AI won't differentiate you because everyone's buying the same tool

The commoditization of frontier AI models means companies adopting them off-the-shelf converge on identical capabilities and advice—the same dynamic that plagued McKinsey-style consulting, where best practices become industry baseline. Competitive advantage now flows from how you apply proprietary data, unique workflows, and differentiated judgment to what the models produce, not from owning the technology itself. Brands betting on LLMs as a moat are outsourcing their strategic thinking to the internet's collective mediocrity.