If you’ve been anywhere near the internet this week, you’ll have seen the name ‘Pomelli‘ doing the rounds. Google’s latest AI experiment has landed, it’s generating branded social media campaigns from a single website URL, and the internet is doing what the internet always does: oscillating wildly between “this changes everything” and “we’re all going to be out of a job by Thursday.”
As someone who’s been a professional copywriter for over a decade and watched the entire ChatGPT panic unfold in real time, I have thoughts. And they’re perhaps not what you’d expect from someone whose livelihood theoretically depends on AI not getting too good at words.
So, What Is Pomelli?
Pomelli is an AI marketing tool built by Google Labs in partnership with Google DeepMind. It launched in public beta in October 2025 and is currently available in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with a UK and European rollout expected later in 2026.
The premise is disarmingly simple. You give Pomelli your website URL. It scans your site – your copy, your images, your colour palette, your fonts, your tone of voice – and builds what Google calls a “Business DNA” profile. From there, it generates tailored social media campaigns, ad creatives, web banners, and marketing assets that are (theoretically) on-brand and ready to go.
As of February 2026, Pomelli has expanded to include an “Animate” feature (powered by Google’s Veo 3.1 video model) and a brand-new “Photoshoot” tool that transforms basic product photos into polished, studio-quality marketing images. You upload a snapshot of your product taken on your phone, and it generates professional lifestyle and studio shots. No photographer required.
It’s fast. It’s free. And it’s backed by one of the most powerful AI research teams on the planet.
So naturally, creatives everywhere are panicking.
We’ve Been Here Before
When ChatGPT launched, copywriters were told to start updating their CVs. AI was going to write all the blogs, all the emails, all the website copy. The profession was finished. It was only a matter of time.
Except that’s not what happened.
What actually happened was that the market flooded with AI-generated content that all sounded exactly the same. Bland. Generic. Littered with phrases like “in today’s fast-paced digital landscape” and “it’s not just THIS, it’s THIS.” The businesses that jumped on the AI bandwagon without a second thought ended up with websites that read like they’d been written by the personification of the colour beige.
And the businesses that cared about standing out came to people like me. Because suddenly, the difference between human-crafted copy and AI-generated filler was glaringly obvious, and ambitious brands didn’t want to be caught on the wrong side of it.
I’ve been the busiest I’ve ever been since ChatGPT launched. My business hit its first six-figure year. Not despite AI – in part, because of it.
What Pomelli Does Well (and Where It Falls Short)
Pomelli isn’t available in the UK but I’m a resourceful person who understands how to use VPNs, so I’ve had a little play around.
Credit where it’s due: Pomelli is clever. The “Business DNA” concept is genuinely impressive. Rather than asking you to upload brand guidelines and style sheets, it extracts your brand identity directly from your website. For small businesses that don’t have a brand kit and wouldn’t know how to put one together, that’s a genuinely useful shortcut.
The Photoshoot feature is particularly interesting for e-commerce businesses. Professional product photography is expensive. If you’re a small retailer selling candles or skincare, spending thousands on a studio shoot for every product line isn’t always feasible. Pomelli’s ability to transform a quick phone photo into a polished lifestyle shot is, for certain businesses, a genuine game-changer.
But Pomelli can only work with what’s already on your website. It can’t invent a brand personality you haven’t built. It can’t craft a narrative that doesn’t exist yet. It can’t understand the nuance of your customer relationships, the inside jokes your audience loves, or the specific tone that makes your followers feel like they’re hearing from a real person.
It’s an execution tool, not a strategy tool. And that distinction matters enormously.
The Real Question: Who Is Pomelli Actually For?
This is where my prediction comes in, and it’s the same prediction I made about ChatGPT that turned out to be spot on.
Pomelli will be brilliant for businesses that just need something functional. The local takeaway that needs a quick Instagram post. The startup with no marketing budget that needs passable social content to get off the ground. The sole trader who’s been posting the same three Canva templates for two years because they haven’t got time to learn graphic design.
For those businesses, Pomelli is a genuine leap forward. And that’s a good thing.
But brands with ambition – those that understand that their marketing is the difference between being remembered and being scrolled past – will do what they always do when the floor gets flooded with generic content. They’ll go the other way.
They’ll invest in distinctiveness. They’ll hire the humans who can do what Pomelli can’t – craft a brand voice that’s unmistakably theirs, build campaigns around stories that actually resonate, and create content that stands out and makes people stop scrolling because it feels like it was made by a person who gets it.
The Pattern Is Always the Same
Every time a new AI tool emerges, we see the same cycle. Panic. Then adoption. Then a split. Budget-conscious businesses lean into the automation. Quality-conscious businesses lean away from it. And the gap between “good enough” and “actually good” gets wider, which only makes the work of skilled creatives more valuable, not less.
My prediction: Pomelli won’t kill creative marketing. It’ll define it. It’ll draw a sharper line between brands that are willing to settle for AI-generated sameness and brands that refuse to.
The businesses that thrive will be the ones that use tools like Pomelli to handle the repetitive stuff. Like the quick social graphics, the placeholder content, and the first drafts. They can then invest their time and energy into the strategic, creative, and deeply human work that no AI can replicate.
What Should You Actually Do About Pomelli?
If you’re a small business owner, try it when it becomes available in the UK. Or get a sneak peak via a cheeky VPN like I did. It’s free and it might save you time on the tasks that don’t require a human touch. There’s no shame in using a tool that makes your life easier.
But don’t mistake efficiency for effectiveness. A tool that can produce content quickly is not the same as a tool that can produce content that connects. And if your marketing strategy begins and ends with “let the AI do it,” you’ll end up sounding exactly like every other business that made the same decision.
The brands that win will be the ones that understand the difference.
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