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Welcome to another week in this busy new AI world. Come on in and make a Splash.
WHAT’S IN THIS ISSUE:
🎯 What $20 in AI really buys you.
💼 Turn one messy input into 10 finished assets.
⚠️ Your roof may be judged by AI.
🤯 Elton, ABBA and the avatar concert gold rush.
🛠️ The AI call screener hiding in your phone.
🫠 A laundry robot wants $7,999 to fold your socks.
Let’s kick things off with a brain teaser. Remember when googling something meant opening 12 tabs, forgetting why you came and somehow spending hours on forum threads from 2009?
Now the internet does the reading for us. Chatbots answer. Google summarizes. Websites sit there like, “Hello? Anyone?” The old search-and-click handshake is left hanging.
🤔 What percentage of Google searches end without a single click to any website?
A) 22%
B) 35%
C) 68%
D) Zero. We’re Americans. We demand 40 links and a recipe backstory first.
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🎯 YOUR AI POWER MOVE
Rent-A-Brain

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
You’re deep in a chatbot conversation, planning a trip, and bam: Message limit reached. Sound familiar?
Millions of us lean on these bots, and the pricing has gotten sneakier than a Ticketmaster “convenience fee.” So when is it worth paying?
💸 What free actually costs you
Free AI is pretty great for almost everything. But if you hit the limit, you get bumped to a weaker, slower version until the clock resets.
ChatGPT’s free tier started slipping ads into your answers this year. (Yes. Ads.) The real muscle, deep research and the smartest model, stays locked behind the paywall. Free is a great test drive but a lousy daily chauffeur.
🧠 When it’s worth paying
AI pricing clusters around $20 a month: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Google AI Pro and Perplexity Pro. Grok is the pricier oddball at about $30. Worth it? Once you stop smacking into that wall, you’ll wonder how you lived without the upgrade. Four rules:
Buy one paid plan, not five. Stack ’em and you’re staring at $110 a month.
Cancel month to month when you cool off. Set a payment reminder.
Turn off training on your private chats in settings.
Never paste passwords, account numbers or SSNs into any bot, free or paid.
A basic Pro tier is plenty for heavy users. You don’t need the $200 plan unless you like giving your money a tiny Viking funeral. Those Max and Ultra tiers are for coders, researchers and people who live inside the chatbot.
Hit the free wall, and your brilliant assistant powers down like a budget Terminator: “I’ll be Bach.”
📩 Send this to someone stuck between that free, paid or max tier AI plan decision.
The secret behind some AI scams

Image: Incogni
AI is fueling a new wave of scams, from deepfake phone calls using a loved one’s voice to emails that look completely real. But how do they know so much about you? Data brokers. They collect and sell your information, including your phone number, home address, and family details.
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Thank you for supporting our sponsors, who keep this newsletter free.
💼 YOUR AI EDGE

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
Less hustle, more muscle
Getting AI to make a thing is so 2025. Anyone can make a thing. A post. An email. A sales blurb that sounds like it had an espresso and a LinkedIn Premium subscription.
The edge isn’t the single prompt but the chain of work behind it. Asana found knowledge workers burn more than half the day on “work about work,” instead of the skilled job they were hired for. McKinsey says AI could automate the activities that eat up 60% to 70% of your time.
Read this. Summarize it. Find the angle. Draft the thing. Fix the tone. Make it useful. Turn it into something else. Check if it’s accurate. Put it in email format. Blah blah blah.
Cue the angels. You can turn any single raw input into a finished workflow.
Messy meeting transcript > action plan, follow-up email, owner list, deadline tracker.
Competitor article > key points, market angle, social post, sales talking points.
Customer complaint > root issue, response draft, refund policy check, improvement list.
Podcast episode > title, description, clips, quotes, takeaways.
💪🏼 Don’t be a copy-paste machine
Make AI your tiny operations department. No salary, no coffee breaks, no complaining about the thermostat. Paste this into your favorite chatbot:
Act as my content operations assistant. I’ll give you one source article. Build a repeatable workflow:
● Summarize it in 150 words.
● Pull 5 strong angles for [my audience].
● Rank those angles by novelty and usefulness.
● Draft 3 LinkedIn posts in distinct tones.
● Suggest one simple visual for each.
● Give me a review checklist for accuracy, clarity, originality and audience fit.
● Output in labeled sections.
Most people ask AI to do one tiny piece and call it a day. Hand it the boring middle instead: the sorting, shaping, checking, ranking and repackaging that usually eats your whole afternoon and half your soul.
Your process speeds up. Your time crawls back into your schedule, blinking at the daylight.
📩 Send this to someone who is drowning in busywork and still thinks AI is for writing emails.
📻 MY NATIONAL RADIO & YOUTUBE SHOW
📺 WATCH ON YOUTUBE NOW OR LATER
A masked “Batman” in Mexico is duct-taping alleged motorcycle thieves to poles, adding cat whiskers and posting the receipts online. Real story? Somehow, yes. Legal strategy? Gotham’s HR department would like a word.
Also this week: A JetBlue flight hit a drone near JFK, AI flower scams are selling seeds for plants that don’t exist and a man used his Tesla’s self-driving mode during a heart attack while his son remotely sent the car directions to the hospital. Wild.
Hit play below, so you’re the smartest person around. 👇
🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.
⚠️ THE AI TRAP

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
You did all the boring, responsible homeowner stuff. Mortgage paid. Insurance renewed. Gutters cleaned. Then the letter lands: Replace the roof in 30 days, trim the vegetation, ditch the trampoline, or we won’t renew you.
Home insurers inspect your house with aerial photos, satellite images, drones and AI property analytics. No knock on the door. No human in your yard.
And spoiler alert, they’re often wrong. A blurry roof photo or an automated risk flag is all it takes to trigger repair demands, premium hikes or a nonrenewal notice.
🏠 The roof, the roof, the roof is not on fire
This usually isn’t a drone buzzing your driveway. It’s worse, in a boring paperwork way. Vendors scrape images from aircraft, satellites, public records and sometimes drones. Then computer vision goes hunting: roof age, missing shingles, moss, tree branches, pools, trampolines, solar panels, yard clutter.
Why the sudden obsession? In 2024, the U.S. got slammed by 27 separate weather disasters that each topped a billion dollars. That’s roughly one every two weeks, all year long. The damage is staggering. The total tab hit $182.7 billion. Hurricane Helene alone ran $78.7 billion.
Your insurer stares at that math and panics. You get the letter.
🔒 Protect yourself
This isn’t your cue to camp on the lawn with a slingshot waiting for the next flyover. If that letter shows up, ask for proof in writing: the photo date, the vendor report, the underwriting rule, the exact flag on your property. Ask whether a consumer reporting agency or third-party provider was involved, and get the dispute steps.
Most important, build your own roof file before renewal. Date-stamped photos. Invoices. Permits. Warranties. Tree-trimming receipts. If their image is old or flat-out wrong, demand a human review. A computer flagged you. A person can unflag you.
Bottom line, your roof is having its picture taken whether you like it or not. So make sure yours is the flattering one. And rolling over for a bad flag? That’s just roofless.
📩 Send this to the friend who owns a house and still thinks bird poop is the only thing bothering his roof.
🧠 SMART STEALS OF THE WEEK
As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.
🧠 Smarter under your roof
Give your nest a smart little refresh.
🚗 Easy entry: Smart garage door opener (15% off, $43)
4.3 ⭐ 18,200+ reviews
Left the garage open? Now you’ll know. Check it from your phone, then close it with a tap or your voice. Works with 1,600+ models, adding control to your existing opener. No need to replace anything.

Image: meross
💡 Bright ideas: Linkind’s smart light bulbs (26% off, $25) sip less juice than regular 60W bulbs. Set schedules or ask Alexa or Google to flip the switch.
Plug party: Turn one wall outlet into five with a multi-plug extender (15% off, $15). There are even three USB ports. Great for tight spaces.
📬 You’ve got mail: This smart mailbox alarm (25% off, $30) alerts you the second your mail lands. You’ll stay one step ahead of porch pirates.
Clip trick: Stick these rotatable cord holders (17% off, $10, six-pack) to your desk or nightstand. Your charger stays put, not buried behind the furniture.
🏠 Homeward bound: Shop all the smart home staples I swear by.
🤯 “I HAD NO IDEA”

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
Don’t go breaking my avatar
And here I thought Elton John’s retirement meant Elton John would stop performing.
The 79-year-old reportedly signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Hard Rock for a hologram-style Las Vegas residency after its new resort opens next summer on the former Mirage site. He found the one encore that requires no hips and, eventually, no pulse.
💸 Holograms make money out of thin air
ABBA Voyage, the Swedish pop time machine, pulls in about $139 million a year (roughly $381,000 a day) before you even count hotels, merch and tourists buying “Dancing Queen” tote bags.
3.5 million people have shown up since 2022, generating around $2.7 billion in UK economic activity. Every fake ABBA concert is a tiny stimulus package with better jumpsuits.

Image: ABBA Voyage
That’s why legacy artists are suddenly looking at avatars like retirement accounts. KISS sold its catalog, name, image and likeness rights to Pophouse (same company behind ABBA Voyage) in a deal valued around $300 million, with a KISS avatar show planned for 2027.
No tour buses, no blown-out vocal cords, no geriatric rock stars needing three ice baths and 90 minutes of hip massages. That’s all replaced by expensive digital clones, a fixed venue and a catalog that can keep selling tickets forever.
Death comes for us all. Merch tables are eternal.
🛠️ YOUR TOOL OF THE WEEK

Image: ChatGPT/Kim Komando
The AI call screener hiding in your phone
WHAT IT DOES: Makes an AI answer your phone for you. When an unknown number calls, your phone picks up, asks who’s calling and why and shows you the answer in real time before it ever rings. Robocalls and spam get hung up automatically. You only get bothered when it’s a real person with a real reason.
WHY IT’S COOL: It’s free, already on your phone, and there’s nothing to download. Most people have no clue their phone can do this.
WHO IT’S FOR: Anyone drowning in spam calls. Especially handy if you run one phone for work and life or you want your notifications to mean something.
PRICE: Free. Built in. No app, no subscription, no upsell.
HOW TO TURN IT ON:
iPhone (iOS 26 or newer, iPhone 11 and up): Settings > Apps > Phone > Screen Unknown Callers > Ask Reason for Calling.
Android (Pixel, plus some phones running the Phone by Google app): Open Phone > More > Settings > Spam and Call Screen > Call Screen, then switch on automatic screening. (Samsung Galaxy has its own flavor called Bixby Text Call.)
THE CATCH: It screens numbers that aren’t in your contacts, so add your doctor, pharmacy and the school. A few legit callers (like a clinic dialing from an auxiliary line) can get caught, so peek at your unknown-callers list now and then. On iPhone, if you call 911, screening shuts off for 24 hours. Google’s auto-screening is mostly a U.S. and Pixel deal for now.
COMING THIS FALL: iOS 27 makes the Phone app smarter still, pulling context from your Mail and Messages mid-call so you know who’s really on the line. But don’t wait for it. The screener works today.
🫠 WTF (WHAT THE FUTURE)?

Image: Weave Robotics
The sheet hits the fan
The home robot finally has a killer app: not curing loneliness, not saving humanity, just defeating the pile of clothes on your chair.
Weave Robotics’ Isaac 1 is available for preorder at $7,999, or $449 per month. A refundable $250 deposit holds your spot. It’s cheaper than some humanoid rivals but still very much priced for people who say “my weekend house” unironically. It folds laundry, makes beds, tidies rooms and runs up to eight hours on wheels like a soft little butler mushroom.
Tricky tasks? Might need a remote human operator. Congrats, you automated housework by inventing a very expensive stranger with cameras.
Eight grand to fold your laundry, and it’ll still lose a sock. Call those the lost soles.
🎬 END OF PROMPT
Here’s your haul for today: You learned when a $20 AI plan is worth it, how to turn one messy input into a full workflow, why your roof might be judged by an algorithm, how avatar concerts are turning old catalogs into new cash, where your phone’s free AI call screener is hiding and why a $7,999 laundry robot still might not save you from the chair pile. Not bad for five minutes of reading.
😳 The answer: C) 68%. Yep, 6 out of 10 Google searches end with zero clicks. You search, you read Google’s answer, you leave. And when an AI Overview shows up? The zero-click rate jumps to 83%.
The fallout’s brutal. Google search traffic to websites plunged 34% in just one year. The chatbots aren’t picking up the slack either. ChatGPT sends websites less than 1% of its visitors. The entire web is open for business, and most of us stopped walking in.
I finally found the perfect place to hide my secret candy stash. Page two of Google search results. Nobody’s looked there in years.
🗑️ Tired of the constant spam and “targeted” junk? It starts with data brokers auctioning off your home address and phone number. I use Incogni because they do the hard work of removing my info from hundreds of broker sites. It works to keep my inbox clean. Take your data off the market with Incogni. Get 60% off with code KIM60.*
Forward this to ONE person who needs to be with the AI program. Thanks for diving in, see you next time! — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
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🎉 Keep it going! You got this! — Kim
Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, meross, ABBA Voyage, Weave Robotics
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