We begin by exploring the mutiplicity of what personalisation means and the potential of digital technologies to provide this at scale, turning next to consider what the ethical cost is weighed against the benefit, and where the teacher and student are in all of this. We put this very briefly into a UK and international policy context. Drawing on selected examples of 'conventional', adaptive, and AI tools from our Erasmus+ Empower2Learn project, we unpick further some differences between tools that are already used by many. In the final section of the talk we invite discussion around what Professor Rose Luckin's notion of 'AI readiness' might mean for empowering institutions to navigate a successful path through a field of commercial competition and hyperbole.