Sorry Alibaba Cloud but your press release \u201cAlibaba Cloud Unveils Advanced Agentic AI Ecosystem for Global Customers\u201d, read like a master class for budding marketers on how NOT to promote AI. Let me break down what was so awful with this announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stuffed with AI buzzwords that literally don\u2019t mean anything.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are just a few – \u201cAdvanced agentic AI ecosystem\u201d, \u201cAgentic era\u201d, \u201cFull stack AI ecosystem\u201d, \u201cAI native platform\u201d, \u201cAgentic cloud infrastructure\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n No depth is provided to these terms, rather they are sprinkled across the announcement, hoping to add flavour rather than create substance. Each term needs clarification in its own right, but that is never given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note to marketers, we may be in the AI era, but wise words of people from long past still hold true. Shakespeare told us in Hamlet \u201cThe lady doth protest too much\u201d \u2014 and in this context, the more loudly something is proclaimed as revolutionary, the more justified readers are in questioning whether it really is. I had hit my AI fill by about the second paragraph of this announcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Annoyingly, there is little substance to show what this plethora of \u201cAI\u201d stuff is actually doing beyond what was already being achieved with automation and ML in the non-agentic era. I suspect in practice the \u201cparadigm shift\u201d is more of a slow adoption of some AI layered over existing automation. Based on this announcement, none of us can really know. What would have helped is a concrete example showing a real workflow that was previously impossible, now made viable specifically because of agentic behaviour.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Still using \u201cnothing burger\u201d words and terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the term \u201cParadigm Shift\u201d hit number one spot in \u201cbull-sh*t bingo\u201d many years ago, so my eyes couldn\u2019t roll much further into my skull when I saw it being used in this press announcement. Even more unforgivable given that this leader in AI couldn\u2019t use its own AI to suggest 25<\/strong> alternatives to the term paradigm shift \u2014 all of which would have been less cringeworthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here is a small tip for the Ali PR team: actually, USE agentic AI to create, edit and refine your press releases, and at no charge here is some AI consulting from me \u2014 add an iterative step in your workflow that checks draft copy for cringeworthy, outdated PR terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still using speeds and feeds to garner credibility.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have paid attention to the AI mantra, we have moved beyond the era of product features and performance stats. The world we build with AI is meant to be goal\u2011driven. We no longer define how to solve a problem; we define the outcome we want and AI gets us there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Old credibility signals were about benchmarks and rankings. New credibility signals should be about outcomes, decisions improved, and costs avoided.<\/strong> Yet this announcement falls back into the same old traps: \u201cranked 5th globally\u201d, \u201cachieved a score of 56.6\u201d, \u201ccompetitive with leading players like Chat GPT and Claude\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arrgghhhh \u2014 we have moved on. Please Alibaba, if you are leading the way in experiential AI, then show your credibility by telling us about \u201cuser outcomes\u201d, \u201cbusiness decision quality\u201d, and maybe even \u201cthe cost of long\u2011running agents\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bottom line \u2014 if you claim to be an AI leader, then you need to talk the language. Jettison the speeds and feeds. AI is now about experience and outcomes, yet in this announcement Ali seems unable to move away from old\u2011style benchmark scorecards in a bid to prove credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Government linkage straight out of the curry favour playbook.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you follow go\u2011to\u2011market plans of large Chinese tech companies when they work in foreign countries, they often build strong, deep, and very high\u2011level government relationships. Personally, I don\u2019t see anything wrong with this approach \u2014 it\u2019s a legitimate way to embed into foreign markets, aligning with government priorities, workforce upskilling, and national digital agendas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But here\u2019s the thing: in this press release (and as is often the case), it is presented as altruism rather than what it really is \u2014 a thought\u2011through GTM plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marketing people should realise that these days their target audience is sophisticated. We understand that initiatives like \u201ceducating 1000 SMEs\u201d are as much about lubricating market entry and garnering regulatory goodwill as they are about genuine altruism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of this is actually fine (in my view), but don\u2019t dumb down your audience \u2014 describe it for what it really is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, as a little bit of fun, I used AI to play a bit of buzzword bingo with this press release \u2014 here is what it turned out for me \ud83d\ude0a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buzzword Bingo: Alibaba Cloud \u201cAgentic AI Ecosystem\u201d Edition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Buzzword<\/strong> \u2192 Status<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Agentic \u2192 \u2705\u2705\u2705 (bonus points for overuse) Agentic era \u2192 \u2705 Paradigm shift \u2192 \u2705 Full stack AI \u2192 \u2705 AI native platform \u2192 \u2705 Seamless integration \u2192 \u2705 Empowering users \u2192 \u2705 Ecosystem \u2192 \u2705 Long horizon execution \u2192 \u2705 Autonomous \u2192 \u2705 Product level agents \u2192 \u2705 Skills initiative \u2192 \u2705 SME enablement \u2192 \u2705 Global customers \u2192 \u2705<\/p>\n\n\n\n If this is what the \u201cagentic era\u201d means to Alibaba cloud , then the first thing they should automate is the AI Press release process!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sorry Alibaba Cloud but your press release \u201cAlibaba Cloud Unveils Advanced Agentic AI Ecosystem for Global Customers\u201d, read like a master class for budding marketers on how NOT to promote AI. Let me break down what was so awful with this announcement. Stuffed with AI buzzwords that literally don\u2019t mean anything. Here are just a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-todays-teardown","tag-daily-dose"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43,"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/43"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech-tirade.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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