When someone like Simon Willison starts promising pelicans on bicycles and possums on e-scooters in his newsletter, you know we've hit peak AI content absurdity.
Willison, a respected voice in the AI community, just sent out his weekly newsletter featuring what can only be described as fever-dream imagery: 4 pelicans riding bicycles, 1 possum on an e-scooter, and up to 5 raccoons with ham radios hiding in crowds. This isn't satire. This is what passes for newsletter content in 2026.
We've been watching this trend accelerate for months. Every AI newsletter now needs its gimmick, its hook, its way to stand out in an inbox drowning in weekly AI roundups. The result? Serious technical content gets packaged with increasingly ridiculous AI-generated imagery, as if readers can't handle straightforward information without cartoon animals.
This matters for small businesses because it's symptomatic of a bigger problem: AI tools are making it too easy to create content without thinking about whether that content serves any purpose. We see this with our clients all the time. They get excited about AI's ability to generate endless variations of blog posts, newsletters, and social media content. But volume isn't value.
The companies winning with AI content are the ones using it to amplify their genuine expertise, not mask the lack of it. They're using AI to research better, write clearer, and reach more people with ideas that actually matter. They're not asking ChatGPT to dream up pelican imagery because they can't think of anything interesting to say about their work.
Willison's newsletter will still be worth reading because he knows AI inside and out. But when even the experts resort to absurdist content marketing, it's a warning sign for everyone else. Your customers don't need more noise. They need you to solve their problems.
If you're running a business newsletter, here's what to do instead: pick three genuine insights from your work each month and explain them clearly. No pelicans required. Your readers will thank you for respecting their time, and you'll stand out by being useful rather than weird.