This talk grew out of a side project that got wildly out of hand. I set out to build a quick Laravel app to make one of my favourite podcasts searchable - just a weekend hack, a bit of “vibe coding” to scratch an itch. Instead, it became EverythingIsShowbiz.com, a fully fledged PHP + AI transcript engine with semantic search. What started as an experiment turned into a practical crash course in where AI actually fits into PHP workflows: from managing GPU-heavy transcription jobs, to cleaning up potentially-libellous misheard phrases, making AI output trustworthy at scale, and all on a side project budget!

Along the way, I learned a lot about the gap between AI hype and engineering reality. We’ll explore the messy middle - where Laravel pipelines replace notebooks, admin tools become sanity savers, and side projects quietly teach us the same lessons as production systems. This talk is for anyone who’s ever been asked, "can you do that... but add AI in?" and wants to know what that really looks like in PHP.

A small reminder that PHP still belongs in the future - even when that future comes wrapped in AI.