05/13/2026
Some podcast conversations stay technical.
Others unexpectedly become personal.
My conversation with Luigi and Matthew on The Liquid Lunch Project genuinely felt different.
We started by discussing AI, voice assistants, local business visibility, trust, and the future of customer interaction.
But somewhere during the discussion, the conversation shifted into something much more meaningful:
how technology affects human relationships, business authenticity, trust, and the responsibility that comes with building systems people rely on.
One of the biggest misconceptions around AI today is that businesses simply need to 'adopt AI'
The reality is much more fundamental:
AI can only be as useful as the information, systems, and trust behind it.
If your online presence is broken, outdated, inconsistent, or abandoned, AI does not magically fix that problem.
It amplifies it.
That is why the future of AI for local businesses is not about replacing humans.
It is about helping businesses become more accessible, responsive, and trustworthy at scale.
Thank you again Luigi and Matthew for the conversation, the energy, and the authenticity.
The full episode link 👇
https://theliquidlunchproject.com/post/laurent-cohen
There is a weird little problem hiding inside all this AI excitement.
A lot of business owners are being told to “use AI,” but nobody wants to talk about what happens when the AI has nothing useful to work with.
❌ Old website.
❌ Wrong hours.
❌ Outdated services.
❌ Dead social pages.
❌ Google listing held together with duct tape.
Then someone asks a voice assistant where to go, who to call, or what business they can trust. And suddenly, the issue is not whether AI is powerful. The issue is whether your business is giving it anything accurate to say.
That is the part small business owners need to take seriously.
Laurent Cohen, founder of GetOblic, joined Matthew R. Meehan and Luigi Rosabianca on The Liquid Lunch Project to talk about voice AI, AI receptionists, local search, trust, and why pretending a robot is human is probably not the big-brain move some people think it is.
The full episode is live now. ⬇️⬇️