What can AI do for Small Businesses?
In this post, we illustrate how AI is within reach for small businesses and present a demo application that highlights its potential.
In layman's terms, AI is a technology that enables machines to mimic human intelligence, allowing them to learn from data, make decisions, and perform tasks that typically require human thought and effort. There are many shapes and forms of AI, we'll focus on Generative AI here. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that creates new content, such as text, images, or music, by learning patterns from existing data and generating original outputs based on that knowledge. The most famous example is ChatGPT, a GenAI solution.
Imagine a tool that not only answers customer inquiries but also fetches images, suggests itineraries, and integrates with other tools and applications. This is not a distant dream but a tangible reality, as demonstrated by our prototype application, TravelChat .
TravelChat: A Glimpse into the Future
TravelChat is a simple example of what can be done with GenAI. This prototype application assists users with travel-related queries, aiming to bring some colour to the interaction with AI through images. It currently fetches relevant landmark pictures and additional info based on the user's inquiry. Imagine using it to plan your travel, learn more about your destination, and book your hotel, car, and flight with it. That may be ambitious, but you could choose a niche of your own in a particular tangent and build a community that uses your tool to see it the way you do. We could integrate advertising to it, there you have your revenue stream, too!
Opportunities
Like other eras of doing business, opportunities are limited only by your imagination. For example, a local bakery could create a chat interface to help customers choose cakes, display images of available designs, and even take orders directly through the chat. You could teach the AI to behave exactly the way you want it to, so it will guide your customers as such.
For larger businesses, you could automate routine tasks and free up employees to focus on more strategic activities. For example, you could ask it to check your inventories at regular intervals, predict demand surges based on specific dates or local events, and advise you to place orders. If you need to review a supplier's update to your terms & conditions, you could ask AI to review the changes and how they might impact you.
A Glimpse into the Future
Generative AI is not just a tool for the tech giants; it's an accessible and valuable resource for businesses of all sizes. We fine-tuned TravelChat in just a couple of days; we deploy, host and maintain it as we go. We can work with you to build a GenAI chat application tailored to your needs and vision, too.
Below is a demo video of TravelChat, with parts intended for a more technical audience. You can also try it out for yourself; please note that it is just a prototype app designed to showcase the concept. It is subject to rate limits on the AI language model and Google search, which may cause it to stop working once those limits are reached.
