Last night, scrolling AI news in bed, I literally sat up

Last night I was lying in bed doomscrolling AI news when I sat up and asked my wife: "Should we be panicking?"

You probably do this too. Every day you scroll past bombshells—robots, chips, funding rounds—and feel like if you don't learn this stuff tonight, you're cooked. But the second you sit down to actually learn, you have no idea where to start.

I used to be the same way. Then last Friday I forced myself to read all 5 AI news items end-to-end. Four had zero connection to my side hustle. Only one actually mattered.

Out of 5 stories, only one actually touches your work

Friday's pile: a US AI company borrowed $220 billion, Nvidia's AI took first place again, Nevada greenlit thousands of robotaxis, Micron dropped $10 billion on memory chips. Sounds scary, but none of it moves the needle for our small businesses.

The only one that does: DeepSeek gave V4 Flash eyes. "Vision" in human terms means "can look at images." Before, you had to pay for API access to make AI read a picture. Now you just open a webpage. Free.

My friend Xiaolin runs Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) account management for clients in Hangzhou. Last week she dropped her client's product photos into DeepSeek and got 5 caption drafts in 10 seconds. She told me: "I used to spend 2 hours writing one caption. Now it's 10 seconds."

You can try this today. 10 minutes.

Replication costs, all laid out:

  • Money: ¥0 (the free tier covers daily use)
  • Time: 10 minutes
  • Technical barrier: if you can type, you're in. Zero coding.
  • First step: go to deepseek.com, click the "+" icon next to the chat box, upload an image

I got stuck on this step too—I assumed I had to install software or learn to code. Turns out it's literally just dropping a picture into a chat box. Same as sending a WeChat message.

Here's what I'd say to three types of people

If you're just starting out: It's fine to skip this for now. Take care of your existing clients first. The more AI news you read, the more anxious you get. Better off not reading it.

If you have 1-2 clients: Strongly suggest spending 10 minutes trying this. Drop the materials your client sends you in, let AI draft a few versions, then edit. The time you save, spend with your family.

If you're scaling up: Wrap this into a service and sell it. "AI vision copywriting" at ¥500 (~$70) per piece, near-zero cost. My partner Ah Qiang did exactly this last month and made an extra ¥8,000 (~$1,100).