Key Takeaways
• AI and automation are becoming deeply integrated across the promo industry, with professionals using tools for everything from email sequencing and product research to CRM updates and creative design enhancements.
• These technologies are helping teams work faster and more efficiently, as seen with companies leveraging AI for communication, data analysis and customer service.
• Despite the benefits, human oversight remains essential, especially for fact-checking, relationship-building and ensuring outputs align with brand voice and client needs.
Artificial intelligence and automation have become perhaps the biggest buzzwords of the decade.
Top tech firms have invested hundreds of billions of dollars on AI technologies, infrastructure and development. ChatGPT now has close to 700 million active weekly users, receiving more than 2.5 billion prompts every day from around the world.
It’s no different in the promo world. A quarter of distributors reported using AI in some capacity, according to Counselor’s 2025 State of the Industry report, as did two-thirds of suppliers. Constantly advancing technology means it’s easier than ever to find software options that automate the order entry process, produce images and write marketing copy, or even power warehouse robots.
Automation and AI aren’t fully interchangeable terms. Automation is all about doing repetitive tasks like data entry automatically, without input from a human user every time. Artificial intelligence is almost like a virtual brain that can make decisions based on user input – whether that’s chatbots like ChatGPT, notetakers like Otter.ai or even self-driving cars that analyze road conditions. In other words, artificial intelligence can be a tool for automation – for example, a system where an AI scans order proofs for potential errors and sends an automated alert to the customer if it finds issues – but isn’t necessarily automation on its own.
But whether used together or separate, both of these tools have the same end-goal: working faster and more efficiently, whether it’s through back-end integration or helping with administrative work like emails.
Read this full feature on ASI Central.
