Guides: what AI actually does, industry by industry
Every guide here answers the same question for a different world: not what AI could theoretically do, but what has actually shipped, what only got announced, what got quietly rolled back, and who has nothing at all.
They are built the same way every time. Every claim traces to a primary source that was opened and read. Vendors with no AI are listed with that stated, because leaving them out would make the market look more automated than it is. The failures are listed too.
Maintained by Brian Cleveland, who writes Brian Tries AI. Each guide carries its own last-updated date. Nothing here costs anything and nobody paid to be listed.
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Each of these is maintained, not written once and abandoned.
AI in Restaurants Live
What 29 restaurant technology vendors actually ship, and what you notice as a diner: the drive-thru voice, the AI answering the phone, AI-altered food photos, and who is really deciding where you eat.
Read the guide → · updated Aug 31, 2026
AI for Small Business Live
What AI is already inside the 25 tools you pay for every month, whether it costs extra, and the usage limits nobody mentions. Plus what it changes about actually running the place.
Read the guide → · updated Aug 31, 2026
AI in Corporate America Live
What 15 of the biggest public companies disclosed about AI in their audited filings - real internal adoption rates, what actually happened to headcount, and the true scale of the spending. Plus what it means for your job.
Read the guide → · updated Aug 31, 2026
AI in Retail Live
What 18 major retailers actually deployed - Walmart, Target, Costco, Amazon, Kroger and more - including the 7 with no verifiable AI at all, the $2.5 billion write-off Kroger put in its own annual report, and the retailers whose loudest AI announcements have not been mentioned since.
Read the guide → · updated Aug 31, 2026
AI Jargon Dictionary Live
Plain-English definitions for the words people use to make this sound harder than it is.
Read the guide → · updated Aug 28, 2026
How these are built
The same four rules every time.
Everything traces to the original source
Vendor newsroom, pricing page, help center, regulatory filing, or the outlet that broke the story. Never aggregators, never listicles, never roundups. No URL is published that was not opened and read.
The ones with nothing get listed
A vendor with no verifiable AI is listed with that stated. Omitting them is the fastest way to make a market look more automated than it is.
The failures get listed
Rollbacks, price increases, regulatory actions, features withdrawn without notice. These are the entries that tell you whether to trust the rest of the page.
No hypotheticals
No invented examples, no simulated use cases, no projections. If something could not be verified, the guide says so rather than softening it into an unsourced assertion.