The AI SaaS Hype Is Real—But Do You Really Need Another Tool? | The Current Thing #3

Welcome back to The Current Thing, where we unpack the latest trend that’s flooding your feed—and ask what’s really going on underneath the pitch decks and product demos. This is edition #3. And this week, it’s personal: AI-powered SaaS tools are everywhere, and they all claim to be the one thing your stack is missing.

Spoiler: they’re probably not.

Everyone’s Selling “AI Productivity.” Most of It Is Just Noise

Scroll through LinkedIn for five minutes and you’ll see it: startup founders demoing AI dashboards that write your copy, launch your campaigns, target your audience, and maybe even explain your metrics in a British accent. Everyone’s got a tool. Everyone’s promising automation, insight, results.

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This week, for instance, TikTok made headlines at its annual advertiser summit. Their new AI-powered Insight Spotlight lets marketers filter trending content by demographic and industry, then suggests angles and keywords for ad campaigns. 

TikTok for Business also unveiled a Content Suite that helps brands turn user-generated videos into ads, with centralized permissions and smart selection tools.

It’s not SaaS in the traditional sense—but it’s operating like one. Tools, interfaces, workflows, automation. The form factor says “platform,” but the function feels very much like a SaaS built for advertisers.

And they’re not alone. In the last few days:

• Progress Software updated ShareFile with AI workflows for accounting firms—automating document analysis, reminders, and follow-ups.
• Freshworks announced it’s rolling out agentic AI by the end of 2025, promising enterprise clients support from bots that act with a bit more autonomy (and hopefully less confusion).
• AWS quietly upgraded Cost Explorer and its Pricing Calculator with AI-powered forecasting, comparisons, and savings suggestions—because FinOps now needs a co-pilot too.

All of these features sound helpful. Some probably are. But let’s be honest—most of the time, they just add more dashboards, more toggles, and more decisions to a day that already has too many.

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IBM Isn’t Just Joining the AI Race—They’re Building the Track

In a blog post that didn’t scream headlines but should’ve, IBM announced it’s restructuring its entire SaaS portfolio around Watsonx, its proprietary AI and data platform. But this isn’t just about retrofitting old tools with new features. IBM is playing a longer game: building an AI-native, ecosystem-first architecture for SaaS.

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Here’s what that means in practice:

• Tools across industries—HR, cybersecurity, analytics, operations—can be built modularly on a shared AI infrastructure.
• Watsonx handles the core intelligence, so vendors and developers can focus on use case specialization.
• It’s a shift from standalone apps to interoperable, composable systems—think Shopify for AI-powered enterprise software.
  
  

And the timing? Spot on. Gartner predicts that by 2028, all SaaS products will come with embedded AI by default. Not as a value-add. As the baseline.

IBM isn’t just responding to the trend—they’re trying to architect it.

AI Tools Are Smarter Than Ever. Are We Getting Any Better?

Now, let’s be fair. These tools are often well-designed. Some are even useful. But let’s not pretend they’re life-changing.

Maybe you’ve tried the AI assistant in ClickUp. It suggested tasks you already completed. Or Notion’s text optimizer. You rewrote the entire paragraph anyway. Or the meeting bot that joins your Zoom calls and sends transcripts… that no one reads.

It’s not the tech that’s broken. It’s the illusion that more tools = more clarity.

In reality, each new SaaS comes with:

• Another login
• Another UI to learn
• Another Slack thread on “where that file went”

And let’s not forget the creeping cost—not just in dollars, but in attention. Every new feature means another micro-decision. Another settings tab. Another tool you swear you’ll use next week.

SEO Is the Latest AI Battleground—But the Rules Haven’t Changed

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In the last year, AI has flooded the SEO space too. Auto-generated articles, automated keyword research, internal linking, AI-scaled backlinks… it all sounds magical, until your traffic tanks and you’re stuck cleaning up a manual penalty from Google.

Seasoned SEOs know better. They still use ScreamingFrog, Ahrefs, SEMrush—not because they’re trendy, but because they work. Because good SEO isn’t just about volume or automation. It’s about knowing which pages matter, which battles are worth fighting, and how your content connects to real users, not just keywords.

This is especially true in programmatic SEO, where scale is built into the process. The temptation is to launch a thousand pages before asking why they should exist in the first place. But when you automate without a strategy, what you’re really scaling is your blind spots.

When everything is AI-powered, the real differentiator isn’t which tools you use. It’s how clearly you think without them.

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We Didn’t Build Another Tool. We Built the Thing You’ll Actually Use

Instead of adding another AI plugin to the pile, we decided to build something with actual weight behind it. Not another tool, but a resource—something you can open on a Monday morning and actually use to move things forward.

The pSEO Handbook is a practical guide to building a programmatic SEO strategy that works in the real world.

This is the kind of resource you’ll want to share with your content team, growth lead, or SEO specialist when someone says: “We should try programmatic.” Because it doesn’t just explain what pSEO is. It shows you how to structure it, where the risks are, how to align it with your product, and how to avoid the traps that kill 90% of these projects.

What’s inside:

• A battle-tested framework for structuring and scaling SEO pages
• Clear principles that prioritize context, quality, and sustainability
• Tactics you can actually brief, execute, and adapt with your team
• Insight from people who’ve done this in fast-moving, real-world scenarios

Join the waitlist to get early access + launch pricing. Launching mid-June 2025. One-time payment. Lifetime access.

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