The AI-Native Brand: 6 Takeaways From Knotch’s Ace Launch Event

On June 16, an array of 100+ marketers, digital leaders, and technology innovators gathered at the Guggenheim Museum in New York to celebrate the launch of Ace, Knotch’s AI Experience Infrastructure. Already, brands like Zillow, Ally Bank, and Google are piloting the Ace technology to turn their websites from static destinations into dynamic, conversational portals that can identify the needs of visitors whose journeys have already been shaped by AI.

Over the course of the past year, Knotch has been engaging marketing leaders in conversations about websites…and their future. That doesn’t sound particularly interesting on the surface, but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find an extremely pressing question at the center: What happens to websites in an AI-native world? For the Knotch team, Ace is the culmination of our exploration into that question. One of our team’s biggest findings as we built Ace, however, isn’t about tech at all, but about humans: As AI transforms how people discover information and interact with brands, the fundamentals of trust, relevance, and human connection matter more than ever.

You’ll see that resonating in the six themes that emerged from our Ace launch event.

1. AI-native audiences require AI-native brands

Visitors are arriving at websites in a manner that’s very different from how they did even two years ago. Increasingly, LLMs are doing much of the heavy lifting before a visitor ever reaches a brand’s owned properties. They are synthesizing information, comparing options, and helping people narrow their choices. By the time someone clicks through to a brand’s site (or navigates to it on their own without a click – which, at least for now, is the bulk of AI-influenced traffic) they’re often further along in their decision-making process than that website anticipates. They also arrive with much more specific intent.

As Knotch CEO Anda Gansca noted, “The modern marketing playbook was built for an audience who no longer exists.”

That reality has some serious implications for brands. Traditional websites were designed around the assumption that visitors would patiently navigate pages and discover information on their own. Today’s audiences expect experiences that are more responsive, more conversational, more tailored to their needs – and they want them fast.

2. Websites are evolving, but they aren’t disappearing

Throughout the Ace launch event, speakers and participants pushed back on the increasingly popular narrative that websites are becoming obsolete. Instead, the consensus was that websites are undergoing a transformation rather than facing extinction.

As the excitement around Ace showed, static experiences built around rigid navigation structures are giving way to something more dynamic. Consumers increasingly expect interactions that resemble conversations. They move fluidly between text, video, images, and voice. They expect information to surface based on intent rather than requiring them to hunt for it.

In that sense, websites are becoming less like digital brochures and more like adaptive systems. Their core purpose remains the same (to educate, engage, and drive action) but the way they accomplish those goals is changing dramatically. The next generation of websites will likely be multimodal, personalized, and capable of responding to visitors in ways that traditional page-based experiences simply could not.

3. The AI era is making brand more important, not less

One of the more surprising themes that surfaced repeatedly throughout the Ace launch event was that AI actually increases the importance of brand. A lot.

Yes, generative AI has dramatically lowered the barriers to creating content, which means information itself is becoming abundant. But abundance creates a new problem: trust. As consumers become overwhelmed by AI-generated answers and content, trusted brands become increasingly valuable authorities. Credibility, reputation, and consistency matter more when information is plentiful.

Rather than diminishing the importance of brand building, AI may be accelerating a return to its fundamentals. Strong positioning, memorable storytelling, and authentic relationships become competitive advantages in an environment where everyone has access to the same tools. In fact, several conversations during Ace launch day suggested that enterprises may need to invest more rather than less in brand if they want to remain discoverable and differentiated in the years ahead.

4. Operating models are often bigger challenges than the technology itself

If there was one phrase that captured the mood of the day, it might have been “pilot purgatory.”

Across the industries represented at the Ace event, from financial services to tech to healthcare, leaders described similar challenges. Marketing teams are experimenting with countless AI tools, conducting pilots, and searching for high-impact use cases. But the biggest obstacles often aren’t technical, but organizational and structural.

Data lives in silos. Governance requirements introduce complexity. Marketing teams need to collaborate more closely with analytics, engineering, product, legal, and risk teams than ever before. In many organizations, the operating model itself has become the bottleneck.

The conversation suggested that success in the AI era won’t necessarily mean having access to the most advanced tools or being first-to-market. Instead, thriving means aligning people, processes, and data around shared goals. The future of marketing is just as much about new ways of working as it is about new technology.

5. AI isn’t replacing marketers. It’s amplifying them

Since the original debut of ChatGPT, there have been countless headlines in the marketing and business trades predicting wholesale disruption of the industry. And yet, the mood in the room was remarkably optimistic about the future of marketing.

Participants largely viewed AI as a force multiplier rather than a replacement. The technology is helping teams move faster, uncover deeper insights, and scale personalization in ways that were previously impossible. But none of that eliminates the need for creativity, judgment, empathy, or strategy.

If anything, AI is off to a promising start in giving marketers more time to focus on the parts of the job that matter most. Rather than spending countless hours executing repetitive tasks, they can devote more energy to understanding customers, developing ideas, and creating experiences that resonate emotionally.

The tools may evolve, but understanding people remains at the heart of marketing. And that work is still (and always will be) deeply reliant on the creativity of other humans.

6. Human connection remains the ultimate differentiator

For all the discussion about agents, interfaces, and AI-powered experiences, one of the most powerful themes of the event was a simple one: people still want to feel understood.

No matter the vertical or sector, participants at the Ace launch repeatedly returned to themes of trust, empathy, relationships, and community. The emotional aspects of decision-making haven’t disappeared simply because technology has advanced.

That may be the greatest opportunity AI creates. Rather than automating humanity away, it will free people to spend more time doing the things machines cannot. It takes humans to build trust, create belonging, and make customers feel seen. As enterprises rethink websites, content, and customer journeys for the AI era, successful brands will have a steady eye on humanity.

And with Ace in-market, we hope it’s getting a little easier for you to stay human.

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Published on June 29, 2026