Episode 9: The Year AI Went Mainstream

In this episode, Holly and Ewan look back on 2025 as a defining year in technology, exploring what really changed (and what didn’t) in the most transformative period since generative AI emerged. They begin with the obvious headline: ChatGPT’s rise into the top five most-visited websites on Earth, a staggering shift for a product only three years old. Ewan reflects on the moment AI moved from novelty to normalised daily tool, from homes to boardrooms to government reports.Holly highlights how this year’s explosion of ChatGPT features (apps, search, shopping recommendations, and especially AI voice conversations) have reshaped expectations of what interacting with AI feels like. Ewan shares real-world stories of fixing household appliances using ChatGPT voice guidance, contrasting it with Google’s Gemini, which has undergone a dramatic improvement arc.The pair also discuss:Email-integrated AI (e.g., Gmail → ChatGPT via Pulse)The coming wave of agentic automation, and why agents still aren’t truly mainstreamHow Gemini 3 and Google’s AI reboot shocked the industryNvidia’s rise to the world’s most valuable companyWhy predictions of mass AI-driven unemployment haven’t materialised (yet!)The uncomfortable truth: companies use “AI realignment” as a convenient narrative during layoffsThey also examine the misses of 2025, including Siri and Alexa still being terrible, Apple’s underwhelming AI offerings, and the gap between promised AI agents and what actually exists today.Finally, Holly closes with a reminder that tech CEOs shape narratives as much as technology itself and that 2025 has been a year of learning to question the hype.