Manage some of the mental load with tools that save time instead of wasting it.

Do you feel like your brain never really switches off? Even when you’re resting, there’s a background list running: Appointments, school notes, meals, birthdays, work deadlines, emotional check-ins and all the tiny things no-one else sees.

Most mums don’t need more productivity hacks; they need less thinking, fewer decisions and a bit more breathing room. You don’t need more apps, more systems or more things to “learn”. What you need is help, the kind that actually takes something off your plate.

That’s where AI tools can quietly step in. There are a lot of AI models that can make things feel a tiny bit easier. Not in a futuristic, robot way, but in a “thank goodness I don’t have to think about this tonight” way. Used well, it becomes less about technology and more like an assistant sitting beside you while you juggle kids, work, school messages and the constant background noise of life.

When used simply, AI becomes a quiet support, like a calm AI assistant that helps you organise thoughts, draft things faster and take some of the mental load off your shoulders.

A second brain for the mental load

One of the most draining parts of motherhood is carrying everything in your head. Planning is invisible work and it adds up fast. AI assistants work like a second brain you can check in with at any time.

Instead of opening multiple tabs, doing a frantic Google search or scrolling through search engines, you can ask an AI chatbot one clear question and get a usable answer in real time. You can ask it to help you make a weekly plan, organise routines or break overwhelming tasks into small action items.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about getting unstuck faster and moving on with your day.

“What’s for dinner?” without the spiral

Meal planning is one of those daily decisions that quietly drains energy. AI tools are especially good at this kind of practical, everyday content creation.

Mums often use generative AI tools to:

• Create a simple weekly meal plan
• Suggest dinners using ingredients already in the fridge
• Adjust meals for kids, allergies or budget
• Generate a grocery list you can copy straight into notes

While AI doesn’t replace a nutritionist or pediatrician, it can be helpful for planning ideas for meals, especially when you don’t want to feed the kids another Vegemite sandwich.

Help with school admin and all the boring stuff

AI is also incredibly useful for the small admin tasks that pile up. Need to reply to a teacher, write a permission note or draft an email that sounds calm when you’re anything but? An AI assistant can help you put words together quickly.

This is especially helpful inside tools you already use, like Google Docs or your email. Instead of staring at a blank page, you can ask AI to draft something, then tweak it so it sounds like you.

AI tools can also help with creative tasks when your energy is stretched thin. Need ideas for birthday parties, school projects or family activities? Want help creating simple images or AI-generated images for invitations or presentations? Many tools now include image generation alongside writing support.

Here are some AI prompts you may want to use:

• Write a short, polite email to my child’s teacher explaining that my Year 3 son, [Name], will be absent on [insert date] due to illness. Keep it warm, clear and under 120 words.
• Summarise this school newsletter in five bullet points focusing only on dates, money due and action items for parents.
• Explain this homework instruction in simple language for a tired parent and a nine-year-old: [paste the instruction].

At the end of the day, when you’re tired and needing a little break, AI can help smooth the workflow.

Support for working mums and side hustles

For mums juggling paid work, freelancing or managing a small business, AI can save hours each month. It can help outline ideas, polish writing and organise thoughts without needing long stretches of focus.

Some mums use AI to plan social media content, write social posts, summaries, product descriptions or landing pages, or brainstorm ideas for projects. Others use it to summarise documents, prepare talking points or structure work so it fits around family life. You stay in control; the tool just gets you started.

Most of this is available on a free version or free trial. Paid plans usually unlock advanced features, priority support or early access to new features, but they’re optional. The basic features are often more than enough.

Here are some AI prompts you may want to use:

• For planning social media content: “Create a simple weekly content plan for my small business Instagram account. I sell [product/service] and I post three times a week. Include post ideas and short caption starters.”
• For product descriptions: “Write a clear, friendly product description for [product], aimed at busy mums. Keep it under 150 words and focus on benefits, not just features.”
• For social media posts: “Write three Instagram captions to promote my [product/service] that sound warm, relatable and not salesy. Include a simple call-to-action at the end.”

Emotional support (without judgement)

This part surprises a lot of mums. Sometimes you just want to think things through, process and ruminate about things without saying them out loud. AI can offer a space to think through emotions, rehearse conversations or process decisions without pressure.

It’s important to remember AI works like social media: It learns what you like, favour or engage with repeatedly, then shows you more of the same. AI is designed to please you, so should not replace a professional, especially when it comes to mental health support. However, it can help in the moment, especially late at night when everyone else is asleep and your brain won’t switch off.

AI is a type of echo chamber, which isn’t something you want for real-world critical thinking skills. It is best used as a tool, but not as a replacement for real people, real connection and real mental processing.

Free versus paid: What you actually need

There are so many free AI tools, most mums start with a free plan and many stay there. Free plans usually come with a limited number of uses per month, but for everyday tasks, that’s often plenty. If you do lots of writing or need extended research capabilities, you can use the premium versions of apps like Grammarly or Perplexity.

Paid plans may include premium features, custom pricing or extra capacity for businesses and students, but they’re not required to get real value. The goal isn’t to use AI constantly, it’s to use it when it helps. You still want your original creativity and flow, which doesn’t rely on AI, using it rather as a help than a micro-managing boss.

Using AI in a way that feels right

AI should support your life, not take it over. You don’t need early access, every update or every new feature. You don’t need to understand how artificial intelligence works behind the scenes.

The best approach is simple:

• Use AI to reduce mental load
• Keep decision-making in your hands
• Ignore features you don’t need
• Stop using a tool if it adds stress

AI works best when it’s quiet, optional and flexible.

Many modern AI tools are designed to feel intuitive, allowing mums to interact using natural language rather than learning complicated systems. You can start with simple text prompts, ask follow-up questions to refine answers and quickly pull out the key points you actually need.

The AI tools mums are using

Here is a list of the more common tools mums love:

• Gemini or Claude: Conversational AI that answers questions, drafts text, brainstorms ideas and helps you plan or organise things using simple prompts.
• Canva: Design tool with built-in AI features that can generate images, suggest layouts, write short text and quickly resize or repurpose designs for different platforms.
• Grammarly: Writing assistant with AI that checks spelling and grammar, suggests clearer wording, adjusts tone (more formal or casual), and can generate or expand short pieces of text.
• Perplexity: AI search assistant that looks up information online, then gives short, sourced summaries so you can get key points without deep-diving into every article.

These tools offer free and paid options and can be helpful time-savers for admin, research, drafting emails, study and creating images for social media.

The bottom line

You probably aren’t going to use all the AI features like voice cloning, image generation or deep integration across your entire Google workspace and that’s perfectly fine. Maybe what you really want is a simple cheat sheet for cleaning the house, a weekly list of appointments or a few ideas for fun things to do during the school holidays.

There’s a wide range of options, but you can pick and choose what actually helps you and your family, giving you a little more breathing room. Most of us will never need the pro plan and some of us aren’t fans of AI mode on Google (me included), but you’ll find yourself happily using text prompts and follow-up questions to get exactly what you need.

With the right approach, even just a few of these tools can make your day feel a lot smoother, letting you focus on what really matters.

AI doesn’t make you a better mum. It doesn’t replace intuition, care or connection. It doesn’t replace a doctor or a teacher. What it can do is help you think more clearly, plan faster and carry less in your head. Used gently, the best AI tools feel less like technology and more like support; there when you need it, invisible when you don’t.

In the middle of everything you’re already doing, it can help to have everything in one place, giving your mind a break when you hit the pillow at night.

Article supplied with thanks to Mum’s At The Table

About the Author: Adriana is Mums At The Table’s part-time digital content creator and writes from Kingscliff, Queensland.

Feature image: Canva

Why do we fear being judged online?

Have you ever replayed a conversation in your head and thought, “Why did I say that?” Or hovered over the “post” button, wondering how people would respond? That second guessing and quiet fear of being perceived the wrong way is something most of us know well. But what if there’s a deeper reason behind it? Some call it the digital panopticon effect.

In today’s surveillance culture, our identity can slowly become shaped by what others think, rather than our own internal convictions.

Alister Cameron, a leader with Power to Change, one of the largest global mission movements, explores this idea. Alister also serves as an Australian ambassador for the Finishing the Task initiative and brings years of experience working with young people navigating faith in a digital age. Speaking into this emerging issue, he offers both insight and hope, helping make sense of the digital pressures shaping today’s generation.

What Is the Panopticon Effect?

The panopticon effect refers to the way people change their behaviour when they believe they are being watched, even if no one is actively observing them.

Originally a prison design, the panopticon was an idea where inmates were arranged around a central watchtower. They could be observed at any time but never knew exactly when. Even without constant supervision, behaviour changed because the possibility of being watched never disappeared.

Today, that concept has made its way from behind bars and has gone global, digitally.

Instead of a guard in a tower, people live in a world of phones, cameras and social media. According to Alister, this digital panopticon effect creates pressure to perform because we feel constantly visible.

How Social Media Created a Digital Panopticon Effect

The modern version of the panopticon effect does not just observe behaviour but also enforces it. In a digital environment, one mistake can be captured, shared, and remembered indefinitely.

“That one moment where they do something cringe is suddenly locked in forever,” Alister says. “It’s on their permanent, digital record, which never gets expunged.”

This describes something many of us feel but rarely know how to name. A kind of “cancel culture panic”. The fear is not just judgment, but public shaming.

Alister describes this as a “chilled” social reality, where people withdraw rather than risk being seen in the wrong way. This is not freedom. Instead, it is behaviour driven by fear and shame.

Why Cringe Culture is Becoming the Norm

One of the strongest expressions of the panopticon effect is cringe culture. Our identity and sense of approval are often shaped by acceptable social standards while we scramble to avoid anything that could make us “cringey” or “awkward.”

These vulnerable moments, genuine expression, and individuality are often met with ridicule and shame. Alister shares how even simple activities like dancing have been affected, with people holding back because “everyone is watching” and filming.

The result is a culture that rewards sameness and self-censorship.

Slowly, you start to perform what is acceptable rather than living what’s actually real. We study the algorithm, adjust our behaviour, and avoid anything that could be mocked.

Over time, this creates a quiet kind of pressure that shapes how we live and behave.

Are We Living in a More Judgmental World?

Christianity is often criticised as being judgmental, but the reality of the digital age tells a different story.

Alister draws comparisons between high control environments and modern online culture, describing similar patterns of constant self-examination, fear of failure and public shaming. Many people today already live under intense judgment just from public life.

The difference is that this system offers very little grace. Judgment is immediate, public, and often unforgiving. There is no clear pathway to restoration.

Christianity vs. The Digital Panopticon Effect

At first glance, Christianity might seem to mirror the panopticon effect. God sees everything and nothing is hidden from Him. But the outcome is vastly different.

Alister makes a crucial distinction. The digital panopticon operates through shame, while God operates through love.  In the digital world, being seen leads to fear and public humiliation. With God, being seen leads to freedom and restoration.

Instead of performing for approval, we live from acceptance. Instead of hiding our flaws, God brings them into the light. We no longer have to fear being crushed by judgment but instead embrace God’s transformation and grace that is available to all.

How Jesus Offers Freedom from Cancel Culture Panic

The message of Jesus cuts directly against the anxiety created by constant surveillance. Alister speaks from personal experience when he describes what happens when we encounter God’s love.

“There comes a moment when that love releases you from the things that used to matter,” Alister shares.

It echoes the words of Jesus, who said He did not come to condemn, but to save. The pressure may still exist, but it no longer has the final say.  We are still seen and fully known, but instead of being rejected, we are met with grace and love.

Breaking Free from the Fear of Being Watched

You may feel this sense of always being watched or measured in your own life, but it does not have to define who you are. The panopticon effect doesn’t have to hold you back from stepping into all that God has for you.

In a world where everyone is watching, Jesus offers something radically different. A place where you are known without fear, challenged without rejection, and loved without condition.

Cancel culture panic tells you to hide. Jesus calls you to step into freedom. And in a culture built on judgment, that might be the most powerful thing of all.

Article supplied with thanks to Vision – a non-profit, follower-funded Christian media ministry taking God’s Word to every corner of Australia and beyond through broadcast, online and print media.

Feature image: Canva

The most useful device in your life is also most likely your biggest real life distraction.

A third of the way through the year and struggling to find time to do any of the things you put on your 2026 list? You are not alone. Time is slipping by fast, but where has it gone?

For many of us there is one answer: the “smart” phone. The little device that slips into your back pocket is a portal to a world of information and activity, but it’s also a black hole that sucks away time and attention, adding overwhelm and anxiety if not used in moderation.

Sound familiar? It should. The average Australian spends four hours of their spare time each day watching TV or using devices (25 per cent of their waking time).

The evidence shows phone usage has many other negative impacts on our health and lifestyle, too. Disrupted sleep, depression, anxiety, lower self-esteem, addiction, and reduced attention span are only a few of the downsides of too much screen time. Add less time spent with friends and family, lower rates of physical activity and reduced time spent outside in nature, and it’s certainly a dark shadow over modern life.

But you can take back control.

If you see yourself in some or all of these scenarios and you’re ready to get your time and life back, it’s time to schedule a digital detox. Here are five tips to get you looking up and experiencing the world around you again.

Getting started

Ask yourself a few questions before getting started:

• What am I trying to achieve through a detox? Writing down your goals will help you stay focused and carry you through the moments when you want to reach for the phone.
• When do I use my phone the most? Identify the times and places when you use your phone and think about whether this is out of habit or genuine need.
• What do I use my phone for? Whether you are looking for information, entertainment or simply filling in time, this is helpful data for taking the next step.
• How do I feel about technology and myself when I use it? Be honest about the type of media you use and how it impacts your sense of self, your relationships and your family life.

Once you’ve set your goals and reflected on your current needs and habits, it’s time to commit to your digital detox. Remember: it doesn’t matter if you have “failed days”, what matters is how you pick yourself back up.

5 Strategies for a Digital Detox

1. Delete

Take a look through your phone and consider which apps take up your time unnecessarily. These might be games, news sites, social media or even language learning apps – you know who you are, Duolingo users.

If you’re ready to take the leap, delete the ones you know are simply consuming time without improving your wellbeing. If they are part of how you communicate with friends and family, let them know you are going quiet for a while. They could always call or send a text.

Remember, you can add the apps back later, so be bold now.

2. Silence

Do you start the day with laser-like focus only to find your train of thought interrupted by your phone beeping away beside you? Turning off all notifications is a step toward controlling who and what gets your attention. Schedule a time in the morning or afternoon to check news, weather and emails. Set a timer and you’ll be even more efficient at staying on top of the important and avoiding distractions.

Put yourself in charge of your time and agenda.

3. Relocate Your Device

Location, location, location. Proximity matters as much with your phone as with anything else. If it’s right beside you, habit will kick in and you’re far more likely to reach for it without even thinking.

Leaving your phone in another room removes the distraction and helps you build new habits.

4. Go Analogue

Do you still have recipe books on your shelves? Pull them out and leaf through them over your morning cuppa. Not only will you avoid mindless scrolling, but you might discover an amazing new recipe for dinner that night: win-win.

Set up a jigsaw puzzle and you’ll have something to return to whenever you want to switch off for a bit.

Is there a book you’ve been longing to read but never seem to get to? Put it next to your bed, on the kitchen bench, or on the coffee table. Do the same with a hobby you haven’t picked up in a while. Leave it in plain sight where you can easily reach for it. You’ll have plenty of extra time, especially if your phone is elsewhere.

Write a list, on actual paper, of things you want to do, places to go, or things to try. Start ticking them off. Yes, with an actual pen.

Get out in nature. Make your morning coffee and take it outside. Feel the breeze, touch some grass, and move your body. Your mind will thank you just as much as your muscles will.

5. Set Time Limits and Phone-Free Zones

There will be some apps you need to access throughout the day. Set realistic time limits on your device. Your phone will alert you when you’ve reached your self-imposed limit. If you find yourself repeatedly going over it, consider deleting the app for a period of time.

Establishing phone-free zones in your home can also help you and you build new routines. Keeping phones out of bedrooms can be particularly useful as you reclaim healthy sleep habits. Invest in an alarm clock, set aside a book you want to read and make the bedroom a place of peace and restfulness. After all, that’s what it’s for.

Next steps

As with any detox, a digital detox is designed to reset your habits and create space for something different. From there, you can decide which changes you’d like to make permanent. Experiment, see what works, and find what can realistically be integrated into your lifestyle long term.

As you develop new habits, they might even rub off on the people around you. After all, you’ll be inspiring company when you start climbing mountains and finally reading all those books.

Article supplied with thanks to Hope Media.

Feature image: Canva

For those who know the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, it may seem hard to remember a time when the company was unstoppable.

Read more: AI Promised the World. It’s Not Delivering.

While her name is now permanently associated with fraud and deception, the truth of the matter is that for a time, the company founded by a 19-year-old Holmes in 2003 seemed poised to change the world. Their promise to revolutionise the healthcare industry by providing fast, accurate and painless blood tests caught the attention of many and led to the company’s peak valuation of nine billion dollars in 2014. Combining the potentially paradigm-shifting technology with Holmes’ captivating public persona, the company seemed poised to change the world. 

Despite claims that they could do a full range of blood tests from a pinprick of blood, the company never developed the technology and instead engaged in a variety of deceptive practices to hide this fact. Of course, as is often the case, Theranos’s secret eventually broke and led to the downfall for a company which had once been praised for its “phenomenal rebooting of laboratory medicine”.¹ Indeed, Theranos and Holmes now serve as a prime example of a company both overpromising and underdelivering—or in this case, failing to deliver at all. 

There was only one problem. It was all a lie. 

One of the most interesting facts about Holmes and Theranos comes not from their downfall, but from the origin of the company. While Holmes may have lied about plenty regarding the company, her stated motivation for creating Theranos seems noble on its face: their attempts to create a blood testing process which used minimal amounts of blood stemmed from Holmes fear of needles—a fear which many can relate to. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the venture, Holmes was told by multiple experts in the field that her hope of creating a full suite of tests which worked from a pinprick of blood was not viable²—advice she ignored, and which would later be proven correct. This, I think, is the most interesting part of the Theranos story: despite knowing that the reality of their dream was impossible, the company continued to sell an impossible promise. 

Another Impossible Promise

On August 8, 2025, OpenAI unveiled the long-awaited next-generation version of their large language model chatbot GPT-5 to the public, claiming it could provide “PhD-level” abilities.³ The world’s richest and most controversial man, Elon Musk, took the claim a step further, hyping up his company’s AI Grok as being “better than PhD level in everything”. In May of the same year, Mark Zuckerberg touted the ability for AI chatbots to replace human relationships and friendships.⁴ Zuckerberg has also made similarly lofty claims about Meta’s other technologies, arguing that in the future, anybody who doesn’t own and use AI glasses will “be at a disadvantage”.⁵

Increasingly, AI is being integrated into every aspect of our daily lives, with its loudest proponents claiming that it will solve all our problems. In the fast-food industry, the owners of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell claimed that they were adopting an “AI-first mentality”⁶(though the company is reportedly rethinking the approach after a customer used the AI to order 18,000 glasses of water).⁷ Interested in learning a new language? Duolingo believes that AI can help the process, with the CEO claiming AI can make employees “four or five times” as productive⁸ (though once again, their adoption of the technology has led to a significant backlash from customers who doubt its effectiveness⁹). Keen to play some games to relax? EA—the publisher of a wealth of large franchises including EA FC(formerly FIFA) and Battlefield—recently announced a 50-billion-dollar sale, relying heavily on the promise of AI to streamline development costs (though gamers and developers alike are less than thrilled). Everywhere you look, AI promises the world. But promises aren’t reality—and there are plenty of good reasons to be suspicious of those with a vested interest in the success of AI. 

The Unfortunate Truth

As a media scholar (and one of the PhD-level people that OpenAI is aiming to replace), I am deeply sceptical of AI. Many of my doubts stem from fundamental issues with how the technology works. While the title “artificial intelligence” implies a level of thought, and the term “large language model” (LLM) seems to indicate an understanding of language, the reality is that these tools neither think nor understand the meaning of words. 

A full explanation of the ways they work is beyond the scope of this article, but on the most basic level, the ways that LLMs and generative AI view language is more akin to a complex math equation. Your prompt is one side of the equals sign and the technology attempts to “solve” for the most likely response. In addition to this process being extremely power intensive (and having negative environmental impacts¹⁰), it is also the reason that despite the hyped improvements in more recent models, AI continues to suffer from widespread “hallucinations”¹¹—where the chatbot either regurgitates inaccurate information or invents entire falsehoods. Indeed, CEO of Open AI Sam Altman has admitted that hallucinations are not an engineering flaw for LLMs but a “mathematically inevitable”.¹² 

Is AI Making Us Dumber?

The issues caused by these hallucinations are significant and may further exacerbate societal issues rather than solve them. A recent report indicated that 45 per cent of AI responses based on news articles contained “significant” errors—with a whopping 81 per cent of responses having some form of issue.¹³ In this age of misinformation, relying on AI seems like a recipe for disaster. More importantly, current research points towards AI having a negative effect on its users, “eroding critical thinking skills”.¹⁴ Furthermore, while it is often thought of as neutral, numerous studies¹⁵ have exposed biases in AI models¹⁶—an unsurprising reality when one acknowledges the potential biases of their creators which may filter in.  

I could go on and on about the issues with AI (and indeed, some of my poor friends have had to endure my rants on the topic in the past). Ultimately however, all these criticisms can be summed up in one sentence. That is, the reality of AI falls drastically short of the promise its creators espouse. 

With all this in mind, I should acknowledge that I am sympathetic to those that want to believe the promise of AI. The world we live in is fundamentally broken in so many ways with political polarisation, environmental destruction and unspeakable injustice occurring daily. And that’s not even acknowledging the more mundane tasks that it could help with. The promise of a “magic bullet” technology that can ease any of the issues we face—just like the promise of a needle-free blood test—is enticing. And it is true that this technology can help in certain situations. As a tutor to international students, machine learning can be a helpful tool in translating complex ideas discussed in our courses (though it still has imperfections that need correcting). My friends who work in software engineering are adamant that it can help make the tedium of coding less strenuous (which is understandable considering coding, like LLMs, also treats language as a sort of math). AI-assisted live transcription is also potentially revolutionary for the hard of hearing. But these are individual solutions for individual problems—and we should not be forced to swallow all the issues with these AI models in order to benefit from them. 

No Silver Bullet?

The reality is, there is no one solution that will solve all our problems. AI cannot create. Every response it gives is based on the existing work of talented artists, writers and experts who it often fails to properly credit. Working as a tutor, I have seen firsthand its negative effects—seeing students inadvertently turn in assignments with invented information and incorrect sources. In seeing AI as the solution to their problems, they have only created more—and greater—problems. 

This, more than anything, is the danger of AI. Proponents like Zuckerberg and Altman want you to believe that it can enhance—or even replace—human connection, but the opposite is true. If you want to learn, create or connect, you can’t do so through AI. You should go to the source, read what others are saying and listen to the experts who have dedicated their lives to solving these problems. Step outside the tech bubble these companies want to trap you in and connect with the real world.

The truth is, no one machine can save the world, nor can any one individual. So don’t give in to the promise of the technology. Connect with reality. Connect with others.  

Article supplied with thanks to Signs of The Times

About the Author: Ryan Stanton is a PhD Graduate from the University of Sydney. A Media and Communications scholar, he is constantly torn between wanting to believe the promise of new technologies and being disappointed by the reality. 

Feature image: Canva

For years, shopping online followed a predictable pattern. You searched, compared, skimmed reviews, opened too many tabs, got distracted, then either bought something or gave up.

It was clunky, time-consuming and mentally draining, but at least the rules were clear. Ads were ads. Advice lived somewhere else.

That separation is disappearing fast.

AI shopping assistants are moving from the sidelines into the centre of the buying journey. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot are no longer just helping people research purchases. They are recommending products, surfacing prices, inserting “Buy” buttons and, in some cases, letting users complete a purchase without ever leaving the conversation.

This shift is happening faster than most people realise. Advances in generative AI, changing consumer expectations and growing frustration with traditional online shopping are converging. Add in a generation comfortable outsourcing decisions to algorithms, and the result is a retail landscape that looks fundamentally different to the one we grew up with.

For professionals, retailers and leaders, the urgency is real. This is not just a new marketing channel. It’s a rewiring of how trust, influence and decision-making work in commerce.

Trend 1: Advice and Advertising Are Merging

The first shift is subtle, and that’s what makes it powerful. The line between genuine advice and paid promotion is becoming increasingly blurred.

Modern AI assistants don’t just answer questions. They suggest products, rank options and increasingly prompt users to buy. Microsoft Copilot now embeds shopping recommendations directly into conversational responses. Other platforms have experimented with sponsored answers that sit alongside organic suggestions, often without clear visual distinction.

Unlike traditional advertising, these prompts don’t feel like ads. They feel like guidance. When a recommendation arrives in a conversational tone, supported by what looks like reasoning, people lower their scepticism. The persuasive power comes not from interruption, but from integration.

For consumers, this creates a new challenge. How do you tell the difference between impartial advice and a commercial nudge? One practical habit is emerging: ask the AI why it recommended something. Does it explain trade-offs? Does it offer alternatives? Or does it funnel you toward a single “best” option? Real advice explains choice. Advertising pushes outcomes.

For businesses, this trend rewrites influence. Visibility alone is no longer enough. Products must be defensible, explainable and competitive when placed side by side in an AI-generated comparison. If your offering can’t survive transparent scrutiny, AI will expose that quickly.

Trend 2: Transparency Will Be Forced, Not Volunteered

At the moment, regulation in this space is lagging behind reality. There are few clear rules forcing AI shopping tools to disclose what is paid, what is sponsored and what is genuinely impartial.

That lack of clarity matters for two reasons. First, consumers deserve to know when bias or commercial influence is present. Second, accountability becomes murky when AI systems get things wrong.

A recent example highlighted this risk when an AI travel assistant confidently advised tourists to visit a hot spring in Tasmania that simply does not exist. The issue wasn’t just the hallucination. It was the absence of clear responsibility. Who is accountable when an AI invents reality with confidence?

As AI increasingly shapes purchasing decisions, transparency will become unavoidable. Disclosure around sponsorship, data sources and limitations will be demanded by regulators, journalists and consumers alike.

For leaders and organisations, this is an opportunity to move early. Systems that explain recommendations, acknowledge uncertainty and clearly separate advice from advertising will earn trust long before regulation forces compliance.

Trend 3: AI Is Compressing Hours of Shopping Into Minutes

Despite the risks, the consumer upside of AI-powered shopping is undeniable. These tools are dramatically reducing friction.

Tasks that once took hours now take minutes. Comparing prices across retailers. Summarising thousands of reviews. Tracking historical discounts. Monitoring price changes. In some cases, completing a purchase without opening a single browser tab.

Australian consumers are leading this shift. Research shows a significant majority of Australians have interacted with AI while shopping in recent months, well above the global average. More tellingly, more than half of those users have made purchases based on generative AI recommendations.

This is no longer experimental behaviour. It’s habitual. Many households are already using AI to stretch budgets, find better deals and automate parts of the shopping process.

For businesses, this fundamentally changes discovery. Where search engine optimisation once dominated, answer engine optimisation now matters just as much. If an AI model cannot easily surface, explain and justify your product, it effectively disappears from consideration.

Trend 4: The Weekly Grocery Shop Is Being Rewritten

AI-driven shopping is not confined to screens. It is reshaping physical retail too.

Smart carts and supermarket apps already allow shoppers to scan items as they go, track their total in real time, receive personalised discounts and pay without lining up. But the bigger transformation is happening quietly in the background.

Experts predict supermarkets will become smaller and more focused on fresh food. Pantry staples like toilet paper, nappies and cleaning products will increasingly be reordered automatically and delivered to homes without conscious effort.

In practice, in-store shopping becomes about choice, quality and freshness, while AI handles repetition behind the scenes. Two shoppers standing in the same aisle may see different specials because the system understands their habits, preferences and household needs.

AI is also changing how decisions are made in the moment. A shopper considering a new pair of headphones can take a photo, upload it to an AI assistant and instantly receive a comparison across models, prices and stores, including historical data showing whether a discount is likely soon.

For retailers, loyalty will be driven less by location and more by usefulness. The brands that win will be the ones that integrate seamlessly into consumers’ decision-making systems.

Trend 5: Trust Becomes the Ultimate Competitive Advantage

As AI takes on more of the buying journey, trust becomes the scarce resource.

These systems are persuasive by design. They speak with confidence. They explain reasoning. They feel personal. That makes over-reliance a real risk.

Consumers will increasingly judge platforms not by how clever they are, but by how transparent and controllable they feel. Can users understand why something is being recommended? Can they override it? Can they see alternatives?

For professionals building or deploying these tools, the goal should not be to remove humans from the loop, but to keep them meaningfully informed. Trust grows when people feel empowered, not nudged.

Brands that over-optimise for persuasion may win short-term sales, but they risk long-term credibility. Restraint, clarity and honesty will prove more valuable than cleverness.

What This All Means

AI-powered shopping is not a future scenario. It is already reshaping how people research, decide and buy. The five trends are clear. Advice and advertising are merging. Transparency will be demanded. Shopping is becoming faster and more automated. Physical retail is being re-engineered. And trust is becoming the defining differentiator.

The challenge for leaders and professionals is not technical. It is behavioural. Understanding how people make decisions when AI is in the room, and designing systems that support rather than exploit that reality.

The question is no longer whether AI will influence what we buy. It already does. The real question is whether we build a shopping ecosystem that is helpful, honest and human, or one that quietly nudges us while pretending not to.

The difference will come down to the choices being made now, while the rules are still being written.

Article supplied with thanks to Michael McQueen.

About the Author: Michael is a trends forecaster, business strategist and award-winning conference speaker. His most recent book Mindstuck explores the psychology of stubbornness and how to change minds – including your own.

Feature image: Canva

Not long ago, humanoid robots sat firmly in the category of “cool demo, wildly impractical.” They dazzled on conference stages, tripped over their own feet on YouTube, and then quietly disappeared back into research labs. That phase is ending fast.

Humanoid robots are moving from spectacle to systems. From factories and hospitals to aged care facilities and, eventually, our homes, they are inching closer to everyday life. Goldman Sachs estimates there could be more than 13 million humanoid robots in use globally by 2035. That’s less than a decade away. While most of these robots will appear in workplaces first, the ripple effects will be felt across households, cities and entire industries.

The drivers are converging rapidly. Advances in AI vision, balance and hand dexterity are accelerating. Labour shortages are intensifying as populations age and fewer people enter physically demanding roles. Cultural expectations are shifting around convenience, care and the value of time. And younger generations are far more comfortable sharing space with machines than any before them.

For leaders and professionals, the question is no longer whether humanoid robots will matter, but how quietly and quickly they will reshape expectations. 

1. From Sci‑Fi Spectacle to Quiet Utility 

The first major shift is psychological. Humanoid robots are not arriving with dramatic flair or cinematic ambition. They’re slipping in through side doors, doing the dull jobs no one wants to talk about at dinner parties.

We already live with robots, even if we don’t think of them that way. They vacuum our floors, mow our lawns and assist surgeons. In fact, more than 80 percent of prostate surgeries are now performed using robotic systems. COVID accelerated this trend, particularly in agriculture and logistics, where closed borders and labour shortages forced rapid adoption.

Humanoid robots represent the next logical step because they fit into environments built for humans. Factories, warehouses and hospitals don’t need to be redesigned when the robot has two legs, two arms and can use existing tools. That’s why companies like BMW, Hyundai and Tesla are already trialling humanoid robots on factory floors for repetitive and physically demanding tasks. Hyundai has publicly stated it plans to deploy humanoid robots in US factories from 2028.

China offers a glimpse of what early adoption looks like at scale. Humanoid robots are already working as tour guides, retail assistants, warehouse staff and service workers, with some even assisting in policing and security roles. Dedicated robot training centres allow machines to learn by observing humans rather than being painstakingly programmed line by line. 

The implication is clear. Early adoption will be quiet and practical rather than flashy. Organisations that treat humanoid robots as boring infrastructure rather than futuristic mascots will extract far more value from them. 

2. Cobots, Not Job Stealers 

It’s impossible to discuss humanoid robots without confronting workforce anxiety. Elon Musk has said Tesla aims to build up to 100,000 humanoid robots per month within five years. Numbers like that naturally raise concerns about job losses.

But the reality is more nuanced. Humanoid robots are particularly good at jobs humans increasingly struggle to fill. Dirty, dangerous and repetitive work. Heavy lifting. Night shifts. Tasks that lead to injury, burnout or high turnover.

Robots are already being used for warehouse picking, post‑surgery rehabilitation support and repetitive assembly. Deloitte predicts physical AI and humanoid robots will play a major role in addressing labour shortages, especially as populations age and healthcare demand grows. 

Rather than replacing humans, most experts expect robots to change the nature of work. This is where the idea of “cobots” becomes critical. Collaborative robots that work alongside humans, taking on physical or repetitive tasks while people move into supervision, creativity, problem‑solving and decision‑making roles.

For organisations, the real opportunity lies in redesigning jobs, not eliminating them. Professionals who focus on skills like judgement, empathy, oversight and systems thinking will become more valuable, not less.

3. Impressive, Fallible and Still Learning

The technology behind humanoid robots has advanced rapidly, particularly in vision systems, balance and hand dexterity. Some recent demonstrations have been so realistic that audiences questioned whether they were watching a robot or a human in disguise.

At the same time, viral clips of robots face‑planting, freezing mid‑task or dropping objects are not anomalies. They are part of the learning curve. This is what early‑stage intelligence looks like in physical form.

Robots perform best in controlled environments like factories and warehouses. Homes are far more challenging. Pets move unpredictably. Children run. Objects shift. Lighting changes. Most humanoid robots today still rely on some level of human supervision or remote assistance for complex tasks.

This phase closely mirrors the early days of self‑driving cars. Highly impressive in certain contexts, unreliable in others. The risk is not that robots will fail, but that humans will assume they won’t.

Organisations that succeed will design systems that assume occasional failure and build safeguards accordingly. 

4. The Home Robot Will Sell Time, Not Wow 

When humanoid robots enter homes, affordability and accessibility will dominate the conversation. Today, a humanoid robot like Neo costs around $20,000. By 2035, that figure is expected to fall closer to $10,000 as manufacturing scales and components become cheaper. 

But ownership won’t be the starting point for most people. Early home robots will be aimed at wealthy households, aged care facilities and people with mobility needs. LG has already demonstrated prototype home robots capable of folding laundry and preparing simple meals, while projects like Tombot, a robotic puppy designed to support people with dementia, show how emotionally intelligent design can support care settings. 

For most households, the first exposure will likely be shared robots in apartment buildings, hotels or assisted living environments rather than owning one outright. Leasing models and robot‑as‑a‑service offerings will play a significant role in improving accessibility.

The real appeal is not novelty. It’s time. Even saving 30 to 60 minutes a day by offloading repetitive tasks changes how people live, work and rest.

5. Trust Will Matter More Than Life-like Design

Safety, privacy and psychological trust will ultimately determine whether humanoid robots are accepted into daily life. Most are designed to be lightweight, slow and compliant, stopping when they encounter resistance.

Privacy is a genuine concern. Robots rely on cameras and sensors to navigate spaces, raising questions about data storage, access and ownership. There is also the risk of over‑trust. Robots that look human can trigger emotional responses even when people know they are machines.

Experts agree humans will remain in the loop for a long time, particularly in homes and healthcare settings. Acceptance will depend less on realism and more on whether people feel in control of the technology.

There is also a genuine fear response to consider. An estimated 20 percent of the population experiences some degree of robophobia. Ignoring that reality would be a mistake. 

What This All Adds Up To

Humanoid robots are not coming to replace us, impress us or entertain us. They’re coming to quietly reshape how work gets done, how care is delivered and how time is reclaimed.

The trends are clear. Practical utility over spectacle. Collaboration over replacement. Rapid progress with real limitations. Time as the killer feature at home. Trust as the deciding factor everywhere. 

The future won’t arrive with a dramatic unveiling. It will arrive task by task, shift by shift, home by home. The robots are learning fast. We should too.

Article supplied with thanks to Michael McQueen.

About the Author: Michael is a trends forecaster, business strategist and award-winning conference speaker. His most recent book Mindstuck explores the psychology of stubbornness and how to change minds – including your own.

Feature image: Canva

When news broke that Disney had signed a landmark agreement with OpenAI, the reaction across the creative industries was mixed.

At a time when much of Hollywood is resisting artificial intelligence, launching legal challenges, or warning of creative collapse, Disney chose a very different path.

Rather than treating AI as an existential threat, Disney treated it as a question.

How could this technology help us tell better stories? How might it expand creativity rather than diminish it? And how do we engage with it early, thoughtfully, and on our own terms?

The agreement allows OpenAI to work with Disney’s vast library of characters and storytelling assets across emerging AI animation and generative video tools. It is an extraordinary move, not just because of the scale of the deal, but because of what it signals.

Disney is once again choosing partnership over protectionism. Exploration over resistance. Curiosity over certainty.

To understand why this decision matters so much, you need to see it not as a one off, but as the latest chapter in a pattern that stretches back more than a century.

This is not a company dabbling in disruption. Disney is a company that has always believed the future belongs to those willing to rethink first.

Walt Disney built an empire not by predicting the future, but by being relentlessly curious about what might be possible.

Long before Disney became synonymous with global entertainment, Walt Disney was an outsider. He was not backed by powerful studios, nor was he working within accepted industry rules. His success came from repeatedly asking questions others dismissed as impractical or reckless.

What if animation could carry emotional weight? What if stories could live across multiple platforms? What if entertainment could be experienced as a place, not just a performance?

These were not safe questions.

In the 1930s, when Disney decided to create Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, industry insiders openly mocked the idea. Feature length animation was considered commercial suicide. Cartoons were short, disposable novelties. No one believed audiences would sit through ninety minutes of illustrated storytelling.

Disney nearly bankrupted his company bringing Snow White to life. He invested in new animation techniques, new camera technology, and unprecedented levels of artistic detail. What he was really investing in, however, was a belief that curiosity about emotional realism would be rewarded.

It was. Snow White did not just succeed. It created an entirely new category of cinema.

That same pattern repeated in the 1950s, when television emerged as a disruptive force. Hollywood studios panicked. Cinema attendance declined. Executives treated television as a threat to be resisted.

Disney Again Went The Other Way.

Rather than rejecting television, he partnered with ABC to create a weekly television series. On the surface, it was entertainment. In reality, it was something far more strategic. The show helped finance, promote, and emotionally prepare audiences for Disneyland, a physical place that did not yet exist.

Television was not competition. It was infrastructure.

That deal helped fund Disneyland’s construction and made Walt Disney himself a household name. At a time when business leaders remained largely invisible, Disney became the face of his vision. Not as a corporate executive, but as a guide, a storyteller, and a trusted presence in people’s homes.

Again, Curiosity Reshaped The Rules.

Disneyland itself was another audacious experiment. Walt Disney rejected the idea of building an amusement park. He disliked the chaos, the noise, and the transactional nature of existing parks. Instead, he imagined something different.

A theme park. A place where architecture, psychology, storytelling, and movement worked together to create a coherent emotional experience.

Buildings were deliberately designed to feel welcoming rather than overwhelming. Pathways controlled anticipation and discovery. Attractions were not rides, but experiences. Guests could spend an entire day immersed in story without stepping onto a single attraction.

It was entertainment designed around humans, not hardware.

Since opening in 1955, more than one billion people have visited Disneyland. That number alone tells a powerful story about the enduring appeal of human centred design driven by curiosity.

Crucially, Disney’s culture did not fossilise after Walt’s death.

When the company acquired Pixar in 2006, it faced a choice. Absorb Pixar and impose corporate discipline, or protect the very culture that made Pixar special.

Disney Chose Protection.

Pixar’s creative model rewarded questioning, dissent, and rethinking. Hierarchy mattered less than ideas. Disagreement was not seen as disloyalty, but as a necessary ingredient for excellence. Some of Pixar’s most successful films emerged precisely because creators were encouraged to challenge assumptions rather than conform to them.

This was curiosity embedded at scale.

Under Bob Iger’s leadership, that philosophy continues. Listening to an interview with Iger recently, I was struck by his admission about how Disney evaluates new ideas. The first question is not about cost. It is not about risk mitigation.

The First Question is Simple: Can we make this great?

That mindset explains why Disney’s response to artificial intelligence looks so different to many of its peers.

Where others see loss of control, Disney sees creative leverage. Where others fear displacement, Disney sees expansion. Where others hesitate, Disney experiments.

The OpenAI partnership echoes the ABC television deal of the 1950s. In both cases, Disney encountered a new technology that unsettled an industry. In both cases, it chose engagement over retreat.

This does not mean blind optimism. Disney has learned from missteps, including the difficult early years of Disneyland Paris. But even those moments reinforced a deeper truth. Curiosity must be paired with accountability. Experimentation must be paired with learning.

That balance is what allows curiosity to endure.

Walt Disney once said that Disneyland would never be finished, as long as there was creativity left in the world. He was not talking about a park. He was talking about a posture.

A refusal to believe the story is ever complete. A willingness to revisit assumptions. An understanding that relevance is not preserved through protection, but through exploration.

The OpenAI partnership is not a departure from Disney’s identity. It is proof that the identity still holds.

In a world obsessed with prediction, Disney continues to bet on curiosity. And history suggests that is a very good bet indeed.

Article supplied with thanks to Michael McQueen.

About the Author: Michael is a trends forecaster, business strategist and award-winning conference speaker. His most recent book Mindstuck explores the psychology of stubbornness and how to change minds – including your own.

Feature image: Canva

The future of privacy has arrived quietly, woven into our daily routines so seamlessly that most of us barely notice how much of ourselves we are giving away. Workplaces, cars, shops, neighbourhoods and even our own devices are now part of a growing ecosystem of surveillance reshaping how we live and work.

This shift is being fuelled by rapid advances in technology, a cultural appetite for convenience and personalisation and a regulatory system still scrambling to catch up. For leaders, employers and professionals, the message is clear. These changes are accelerating and recognising them early is essential.

1. Worker Monitoring Is Becoming Everyday

Digital oversight has become surprisingly normal. Employers are now using everything from Microsoft Teams’ new location tracking to keystroke loggers, webcams and GPS tools. Around two-thirds of companies use at least one form of monitoring. What started as a temporary pandemic solution has evolved into an everyday feature of remote and hybrid work.

The issue is not legality. Most of this is legal because Australia’s workplace privacy laws are years behind the technology. The issue is trust. When people feel watched, the home office can start feeling like an open-plan cubicle with better lighting. Some states are finally starting to consider tighter rules around what employers can reasonably track, but the cultural impact is already here. Teams perform better when trust is high and surveillance rarely builds trust.

2. Cars Are Becoming Data Factories

Modern vehicles are now data-hungry machines. A typical car produces about 200GB of data per hour and vehicles with advanced driver-assist or autonomous capabilities can generate up to 1.4TB in the same timeframe. They record where you drive, how you brake, how fast you take corners, the tone of your voice commands and even how you interact with the entertainment system.

Employers are increasingly tracking staff in work vehicles and sometimes after hours. Manufacturers are collecting even more. One major carmaker was caught storing and sharing photos and videos recorded inside customer vehicles. This wasn’t a technical glitch. It was a glimpse into just how much visibility companies now have into our personal lives. Cars used to be private spaces. Now they are mobile data centres and most drivers have little idea what is being captured, where it goes or who can access it.

3. Facial Recognition Is Moving Into Everyday Life

Once a futuristic idea, facial recognition has slipped quietly into daily routines. Several major Australian retailers were found to be scanning customer faces in-store without proper consent. The Privacy Commissioner ruled it illegal, setting a major precedent.

Yet the technology continues to spread. In parts of the United States, you can already board a plane with a face scan instead of a boarding pass. Many stadiums use it to manage crowds and security. One fast-food chain even used facial recognition to identify hungover customers and offer them discounts, which is either clever marketing or a sign we have overcorrected on personalisation.

Public sentiment is shifting fast. More than half of Australians say facial recognition in retail feels like an invasion of privacy. The technology is moving faster than public comfort and far faster than updated regulations.

4. Cameras Are Everywhere and the Idea of Public Space Is Changing

CCTV used to belong to governments and shopping centres. Today, anyone with a doorbell camera or home security system is contributing to a rapidly expanding layer of community surveillance. We are filmed dozens of times a day. Sydney has roughly one camera for every 80 residents. London has one for every 13. In Shanghai and Beijing, it is one for every two people.

Doorbell footage that once lived on a small local device now sits in cloud databases managed by large tech companies. Overseas, police have increasingly requested access to this footage, raising complicated questions about consent, ownership and the rights of people captured incidentally while simply walking past.

The line between safety and surveillance is getting thinner and many people do not realise how visible their everyday movements have become.

5. The Debate Over Whether Our Devices Are Listening

Ask almost anyone whether their phone is listening to them and you will hear the same story. They mention a product once and find it following them around the internet shortly after. Tech companies insist they are not using phone microphones to target ads. Yet public suspicion is growing and the stories keep multiplying.

Whether microphones are involved or not, voice is becoming the next frontier of data capture. Smart speakers, phones, watches, TVs and cars are equipped with microphones that are always partially awake, listening for wake words. Every new layer of surveillance, from face to movement to voice, generates highly sensitive personal data and individuals have very little control over how long it is kept or who it is shared with.

Hyper-personalisation may be convenient, but many are beginning to question the cost.

The Choices We Make Now Matter Most

Taken together, these five trends show a world moving rapidly toward deeper monitoring and a growing tension between convenience and control. The benefits are real. Better safety, smoother travel, more personalised services and more efficient workplaces. The challenge is finding balance.

Surveillance becomes harmful when it is invisible, unregulated or unchecked. The real issue is consent. Not the tick-a-box kind but genuine, informed consent where people understand what is being collected and why.

This moment calls for curiosity rather than complacency. For leaders, it means being transparent and thoughtful about how monitoring technologies are used. For governments, it means updating laws at the speed of technology rather than the speed of bureaucracy. For individuals, it means paying attention.

The future of privacy will not be defined by the technology itself but by the choices we make about it. We can embrace innovation without surrendering autonomy. We can enjoy convenience without forfeiting trust. The question is not whether surveillance will grow. It is how intentionally we manage it so the future we build still feels like our own.

Article supplied with thanks to Michael McQueen.

About the Author: Michael is a trends forecaster, business strategist and award-winning conference speaker. His most recent book Mindstuck explores the psychology of stubbornness and how to change minds – including your own.

Feature image: Canva

“It’s a great question, but I need to be honest up front and say, folks, I think the phrase is the horse has bolted. We live in a tech world,” said the National Grandparenthood Movement’s Ian Barnett.

That doesn’t mean parents and grandparents are powerless though. 

“We can’t avoid technology altogether, but we can create spaces that prioritise connection, real-world connection,” he said.

Creating Spaces of Connection

In Ian’s home, he and his wife have tried something many families might find refreshing. 

“When people come around to visit, they actually put all their phones in a basket,” he said. It’s a simple way to avoid distractions. 

“That means you’re not going to get distracted. That’s the problem with iPhones and iPads, you get distracted. Including the parents, including the grandparents!”

Instead, the Barnetts plan activities. “My wife has one of our granddaughters involved in making stuff, cooking, working in the garden,” he said.

“Or I’ll take one of the grandkids to play putt-putt golf. You’ve got to think about what you’ll do if you’re not going to use devices.”

The Value of Tech-Free Moments

The goal isn’t about punishment or nostalgia. It’s about reclaiming space for conversation and imagination. 

“We used to talk over the fence; we used to talk on the streets. It’s all changed. But [parents and] grandparents can model something different.”

Even the Australian Government is taking screen time seriously, introducing new age-based restrictions on platforms like Instagram and TikTok for under-16s from December 2025. 

“If a secular government is concerned about access, then we as parents and grandparents have to be concerned, too,” he said.

That means thinking intentionally about when and how technology is used.

Finding Balance, Not Banning Devices

While some may dream of a completely screen-free zone, Ian warned against extremes. 

“Can I live in Utopia where there’s actually no technology whatsoever in my home? Probably not,” he laughed.

He pointed out that technology has its place, even for bonding. 

“I bought a Nintendo Switch so I could play sports games with my grandkids. There’s good stuff you can do.”

The key is balance. “Technology itself isn’t the problem; it’s the love of technology. It’s how you engage with it that matters.”

Giving Kids “a taste of something better”

For parents and grandparents wanting to create healthier tech habits for their grandkids, Ian offers these tips:

• Plan activities in advance. “Have things set up before they visit, it makes it easier to say no to screens.”
• Talk about what they’re seeing and doing. “When I used to push my kids in the pram, I’d talk about what they could see. Today, parents and kids are both staring at screens.”
• Set limits without shame. “Don’t make the screen so important in their lives. Use it as a reward after doing something active or creative.”
• Keep conversations flowing. “Your kids and grandkids still want to connect. They’re watching how we use our phones too.”

“Give them a taste of something better… Mums and dads and grandparents, give them a taste of heaven.”

A Home That Feels Like an Oasis

It’s encouraging to remember that a home can be an “oasis of engagement and enchantment”, not a place of restriction, but of restoration.

“When my grandkids visit, they know they’re stepping into a different environment,” he said. 

“We play games, go bike riding, or work in the garden. It’s a whole other experience. And I think it’s a break they actually enjoy.”

“Think about how you can give your [kids or] grandkids real-world experiences,” Ian said. “That’s the kind of connection that lasts.”

Article supplied with thanks to Christian Media & Arts Australia.

This article was prepared with AI assistance and carefully reviewed by our Digital team.

Feature image: Canva