What Small Businesses Need to Know about Generative AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for some time but with limited scope and access. You may wonder why you’re hearing so much about AI recently if it’s existed for so long. Recent technological advancements, paired with new generative AI products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have enabled everyday individuals and small businesses to access and use this advanced technology. In this article, we will discuss what increased access to generative AI for small businesses means for you, but first, let’s start with defining artificial intelligence and then dig deeper into the capabilities of generative AI. What is AI? Artificial intelligence refers to technology that aims to mimic human-level intelligence and understand, learn, and perform intellectual tasks that humans can do. A defining feature of AI is the ability to change rules or logic over time without human intervention versus other technological tools that improve efficiency but require human intervention and pre-defined rules.
There are several subsets of artificial intelligence. One of those that has recently garnered a lot of attention is generative AI. Generative AI is artificial intelligence that can generate new content and artifacts, such as original text, images, audio, and video, based on the massive amounts of data these models are trained on. Examples of generative AI programs include Open AI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Bard, and Anthropic’s Claude. Top Complex Business Problems That Can Be Solved With Generative AI for Business Now let’s take a look at the primary business challenges that can be addressed by utilizing generative AI tools. Content creation Crafting high-quality content is one of the most daunting and time-consuming tasks in the corporate world, whether it’s producing product descriptions, promotional materials, or even entire articles. Companies can leverage generative AI technology in business in such cases to generate acceptable quality content in a limited amount of time.
By utilizing natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, generative AI tools can evaluate existing content and create new, high-quality content that meets specific standards. This may involve considerations such as tone, style, and even targeted audiences. Customer service Customer service is a vital field in which generative AI tools like ChatGPT can address challenging business problems. Chatbots powered by ChatGPT can provide customers with prompt and precise answers to their inquiries, improving the overall customer experience. They can also make tailored suggestions to customers based on their purchase history and preferences. For instance, a retailer may employ ChatGPT to create a chatbot that can help customers locate products, answer inquiries, and process orders. The chatbot can also be programmed to identify and resolve customer complaints and issues, ensuring timely resolution and customer satisfaction. Legal Aiding in a company’s legal operations is one of the most important generative AI business applications. Corporations can derive considerable advantages from the utilization of generative AI tools in their legal departments. By means of the ability to perform legal research, scrutinize case law, and formulate legal documents, generative AI has the potential to enable legal teams to operate more capably and proficiently. To provide an example, a company’s legal team could make use of ChatGPT to scrutinize contracts and pinpoint prospective legal predicaments, thus ensuring compliance with legal regulations and diminishing the probability of legal disputes. Handling HR processes Artificial intelligence instruments like ChatGPT have the potential to offer significant support for corporate HR operations. ChatGPT, through natural language processing and machine learning techniques, can mechanize repetitive HR chores while delivering exact and swift answers to staff inquiries. For instance, enterprises can leverage the power of generative AI for business to devise a virtual HR assistant. This virtual assistant can help employees with tasks like managing leaves, administering benefits, and introducing new hires to the organization. Moreover, the chatbot can offer tailored career development recommendations to workers based on their skills and interests, thereby improving employee participation and retention. Furthermore, generative AI can be utilized to institute cheating-prevention measures in online entry tests.
Data analytics Generative AI technology in business offers a significant advantage in data analytics by uncovering hidden patterns and trends that may elude human perception. The capacity of AI to reveal such insights presents businesses with the opportunity to identify new areas of growth, optimize operations, and heighten the satisfaction of their customers. The sentiment analysis capability of generative AI serves as an excellent use case in data analytics. Read More
Tools like ChatGPT can analyze social media data to identify the disposition of customers towards a brand, product, or service. Businesses can leverage the benefits of generative AI in business by using this information. They can refine their marketing strategies, develop an in-depth understanding of their customers, and enhance customer contentment with the help of this data. Enhance sales Many organizations use generative AI for business, particularly to enhance their sales. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining importance in the business world as a means of augmenting sales and staying competitive. One specific application of this technology involves the use of generative language models to create personalized product descriptions that cater to the individual needs and preferences of customers. Through analysis of customer data and behavior, generative AI is capable of generating descriptions that are unique and compelling. New product development New product development is another great use of generative ai for business. Developing innovative products and expediting the design process can be intricate business quandaries for numerous corporations. Nevertheless, there are creative methodologies to tackle these obstacles, and one of them is through the utilization of artificially intelligent-powered mechanisms. By exploiting AI, enterprises can expeditiously scrutinize copious amounts of data and produce optimized designs grounded on specific parameters. This can significantly reduce the duration and expense of product development while still ensuring quality and performance. Fraud detection To tackle the intricate problem of fraud detection in the business sector, companies may employ AI-powered tools. These tools have the ability to actively detect and thwart various types of fraudulent activities. 5 One advantageous application of using generative AI for business is in the arena of forged ID documents identification. These tools swiftly scan and authenticate identity documents like passports, driver’s licenses, and more to prevent fraudulent activities. Coding Businesses operating in the field of coding encounter intricate issues related to composing efficient and error-free code. Nevertheless, there exist AI-fueled tools that can assist in resolving these challenges. Coding is one of the major generative AI uses for businesses operating in the code-creation space. Through analyzing pre-existing code, they can generate fresh code that is optimized, precise, and streamlined. Quality assurance is another area in which AI-driven tools can render assistance. By scrutinizing the code, they can detect possible errors prior to them causing any hindrances. CodeSonar, for example, is an advanced static analysis tool capable of identifying and remedying errors in code, thereby saving developers valuable time and effort. What are the Opportunities to Leverage Generative AI for Small Business? Customer Experience There are several ways that AI can help improve customer experience. One example is using chatbots to mimic human-like conversations to deliver quick and seamless customer service or perform routine tasks such as sending order confirmations and following up on support tickets. For example, if you are getting complaints about customer wait times, you could use an AI chatbot to handle basic customer inquiries while transferring customers to a live representative for more complex questions or situations. AI can assist with these transfers by providing the customer service representative with a comprehensive view of the customer before they get on the phone, thereby helping improve the customer experience. Research and Brainstorming Generative AI for small businesses can be helpful when analyzing vast amounts of data to provide insights and trends or extracting critical information from lengthy documents, articles, and reports. Let’s say you have a long report to read and glean information from. AI tools can help summarize and pull key insights from the report to share in an upcoming meeting, resulting in big time savings. AI can also help generate or accelerate ideas, like product ideas or new business concepts based on your existing offerings, customer demographics, and market trends. You can use image-generating AI to begin bringing these concepts to life.
Analysis and Data-Driven Decision-Making When analyzing trends in your business and industry, AI tools may provide valuable market insights and customer behavior patterns. Let’s say you are considering expanding your business to a neighboring town. Market research can help you assess the need first. AI can also assist with forming projections based on past data, perform sentiment analysis on customer reviews, and identify emerging opportunities to outmaneuver competitors. When you are looking to organize the data, AI can provide Excel support. When you’re ready to present your data, it can offer PowerPoint support. Writing and Editing Potential uses of AI in writing and editing include generating content like business plans or fresh marketing materials such as blog posts, articles, and product descriptions. AI programs can also refine and rephrase existing content with grammar checks. For example, if you have written an original blog post for your business and want to improve the grammatical structure and correctness and make it more detailed or descriptive, AI can help. Language translation is another valuable AI tool to help you reach broader audiences. Design and Production AI can optimize marketing strategies with customized and personalized campaigns, generate graphic designs and visuals for marketing materials and social media posts, create video content to promote products and services, and prototype products and websites. The Caveat: What Should Small Business Watch Out For? As discussed above, artificial intelligence can be a valuable tool in your toolbox for business needs. However, businesses using or contemplating the use of AI should be mindful of its risks and limitations. This technology is still in its early stages of use and development. Before using generative AI for small businesses, here are a few things to consider. The quality of the response depends on the quality of the input. It’s important to remember that even though responses sound like a live human, they are computers whose answers are based on sources they’ve been trained on (books, websites, scientific papers, news articles, social media, forums, etc.). These sources can include misinformation and bias. Currently, the reference data used by AI is not real-time, and in many cases, the input sources used to compile responses are several years old. Always review and edit results before publishing AI-generated content. Also, legal ownership of the content is ambiguous, so don’t use it to create anything that could be misinterpreted as your intellectual property. Remember that nothing created by generative AI can be copyrighted.
Just like a Google search, AI stores your interactions. Do not share sensitive personal or customer data in your interactions. AI systems can be vulnerable to security breaches, resulting in private data being compromised or stolen. Cybercriminals, scammers, and hackers use AI to launch more sophisticated attacks and make phishing emails and websites more convincing, which can be challenging to detect and defend against. Use caution and be wary of clicking links in unknown emails. For these reasons, it is best to use generative AI for small business as one of many tools in your toolkit and not rely on the outputs alone. Wrapping Up Artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved and is now ubiquitous in daily life for many people. Though it’s crucial to be cautious and discerning when utilizing these capabilities, AI has enormous potential to help organizations enhance the quality of their products, efficiency, and cost savings
