Martez Knox on the Influencer Podcast: How BakedBot Brings Netflix-Level Personalization to Cannabis

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In episode #158 of the Influencer Podcast, Dr. Bill Williams sat down with Martez Knox — CEO and co-founder of BakedBot AI — for a wide-ranging conversation about artificial intelligence, the cannabis industry, and the future of personalized retail.

The interview covers BakedBot's founding story, the Netflix analogy that drives the company's product philosophy, and where Martez sees autonomous AI agents taking the dispensary experience over the next few years.

Here are the key themes from the conversation.

The Cannabis Industry Needed a Netflix Moment

Martez opens with the analogy that has defined BakedBot's pitch since day one:

"When you look out at the cannabis industry, it's kind of like how the movie industry was 20 years ago. You had all these different titles and all these different genres, but there was no real way of it being organized or for you to find out: is this something I would like? You might tune in and watch five movies before you actually find a good one. The innovation Netflix brought was using machine learning to discover what movies you'd actually be likely to like. That's what we're bringing to cannabis retail."

With hundreds of strains and products on the shelf, a customer who walks in and gets the wrong product — one that doesn't match their tolerance, their mood, or their medical needs — is a customer who doesn't come back. The cost of a bad experience in cannabis is a lost customer. The opportunity cost is every purchase they would have made over the next five years.

Co-Founding BakedBot with Greg Jack Allen

Martez describes BakedBot as "one half of a duo" — he and co-founder Greg Jack Allen built the company together. Martez brings the marketing and lead generation background, having worked in chatbots and automation since 2018 and 2019. Greg brings the technical architecture.

Together they focused on building AI solutions at the intersection of two complex challenges: cannabis regulation compliance and personalized marketing at scale.

BakedBot's AI Stack

When Dr. Williams asks which AI tools Martez works with, he's candid:

"We use ChatGPT as well as — I'll say I'm a fan of Claude 3. We also have our own GPT — it's called BakedBot GPT — a cannabis-focused GPT that's trained on all sorts of neat cannabis data."

On Claude specifically: "If there is anybody out there looking at large language models and wondering where to start, Claude is absolutely a great model. They're crushing it, particularly the ones they recently introduced."

That practical multi-model approach — using the right model for the right task — reflects how BakedBot's internal agent architecture is built. Different agents (compliance, competitive intelligence, customer retention) use different underlying models depending on what each task demands.

The Most Exciting Feature: Autonomous Agents

Martez describes autonomous agents as the feature he's most excited to ship:

"These are AI software programs that are able to act independently of you regardless of what you have going on. The vision is a dispensary where your AI is handling customer reactivation, competitive monitoring, and marketing — without your team having to think about it on a Tuesday night."

For a dispensary operator who's also managing compliance, staffing, purchasing, and regulatory reporting, the promise of autonomous agents isn't a futuristic dream — it's relief. The work happens whether or not someone is in the back office watching it happen.

The Pace of AI Progress

One of the most memorable moments in the interview is Martez's description of how fast the AI landscape moves:

"What used to take six months now takes a month or less. Yesterday's AI is not today's AI — it's like a grown-up Ninja Warrior compared to a Kindergarten Cop."

That pace is both opportunity and pressure. For BakedBot, it means shipping faster and committing to continuous updates rather than annual release cycles. For dispensary operators, it means the gap between what's possible and what they're currently doing is closing fast — and the operators who adopt AI-native tools now will have a structural advantage over those who wait.

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Transcript sourced from Influencer Podcast #158. Subscribe to Dr. Bill Williams on YouTube.