Today we experimented with Zeely, which is a magic AI-powered tool that is supposed to generate sales, somehow. We saw an advertisement for it and figured we'd give it a shot.
Everything it gave us was crap - like garbage made up by AI that didn't even work. We paid $25 for nine leads from this - one was a wrong number, one was a call that could not connect, and the most interesting was a Spanish speaker:
"Hola!" (Hello)
"Hola. Betty?" (Hello, Betty?)
"Si." (Yes)
"Did you fill out our contact form, looking for programmers?"
"Lo siento, solo hablo español." (Sorry, I only speak Spanish.)
"¿Necesitas programadoras?" (Do you need programmers?)
"No."
"Gracias, adios." (Thanks, goodbye.)
I called all nine of these leads. My wife emailed six of them, and I emailed the last three from her account. Interestingly, only one of the emails had any kind of bounce.
If you look at what Zeely states they are offering, they said they would provide an "AI Powered Sales App" which they did. They sales app they provided worked, for lead collection, and the AI agents they used to populate it, really provided AI power. The value of the AI power was negative - if I have an AI routine generate realistic-seeming data, from AI-generated leads, when I call those people they will have no idea what I am talking about.
Zeely did not actually do anything different from what it promised. After our credit card company flagged it as a fraudulent charge, we authorized it. I believe they sold us what they said they would, but what they said they would was not particularly useful.
AI is not magic. It still requires a human to understand, and validate, what is going on.
It's also not a good idea to do business with someone with an F rating with the Better Business Bureau either.
