#26. Karin & Ave: From ChatGPT to Claude, FOBO & Closing Chapters: An AI Catch-Up

#28 Saniya Vardak x Girls Who Prompt: The Episode Where an AI Avatar Joined the Show

In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Saniya Vardak, Head of Growth at Beyond Presence [https://www.beyondpresence.ai/] — a Munich startup building real-time AI avatars that can see you, hear you, and respond in under 100 milliseconds. With nearly a decade scaling Wise, Wolt, and Deel, Saniya is now the sole marketer inside a company where the product didn't exist 18 months ago, growth is 45% month-on-month, and their avatar Nelly once fooled a room full of people into thinking she was real. Then Nelly crashed the Girls Who Prompt call. Live. This conversation is less about whether AI avatars are impressive and more about the harder question every company is quietly circling: where does the first layer end, and when does the human have to step back in? In this episode we discuss: * What a real-time AI avatar actually is — and what makes Nelly different from a chatbot, a safety video, or a deepfake * Why users learning a language with an AI avatar outperform peer-to-peer learners — and why feeling less judged is the whole reason * The "first layer" question: where AI contact ends and the human must take over (and why Saniya believes that line still matters deeply) * Europe vs. the rest: why GDPR-first, ethics-first avatar design is Beyond Presence's founding philosophy — not just a compliance checkbox * Why building your own avatar is starting to look a lot like the music industry — with royalties, licensing deals, and real contracts for real faces * The campaign where Beyond Presence asked people to spot the real human in the video — and most of them got it wrong * On imposter syndrome: how Saniya has made "I know nothing about this industry" her actual career strategy — across FinTech, food delivery, dating apps, and now AI avatars A reminder for anyone who feels behind the curve: Saniya has started from zero in every single industry she's entered. She delivers anyway. The not-knowing isn't the obstacle. It's the method. Meet the guest: • Saniya Vardak [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanyavardak/] — Head of Growth at Beyond Presence [https://www.beyondpresence.ai/] Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and storyteller interested in AI and passionate about digital marketing, books, movies and learning. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com [girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com] 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08].

#27 Stefanie Janssen x Girls Who Prompt: When AI Killed My Business (And Built Me a Better One)

What happens when AI quietly takes your clients, breaks your business model, and forces you to rebuild everything from the inside out? You stop fighting it. You learn Claude Code. And you build a better company. In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Stefanie Janssen, Co-Founder and CEO of MarchiteQ — an AI/Tech-first marketing agency for paid ads, GEO, data and automation, and a 2026 European Search Awards finalist.  With 10+ years in performance marketing, Stefanie thought she was building the dream: smaller clients, more autonomy, no stakeholders. Then her clients started leaving her for custom GPTs sold to them for €800. What she did next is the real story of this episode. This conversation is less about the tools and more about the deeper tension every marketer is quietly sitting with: what do you do when the playbook you mastered for ten years suddenly stops working  and AI is the one rewriting the rules? In this episode we discuss: * Why Stefanie calls AI "a curse and a blessing at the same time" — and what it uncovered for her * The "survival client" problem nobody in agency-land wants to talk about (and why you attract what you are) * How she went from zero to building her own MCPs for Google Ads, GA4 and GTM in two weeks — and why she skipped buzzword YouTube and learned from developers * Why the algorithm "going off track" is the real reason most paid campaigns silently break  * The death of browser tracking, the rise of server-side, and why most businesses are running on 50% of their actual data * Why GEO and paid ads are quietly merging. And what the next ad format will really look like (spoiler: citations and recommendations) * The MarchiteQ thesis: Create,  Measure, Scale, Automate — and why most agencies skip the first two * Where AI absolutely cannot replace humans yet — and why "AI never says no, and AI never stops" is both its superpower and its biggest risk * A real story of an autonomous AI agent experiment that ended in chaos — and what it teaches us about the value of human "no" * The human spark, the soul, intuition — and why Stefanie believes the most replaceable marketers are the ones not using their full skill set A reminder for anyone feeling behind: Stefanie was overwhelmed too. She thought she'd lost a year. It actually took her two weeks to catch up. The door is more open than the algorithm wants you to believe. Meet the guest: * Stefanie Janssen [https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanie-janssen-498348233/] — Co-Founder & CEO of MarchiteQ [https://www.marchiteq.com/] Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and storyteller interested in AI and passionate about digital marketing, books and learning. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08].

#26. Karin & Ave: From ChatGPT to Claude, FOBO & Closing Chapters: An AI Catch-Up

Ave and Karin are back for a two-of-us catch-up. No guest today, just yapping about everything that's shifted in the past few months. Ave shares why she moved her daily work from ChatGPT to Claude, how Cowork connectors and Skills are reshaping her work and some extra projects with competitor research and AI visibility audits, and why Whisper Flow turned her home into "a podcast all the time." Karin opens up about closing the AioraLume chapter. What six months of building taught her, why timing matters more than the idea, and how fast the technology has outgrown what she built. They also dig into: * The four big AI leaps of the past six months (reasoning, agents, robotics, automated science) * FOBO : the new "fear of becoming obsolete" hitting people * Why leadership and quality obsession are the most future-proof skills * Mark Zuckerberg's AI avatar reportedly running performance reviews at Meta * Notebook LM, Gamma, and whether general LLMs will eat the niche tools * The bigger shift: from an information society for humans to one written for machines Honest, a little messy, full of practical tips. Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and storyteller interested in AI and passionate about digital marketing, books and learning. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com [girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com] 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08]

#25 Jovana Paroški (Otterly.ai) x Girls Who Prompt: Get Found by AI. Get Helped by Humans.

In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Jovana Paroški, Customer Success professional at Otterly.ai - one of the first platforms built to track how brands appear in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. Jovana's path here was anything but straight: English literature graduate, teacher by training, pandemic-era SEO convert, three years at SEMrush marketing platform and now, someone who lives at the exact crossroads of AI visibility and very human customer relationships. This episode is less about tactics and more about the two questions every marketer and business owner is quietly asking right now: how do I get AI to notice me? (marketing) And what happens when AI handles my customers badly? (CS) In this episode we discuss: * What GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is  and why the shift from Google to AI search is already happening faster than most people realise * How Otterly.ai helps brands track and improve their visibility in AI-generated answers * The sources AI actually cites: why PR is having a comeback, why Reddit keeps showing up, why long YouTube videos beat Shorts and why LLMs.txt is not worth your time right now (Otterly ran the experiment) * Free content tips anyone can apply today:  key takeaways, FAQs, question-based headings to make AI more likely to surface your content * How AI handles 60% of Otterly's customer support, and the 40% where Jovana still has to step in  including the caps lock rule * Why 75% of people still want to speak to a human, and what that means for the future of customer success * How to build and train your first support bot — starting with FAQs, not fiction * What Jovana actually sees coming in five years: more AI roles, fewer tier-one tickets, and maybe,  just maybe,  the idea of taking your own AI from job to job This episode is for anyone building a brand, running a support team, or trying to figure out where the human still wins. In search and in service. PS: You'll also hear why Jovana built an AI finance tracker connected to her Google Sheets — and why she quietly deleted it once she saw the numbers 😅 Meet the guest: * Jovana Paroški [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jovana-poroski/] — Customer Success at Otterly.ai [https://otterly.ai/] Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and experimenter wondering what happens when AI stops being just a tool and starts acting like a companion. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/]: audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08]

#24 Denise Reffelmann (Commerzbank) x Girls Who Prompt: Your Bank Has a Face Now . Meet Ava

In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Denise Reffelmann, Product Owner of Ava - Commerzbank's AI-powered video avatar and virtual banking assistant. Ava isn't your usual chatbot. There's a real actress behind her, end-to-end banking services under her belt, and already more than 30,000 real conversations with real customers.  PS: yes, there was an actual casting process. This episode is all about what happens when a major bank bets on making digital feel human again,  and actually pulls it off. In this episode we discuss: * How the idea for Ava started at a trade fair and became a first-mover product in European banking * The casting, the customer testing, and why,  against all expectations, a woman in a suit won * Why 75% of cases are now resolved autonomously, without a call to customer service or go on spot * The chit-chat feature: the customers who use Ava just to have someone to talk to, for example ask her favorite book (and yes, some flirt with her) * What the agentic future of banking looks like — and how Commerzbank is already thinking ahead * Denise's own path from corporate communications to product owner of one of Europe's boldest banking AI products PS: There's also a fun moment where Ave meets Ava  Meet the guest: * Denise Reffelmann [https://www.linkedin.com/in/denise-reffelmann-a436a3147/ ]-  Product Owner of Ava at Commerzbank [https://www.commerzbank.de/]  Meet the hosts: * Karin Nemec [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-nemec-246ba8/], the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response. * Ave Annuk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ave-annuk/], marketer and experimenter wondering what happens when AI stops being just a tool and starts acting like a companion. Meet the team: 🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-roy-5b3b99202/] — audio expert, sound designer and composer. 📧 Write us: girlswhopromptpodcast@gmail.com 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel [https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbArAwJLY6d3zcwssr08]