5 Things to be Wary of When Using AI in Your Small Business
AI can be a useful tool for small businesses. It can help you brainstorm ideas, draft content, summarize information, analyze data, automate repetitive tasks, and generally save time.
But like any tool, it can cause issues when the user isn’t mindful about ‘safe’ operating procedures.
Here are five things to be wary of when using AI in your business.
1. Privacy and confidential information
Be careful about what information you feed into an AI tool. Depending on the platform and its settings, information you enter may be stored or used in ways you don't expect.
This is particularly important for sensitive business information, such as customer details, financial data, employee records, passwords, proprietary information, or confidential client communications.
Before using AI for business purposes, understand the tool's privacy policies and settings. Establish clear guidelines for your team about what information can and cannot be entered into AI tools.
2. Accuracy isn't guaranteed
AI can produce information that sounds convincing but is incorrect. It can misunderstand a question, make up information (hallucinate), or present outdated information as fact.
This can cause issues when stating any kind of fact or statistic. Or it could even be incorrect information about your own business, which can lead to broken promises and miscommunication with clients.
Always review AI-generated information before relying on it. Double check any facts, and even link to your sources for added reliability.
3. It can make your business sound like everyone else
AI-generated writing has a recognizable style. If you're using it to write all your website copy, social media posts, emails and marketing materials without editing, your business will start to sound generic.
Look for these tells:
“And honesty?...”
“Not just X, but X”
Paragraphs that don’t add any new information
Repetitive sentence structures
The overuse of descriptive words
Random bolded words within paragraphs
Your business has its own personality, expertise and perspective. AI can help you get started, but make sure the finished content actually sounds like you.
4. It can create a lot of content that nobody needs
Just because AI makes it faster and easier to create mountains of content, it doesn’t mean that content is actually going to do anything for you.
You can generate dozens of social media posts, blog articles or marketing emails with a quick prompt. Then you can spend hours scheduling it all in and sharing it with audiences.
But for what? Is it content you really needed? Content your audience was looking for?
Start with what you want to achieve, rather than what AI can produce. Use it to help you create useful content more efficiently, not simply to increase the quantity your output.
5. Your team can become too dependent on it
AI can make certain tasks much faster, but there is a downside to outsourcing too much of your thinking.
If employees always turn to AI to write, research, problem-solve or make decisions, they may have fewer opportunities to develop and use their own skills. You can also end up with a team that knows how to generate an answer but not necessarily how to evaluate whether that answer is good.
Think of AI as a tool that strengthens your team's capabilities, rather than something that replaces them.
Using AI as a positive tool
AI can be a valuable addition to a small business toolkit, if it’s something you’d like to incorporate.
But like any good tool, you still need to do the safety checks. Keep a human in the loop, protect confidential information, check important information for accuracy, and make sure the final work reflects your business style.
Looking for more small business advice? We're available for Sea to Sky entrepreneurs, whether you're thinking about starting a business, or are already up and running. Learn more about our local, free business advice sessions and make a booking here!
