Companies are loudly calling themselves ‘AI-first.’ Are they helping or hurting their own brands?

Last week, the online freelance marketplace Fiverr generated a flood of headlines after it announced an effort to reimagine itself as an “AI-first” company.

According to a published memo from CEO Micha Kaufman, the new-and-improved Fiverr will be “leaner, faster,” with modern AI infrastructure, greater productivity, and “far fewer management layers.” The change will also require a “painful reset,” Kaufman added, that will see 250 people lose their jobs.

Fiverr is just the latest tech company to loudly proclaim its embrace of artificial intelligence this year. It joins Duolingo, Klarna Group, Shopify, and a number of others that have said they are moving at breakneck speed to get ahead of the transformational technology.

In many cases, these companies have employed a similar mix of buzzw