Humankind has nurtured a fascination with intelligent robots for decades. But while artificial intelligence (AI) was once found only in sci-fi novels, it has become a ‘real-world’ tool with big small-business potential.
The release of ChatGPT and other so-called generative AI tools has sparked much debate about how AI can and should be used. If you are wondering what it all means for your small business, here are five things you need to know about AI technology:
1. What can AI do for my small business?
Many small businesses are already recognising the huge potential of generative AI to help access and analyse knowledge and make it easier and quicker to complete tasks. You can use it to improve business operations and can help transcribe online meetings or videos or create social posts. AI suits programmatic, repetitive tasks, like buying ads on Google. If you tag your data correctly, it can fill in the gaps in your first-party data. However, privacy concerns exist.
2. It is much smarter than just a chatbot
Generative AI is a form of AI that uses machine learning and pulls from the wide variety of data on the internet to create new content like text and data. While customer service chatbots operate within defined frameworks, ChatGPT and Google’s Bard comb the internet for patterns in online information and are trained with human inputs to craft unique dialogue. In January, it was estimated that ChatGPT had more than 100 million active monthly users.
3. If you want it, AI can probably create it
No matter whether you want a recipe, a social media strategy for your jewellery business or a dissertation on the flora and fauna in the Cretaceous period, generative AI can likely create it.
The applications are designed to respond to inputs so it will action everything from a simple question to a request to write an essay, a strategy or even computer code. The more details you nominate in the inputs, the more precise a response you’re likely to receive.
Using the right prompts, AI applications can help small-business owners tackle some of the most common issues they face including marketing, customer engagement and business building. So far, the advice is also free and you don’t need to be a tech expert to use it effectively.
4. AI is far from perfect
While generative AI is an exciting new technology with incredible potential, it is still in its infancy. The Chief Executive of OpenAI, Sam Althman even warned: “It’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now…we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.”
While the chatbots might be able to produce thousands of words in minutes, there is no way yet for the technology to fact-check itself. As a result, reviewing content for accuracy or bias is important.
There is also no telling if answers have been generated using another company’s intellectual property which may create risks. And never to enter sensitive or confidential information, as the application stores user inputs to review for abuse or to help it improve.
5. How to get started
There are many great ideas and examples for small-business owners to help them get started experimenting with generative AI. Once you’ve created a free profile or obtained an enterprise licence with one of the bots, you can play around with any number of requests such as:
- Write an engaging, <adjective> Facebook post about <topic> for a <vertical> business.
- Rewrite this product description so it’s more effective at converting prospects into customers.
Generative AI technology may not be perfect, but it so far has shown potential to be a powerful tool for small business to help level the playing field with the resource-rich big business.
