Scale & Strategy
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Here’s everything you need to know:
- China Makes AI Self-Sufficiency a National Priority
- AI Overviews Are Slashing Clicks—and It’s Probably Just the Beginning
- This Simple Prompt Trick Creates Shockingly Realistic AI Photos
China Makes AI Self-Sufficiency a National Priority
Chinese President Xi Jinping has officially declared AI self-sufficiency a national mission, pledging expanded government support to accelerate the development of AI chips, software, and talent amid growing tech tensions with the U.S.
The details:
- Xi outlined a new "whole national system" approach, focused on building high-end chips, advancing AI software, and scaling AI education and talent pipelines.
- The initiative will include increased policy support, stronger IP protections, and expanded research funding to break through key tech bottlenecks.
- Chinese tech giant Huawei is reportedly testing an advanced AI chip designed to replace NVIDIA processors—currently restricted by U.S. export controls.
- Rumors also suggest DeepSeek R2 is nearing release, featuring aggressive price and training cost cuts—and potentially switching from NVIDIA to Huawei chips.
Why it matters:
With a second potential "DeepSeek moment" looming, domestic AI chips gaining ground, and the performance gap between Chinese and U.S. models narrowing fast, China is pushing aggressively to secure AI leadership—proving it may not need U.S. technology to win.
AI Overviews Are Slashing Clicks—and It’s Probably Just the Beginning
After analyzing 300,000 keywords, Ahrefs has a clearer view of how AI Overviews (AIOs) are impacting organic search traffic.
Spoiler: It’s not great.
According to researchers Ryan Law and Xibeijia Guan, AIOs are driving a 34.5% drop in click-through rates (CTR). Yep, ouch.
Here’s how they broke it down:
- Keywords with AIOs: CTR for the top organic position fell from 0.073 to 0.0226 over the past year.
- Keywords without AIOs: CTR also declined, but less sharply—from 0.056 to 0.031.
- Net impact: After adjusting for the broader decline in CTR, AIOs are tied to a 34.5% decrease in clicks on top organic results.
What it means for you:
If you’re relying on top rankings for traffic, brace yourself—AI Overviews are likely siphoning off your clicks. It’s time to adapt your strategy:
- Prioritize getting featured inside the AIOs when possible.
- Explore ways to diversify traffic sources to offset potential losses.
For now, Google doesn’t show direct CTR data for AIOs, so it’s hard to measure their true value. Hopefully they perform better than organic listings... but we’re not holding our breath.
This Simple Prompt Trick Creates Shockingly Realistic AI Photos
When it comes to AI prompts, the rule of thumb is usually: the more specific, the better.
But if you're aiming for photorealistic images, forget fancy descriptions like "shot on DSLR" or "cinematic lighting."
Cory Dobbin shared a simple hack that changes everything.
The trick:
At the start of your prompt, add a random-looking file name like:
“IMG_190282009.HEIC”
That’s it.
Why it works:
AI models have been trained on countless real-world images—many of them straight from digital cameras, complete with auto-generated filenames.
When you include a filename like that, the model interprets your request as a real photo, tapping into a part of its training data designed to replicate authentic camera output.
For example:
- Prompt without the filename: “Mountain landscape from the perspective of a hiker in digital camera style”
→ Result: Pretty, but still noticeably AI-generated.
- Prompt with the filename: “IMG_190282009.HEIC mountain landscape from the perspective of a hiker”
→ Result: Sharper, more realistic—like a real snapshot from a hike.
It works on portraits too.
Where this shines:
This trick works especially well on Midjourney v7, particularly for human subjects and portraits.
Midjourney v6.1 also produces strong results, though not quite as refined.
The takeaway:
Sometimes, the best AI results come from understanding how the model thinks—and reverse-engineering your prompts to guide it.
Give it a try and see the difference for yourself.
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