Tech Explained: Livingston Lures designer says ‘truly functional’ EBS technology beats AI hype in Simple Terms

Trust the science not the hype when it comes choosing lures, writes Steven Paul, Livingston Lures’ acclaimed musky guide and award-winning lure designer.

Writes Paul: Artificial intelligence has quietly rewritten how anglers discover tackle. Search engines summarise. Marketplaces recommend. Product pages compress once distinct ideas into interchangeable phrases like ‘great action’, ‘natural colours’ and ‘fish catching design’.

At the same time, outdoor media outlets that pivoted toward click-driven content are collapsing under the weight of their own ‘top 10’ and ‘best of’ lists. In chasing traffic, they trained the very AI systems now extracting answers without attribution or loyalty. The result is a marketplace where answers are abundant, but meaning is scarce.

In this environment, most lures become thematically indistinguishable long before a customer ever reaches a retail wall. Shortened attention spans only accelerate the problem. Many consumers cannot recall what they viewed 60 seconds ago, yet brands continue pouring resources into social media influencers with little measurable return.

What remains is a scramble for relevance. Marketing departments race to revive blogs, chase engagement and manufacture connection in a landscape where sameness is rewarded and differentiation is erased. This is the new reality of online tackle marketing and it forces the industry to confront a difficult question.

What still stands out when everything is the same?

The compression created by AI search means every lure now claims great action and a perfect wobble, language recycled by marketing departments for decades. Combined with click-driven SEO directives, this has truncated the fishing industry into an extremely narrow bandwidth of repeated ideas, creating an AI-driven regurgitation loop that strips products of meaningful distinction. This reality is not lost on anglers.

The reality is simple. To stand out at retail, products must possess an edge that exists beyond marketing language. Differentiation must be rooted in principle, function and performance, not buzzwords.

This is precisely why Livingston Lures EBS (Electronic Baitfish Sounds) technology stands apart. Not as a marketing claim, but as a form of differentiation that survives AI compression, algorithmic summaries and drives real attention to both online and in-store inventory.

These advantages are not cosmetic. They are functional. That functional difference is exactly why EBS remains resilient in a retail landscape increasingly flattened by AI driven search.

Artificial intelligence excels at summarising visual traits and generic performance claims. It struggles to explain why a lure behaves differently in the fish’s sensory world. Electronic sound is not a theme that can be easily compressed into a sentence or replicated through branding. It is a mechanism that requires engineering, testing and manufacturing discipline.

Because of that, EBS resists commoditisation in ways traditional lure features do not. Algorithms may group crankbaits or jerkbaits together, but they cannot meaningfully collapse a lure that actively emits biologically relevant sound into the same category as passive designs. As AI search compresses online reach, carrying lures in your inventory that are functionally different is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity.

For retailers, this creates a clear advantage. EBS products remain explainable and premium even as online discovery pushes consumers toward generic offerings. In store, EBS provides something increasingly rare: a factual, non hyperbolic story grounded in how fish actually behave and perceive their environment. The conversation shifts away from colour preference or trend-chasing and toward why a lure continues to work when others fail. It communicates when paused. Its sound travels farther than visual cues. It performs in dirty water, high pressure environments and neutral fish scenarios where traditional approaches struggle.

That kind of explanation builds confidence. It shortens decision cycles. It justifies value without relying on discounting or hype. As AI search continues to flatten language and themes, the retailers who succeed will be those who sell knowledge and understanding rather than inventory alone.

The next retail battleground is not shelf space or SKU count. It is meaningful differentiation in a world where everything is compressed online. Livingston Lures EBS technology stands out because it operates where algorithms struggle and biology still rules in the real world.

It speaks directly to how fish perceive the underwater world and gives retailers a story that survives simplification and pushes past the watered down AI version of the tackle industry.

T: +1 210 410 2041
erick.arnoldson@livingstonlures.com
www.livingstonlures.com