data.
Think of it like: A student who studied millions of photos and can now sketch a new one on demand, from scratch.
Why you'll hear about it: Gucci used it for fashion photos and Adobe built it into video editing tools.
🧰 Your Toolkit
5-Minute Quickstart: Using AI Tools in Your Everyday Work
- Open ChatGPT or a free AI tool and type a simple question about something you dealt with at work today.
- Ask the AI to explain a confusing topic in plain English, like: 'Explain [TOPIC] as if I'm completely new to it.'
- Try asking AI to summarize a long article or email by pasting the text and writing 'Summarize this in 3 bullet points.'
- Use AI as a brainstorming buddy - type 'Give me 5 ideas for [YOUR GOAL, e.g. improving team communication].'
- Ask AI to help you write something, like: 'Write a short email to [RECIPIENT] about [TOPIC] in a friendly tone.'
- Test AI for research help by asking: 'What are the most important things to know about [SUBJECT] for a beginner?'
Once you're comfortable with these basics, try chaining requests together - for example, ask AI to brainstorm ideas and then immediately ask it to turn the best one into a plan. The more you practice, the faster you'll find ways AI can save you real time.
The Bottom Line
The Pattern: Across fashion, finance, video editing, and HR, AI is arriving not as a replacement for entire roles but as a filter that separates routine work from the judgment calls that actually create value. The companies and professionals getting burned are the ones deploying AI where the human touch was the product itself.
Why It Matters: The Harvard study puts a number on it - predictable, formulaic work is 71% replicable, and the people doing that work already underperform. That means AI doesn't threaten the best in any field; it threatens the average. For businesses, the risk isn't that AI takes your job. It's that AI reveals which parts of your job weren't worth paying for.
Your Move: This week, list the five most time-consuming tasks in your role. For each, write one sentence answering: "Would my client or boss notice if AI did this instead of me?" Any task where the honest answer is "no" is a candidate for automation. Any task where the answer is "yes, and they'd be upset" is where you should be spending more of your time.
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Fluently yours, The My AI Fluency Team