🔒Five ways your business can start using AI today

It’s official: Most U.S. businesses use artificial intelligence. In 2023, 55% of businesses reported using AI. By 2024, that figure had surged to 78%, according to Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

“You can just scream at the wind if you want, but it's here,” said Julia Becker Collins, chief operating officer Northborough-based marketing firm Vision. With the rise of new AI platforms, Becker Collins and her peers have seen some businesses hesitant to implement the tool into their operations. Some think the rise in AI is equivalent to doomsday, said Kham Inthirath, CEO of Compound Effect, a Boston-based AI solutions consulting firm. Others worry it’s going to replace their jobs or the technology is just too complex to tackle, said Michelle Fuller, managing director of strategy & operations, senior wealth advisor at Bartholomew & Co., a Worcester-based financial services provider. But in truth, simple ways of using AI in daily business operations don’t equate to personnel cuts or apocalyptic collapse, but instead, save businesses time and money. “If you’re not leveraging this tool, you’ll be spending time doing things that a machine can do as opposed to where a human can add value,” said Fuller. Here are five ways you can implement AI into your business operations today, with little to no training.

1. Use AI notetaking

Hand over notetaking to an AI scribe, letting employees stay more present during meetings and interviews. With dozens of tools to choose from, such as Otter.ai and tl;dv, AI scribes will record, transcribe, summarize, and offer next steps to review. As a board member of Worcester’s League of Women Voters, Becker Collins uses Fathom AI during organization meetings so she can stay engaged in conversations, without the distraction of writing down who said what. “When I think about AI, and the way that it can be used really, really well in business, it’s … what requires the least amount of training and what has the greatest output,” she said.

2. Do deep research

Unlike the near-instant, surface-level research AI tools produce on the free version of platforms like ChatGPT, using AI to do deep research generates far more sophisticated and comprehensive results. Deep research uses agentic AI, an autonomous form of AI making decisions and carrying out tasks without the need for extensive direction. “Agentic AI is beyond a chatbot. It's actually executing a task similar to what a human would do,” said Inthirath. While it may sound complicated, deep research is purposefully created to be easy. Using a prompt, deep research works by analyzing hundreds of sources from academic research to case studies to credible media outlets. Instead of returning responses within seconds, these reports can take up to 30 minutes to deliver, while potentially saving the user hours of research. Paid versions of deep research, such as those provided by Perplexity and Gemini, will run autonomous tasks for users, providing updates as often as needed. For example, Perplexity can send weekly updates to a business owner, summarizing newest updates and product launches from specific competitors; or a nonprofit leader can ask Gemini to research all grants to be renewed next year.

3. Summarize documents

Tools like ChatGPT can act as a personal assistant, returning summaries and performing data analysis on long reads, including reports, PDFs, and presentation decks. AI can comb for specific reference points, such as a specific claim in a lawsuit or a result buried in a medical report. AI tools can even analyze multiple documents, such as proposals, said Fuller. AI applications can compare targeted metrics, such as discerning which marketing proposal will take less time and be more cost-efficient. “You can upload proposals into an AI tool, and it can literally spit back out a summary of and a comparison of all the relevant and respective data points within the proposal in seconds,” said Fuller.

4. Second pair of eyes

For entrepreneurs or businesses with small teams, AI can play an integral role in catching errors. “For small to midsize business leaders, [AI’s] like your unpaid intern or another pair of eyes,” said Becker Collins. Tools like Grammarly can quickly scan drafts of emails, reports, and press releases, checking for grammatical errors and consistency with specific guides, such as AP Style. AI tools can act as a sounding board for creatives by reviewing a business’ previous work and suggesting next steps, such as new blog topics or new features for a website. The best way to do this is to use a custom GPT, said Becker Collins, which is a tailored form of ChatGPT created by individual users for specific tasks. “You're not just talking to an anonymous machine. You're talking to something that has been trained on exactly what you're talking about, and you don't need a degree in computer science to know how to do that,” she said.

5. Create images

AI’s ability to create photos and images have come a long way, even in just the past few months, said Inthirath. Workers can use tools like Nano Banana to create custom images by prompting the chatbot with specific instructions for the images. Businesses can use AI to create infographics, professional-looking headshots, and images of their products in different environments. This ability is a major win, especially for small businesses tight on cash, Inthirath said. Instead of having to hire an outside graphic designer or photographer, business owners can custom make images in mere moments. “Instead of using Photoshop, you can have the AI do it for you, and it's done in a minute or less,” Inthirath said. Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare, manufacturing, and higher education industries.