Paul Roetzer’s first reaction to OpenAI’s new model wasn’t excitement. It was dread, his word. On episode 237 of The Artificial Intelligence Show, out September 8, the founder of SmarterX and the Marketing AI Institute said of GPT-6 Astra: “This is the first model release where my first reaction was dread over excitement.” His reason was the marketing. OpenAI’s opening line, he noted, was that Astra can do anything you can do on a computer, fast, and that’s a claim about replacing computer work, not helping with it.
His second point is about who moves first. The AI-native startups, he expects, will run seven agents all day and do the work of a hundred people, while established companies are still absorbing the assistants of two years ago.
Then he turned it on his own old trade. Asked about Wall Street banks pressing law firms for AI savings, Roetzer, who once owned an agency, said that if he were hiring a marketing agency today, “it’s like a tenth of the time it used to take.” Service firms that bill by the hour, he predicted, face the same squeeze lawyers do.