ChatGPT Recommended a Deodorant That Doesn't Exist: 4 AI Updates That Change How Your Business Gets Found
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A few weeks ago, a marketer built a deodorant brand that does not exist. No product. No factory. Nothing sitting on a shelf anywhere. She used AI to build a website, waited about three weeks, and then watched ChatGPT start recommending her made-up deodorant to real shoppers. It ranked above deodorants you can go buy right now.
That story is the first of four AI updates from the past few weeks, and every one of them changes something about how your business gets found online. You do not have time to read every AI newsletter or sit through every model launch. So here is the shortcut, with one move you can make this week for each.
1. The fake deodorant that ChatGPT fell for
The marketer is Dina Berk, co-founder of a media company. She invented a natural deodorant brand called Marowyn, gave it a very specific niche (oatmeal-based deodorant for sensitive skin), built the site with AI, and optimized every page for both search engines and AI search. Then she waited.
About three weeks after the site got indexed, ChatGPT with web browsing started serving up Marowyn as a recommendation. It outranked real, established brands.
Around 30% of shoppers are now asking AI for product recommendations. My husband and I both did it during a recent deodorant search of our own. What this means for you is that there is a new shelf. When your ideal client asks ChatGPT for the best brand strategist, wellness coach, or web designer, AI is going to pick a few names. Your business is either on that shelf or it is completely invisible.
Here is the part worth sitting with. Marowyn won that shelf with clarity. A tightly focused site, plain language, one specific lane. No ad budget required. That is winnable for you.
Your move this week: Open ChatGPT or Google's AI mode and ask the exact questions your dream clients would ask. See if you come up. If you don't, see who does and look at what they are doing well. Then look at your own website. Is it painfully clear who you help and the one thing you want to be known for?
One caution. This cuts both ways. If a completely made-up brand can get recommended, so can a really bad one. Read reviews and cross-check with a second AI before you spend money on something you have never heard of.
2. Two new models landed in the same week (and you owe neither one your loyalty)
In early September, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1 and OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra within days of each other. People have been running real-world tests on both, and the verdict is split. Some say GPT-6 Astra is a big upgrade for writing and visual design. Fable still comes out ahead on the logic behind building an actual product.
Claude users may have noticed something else. The newer Claude models have gotten wordier and wordier, and that helps nobody who has to read the output.
Here is what matters. You do not owe any company your loyalty at this point. Plenty of smart women I talk to regularly keep more than one model open and switch based on the task. The catch is friction. Swap models in the middle of a project and you will spend your afternoon re-explaining roles, repeating steps, and handing over context you already gave.
Your move this week: Pick a default for each kind of work. One model for writing and voice. One for building, automations, and operations. Then stop model hopping inside a single task. Test with real work, like a client email or a sales page, and trust what you find in your own workflow over any score somebody posted in a newsletter.
3. What professional writers are letting AI touch
Laura Entis, a writer at the publication Every, interviewed five professionals about how they really use AI. The group included Every's CEO, a well-known designer, and a former New York Times columnist. Nobody used it the same way. Some of them use the same tools and the same models. One uses it to think more clearly before writing. Another felt that same model made their writing worse.
What they had in common: every single one uses AI selectively and keeps their hands and their brains on the parts that carry their voice.
The pressure to hand everything over to AI is loud right now, especially on LinkedIn. The people who write for a living are doing the opposite. AI helps them brainstorm, research, or get unstuck. The thinking stays theirs, and so does the final piece of the craft.
If your business lives and dies on sounding like you, that final pass of your human voice is the whole thing. You cannot skip that part.
Your move this week: Use AI only for the messy middle. Outlines, first drafts, research, the blank page. Start by voice-dictating rough ideas into the model of your choice. You are the two bookends. You start it and you end it. When the draft doesn't sound like you, treat that as the tool falling a little short and rewrite that part yourself.
4. The September 15 change that could hide your website from AI
This one is a little in the weeds, but if you have a website, you need to know about it. Cloudflare, a platform that sits in front of about 20% of the web, is changing its default AI settings on September 15, 2026. New sites and sites on the free tier will start blocking certain AI bots by default, especially on pages that run ads. The bots that train models and the bots that take actions get blocked. The bots that help you get found in AI search stay allowed.
For context, almost 60% of website traffic is now non-human, and human visits to a lot of business websites have dropped 35 to 40% in the last year. This is about who gets paid when AI uses your content. Big publishers are already using these controls to charge AI companies or block them entirely. Some local news sites now make more from licensing than they do from ads.
For most small business owners, the goal is the opposite of blocking. You want AI to find you and recommend you. That goes right back to the deodorant shelf.
Your move this week: If your site runs on Cloudflare (you may need to ask your IT person), log in and look at your AI crawler settings before September 15. Make sure search access stays on so you stay discoverable. If you sell a premium program, original research, or paid content, that is where blocking or charging the training bots could start to make sense.
Key takeaways
AI is a new shelf, and clarity plus one narrow lane is what gets you on it. A fake brand beat generations-old brands with a clear website and zero ad budget.
You owe no AI company your loyalty. Pick a default model per type of work, then stay put inside a single task.
Professional writers use AI for the messy middle. The thinking and the final pass stay human.
Check your Cloudflare AI crawler settings before September 15 so search bots can still find you.
AI is becoming the front door for your business. It recommends you. It writes with you. It is the gatekeeper deciding whether you get seen and paid. Pick one move that fits where you are right now, and you are already ahead of most of the people in your market.
Season three of the AI Queens Podcast is coming this fall, and guest spots are open. Bring your messiest business problem and solve it with me on the air, free of charge. Apply at aiqueens.com/apply.
