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S3E14 - Intentional AI: AI agents are only as good as your workflow
Agentic AI has been one of the most repeated phrases in marketing and technology for the past year. Most people using it cannot tell you what it means. Virgil and Cole bring in Sean Wright, Lead Product Evangelist at Kentico, to cut through the noise and talk about what agentic AI actually does inside a content management workflow.
The starting point is a distinction that gets lost in the hype. Standard AI chat requires you to keep driving it. You ask, it answers, it stops. Agents do not stop when you do. They make decisions, take action, and iterate toward a goal using whatever tools and data they have access to. Sean makes the case that this shift in behavior is significant, but only if the agent has something real to work with. Context is the deciding factor every time.
Sean walks through two areas where Kentico's built-in AI engine, AIRA (AI Recommendations and Assistance), is already handling real workflow tasks. The first is image management - optimization, cropping, focal point detection, alt text generation, and taxonomy tagging, all happening in the background without the marketer stepping in. The second is a content strategist agent that evaluates web content against your organization's content strategy document, checking for consistency in tone, style, and voice before anything goes live.
The conversation closes on evals, a concept that does not get enough attention outside of product development circles. As models change and context evolves, teams need a way to verify that output quality is holding steady. Sean makes the case that this applies to individual marketers and marketing teams, not just vendors. If you rely on a repeatable AI-assisted workflow, you should have a way to know when something has quietly shifted.
Previously in the Intentional AI series:
- Episode 1: Intentional AI and the Content Lifecycle
- Episode 2: Maximizing AI for Research and Analysis
- Episode 3: Smarter Content Creation with AI
- Episode 4: The role of AI in content management
- Episode 5: How much can you trust AI for accessibility
- Episode 6: You’re asking AI to solve the wrong problems for SEO, GEO, and AEO
- Episode 7: Why AI can make your content personalization worse
- Episode 8: The real value of AI wireframes is NOT the wireframes
- Episode 9: Just because AI can create images doesn't mean you should use them
- Episode 10: The Super Bowl didn't sell AI, it exposed it
- Episode 11: AI video rewards planning, not your ideas
- Episode 12: AI might struggle with creativity, but coding isn't creative
- Episode 13.1: What the rise of conversational search means for your website
New episodes every other Tuesday.
For more conversations about AI, design, and digital strategy, visit https://www.highmonkey.com/podcast and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
(0:00) - Intro
(0:44) - Meet Sean Wright from Kentico
(1:45) - What does "agentic" actually mean?
(3:13) - The agent doesn't stop when you do
(4:11) - It all depends on the tools
(5:49) - AI output is non-deterministic. Plan for it.
(8:11) - What AIRA handles behind the scenes
(11:17) - Where AI works best: logic over creativity
(12:17) - Evaluating content against your own strategy
(15:24) - Consistency is harder than creation
(16:03) - AI still requires planning
(16:58) - Tools that can help across the content lifecycle
(18:48) - Cognitive load and the 80/20 rule
(20:16) - Will AI replace your job?
(21:45) - The Wall-E chair question
(23:19) - Agentic AI is intentional AI
(24:17) - What are evals and why do they matter?
(27:01) - Wrapping up
(28:00) - Outro
Subscribe for email updates on our website:
https://www.discussingstupid.com/
Watch us on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@discussingstupid
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discussing-stupid-a-byte-sized-podcast-on-stupid-ux/id1428145024
https://open.spotify.com/show/0c47grVFmXk1cco63QioHp?si=87dbb37a4ca441c0
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Check Us Out on Socials:
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View all episodes
By High MonkeyAgentic AI has been one of the most repeated phrases in marketing and technology for the past year. Most people using it cannot tell you what it means. Virgil and Cole bring in Sean Wright, Lead Product Evangelist at Kentico, to cut through the noise and talk about what agentic AI actually does inside a content management workflow.
The starting point is a distinction that gets lost in the hype. Standard AI chat requires you to keep driving it. You ask, it answers, it stops. Agents do not stop when you do. They make decisions, take action, and iterate toward a goal using whatever tools and data they have access to. Sean makes the case that this shift in behavior is significant, but only if the agent has something real to work with. Context is the deciding factor every time.
Sean walks through two areas where Kentico's built-in AI engine, AIRA (AI Recommendations and Assistance), is already handling real workflow tasks. The first is image management - optimization, cropping, focal point detection, alt text generation, and taxonomy tagging, all happening in the background without the marketer stepping in. The second is a content strategist agent that evaluates web content against your organization's content strategy document, checking for consistency in tone, style, and voice before anything goes live.
The conversation closes on evals, a concept that does not get enough attention outside of product development circles. As models change and context evolves, teams need a way to verify that output quality is holding steady. Sean makes the case that this applies to individual marketers and marketing teams, not just vendors. If you rely on a repeatable AI-assisted workflow, you should have a way to know when something has quietly shifted.
Previously in the Intentional AI series:
- Episode 1: Intentional AI and the Content Lifecycle
- Episode 2: Maximizing AI for Research and Analysis
- Episode 3: Smarter Content Creation with AI
- Episode 4: The role of AI in content management
- Episode 5: How much can you trust AI for accessibility
- Episode 6: You’re asking AI to solve the wrong problems for SEO, GEO, and AEO
- Episode 7: Why AI can make your content personalization worse
- Episode 8: The real value of AI wireframes is NOT the wireframes
- Episode 9: Just because AI can create images doesn't mean you should use them
- Episode 10: The Super Bowl didn't sell AI, it exposed it
- Episode 11: AI video rewards planning, not your ideas
- Episode 12: AI might struggle with creativity, but coding isn't creative
- Episode 13.1: What the rise of conversational search means for your website
New episodes every other Tuesday.
For more conversations about AI, design, and digital strategy, visit https://www.highmonkey.com/podcast and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
(0:00) - Intro
(0:44) - Meet Sean Wright from Kentico
(1:45) - What does "agentic" actually mean?
(3:13) - The agent doesn't stop when you do
(4:11) - It all depends on the tools
(5:49) - AI output is non-deterministic. Plan for it.
(8:11) - What AIRA handles behind the scenes
(11:17) - Where AI works best: logic over creativity
(12:17) - Evaluating content against your own strategy
(15:24) - Consistency is harder than creation
(16:03) - AI still requires planning
(16:58) - Tools that can help across the content lifecycle
(18:48) - Cognitive load and the 80/20 rule
(20:16) - Will AI replace your job?
(21:45) - The Wall-E chair question
(23:19) - Agentic AI is intentional AI
(24:17) - What are evals and why do they matter?
(27:01) - Wrapping up
(28:00) - Outro
Subscribe for email updates on our website:
https://www.discussingstupid.com/
Watch us on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@discussingstupid
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/discussing-stupid-a-byte-sized-podcast-on-stupid-ux/id1428145024
https://open.spotify.com/show/0c47grVFmXk1cco63QioHp?si=87dbb37a4ca441c0
https://soundcloud.com/discussing-stupid
Check Us Out on Socials:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/discussing-stupid
https://www.instagram.com/discussingstupid/
https://www.facebook.com/discussingstupid
https://x.com/DiscussStupid