Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way businesses operate. One type of AI, called generative AI, can create new content such as images, text, audio, and video. This article tries to explain in simple terms how generative AI works and how it can help small businesses be more productive and creative.
What is generative artificial intelligence?
Generative AI systems can create new images, text, audio, and video based on examples and data they are trained on. There are two main types:
- Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): Two AI networks compete. A generator tries to create realistic outputs, while a discriminator tries to identify false outputs. The generator improves through this process.
- Large language models are AI systems trained on massive amounts of text. They can generate new text that follows similar patterns. These are used to create images, videos, and audio.
Both types “learn” from massive data sets and then use that knowledge to generate new content. As datasets and AI models improve, so do the capabilities of generative AI.
How generative AI works in simple terms
Think of generative AI as a robot apprentice. You show him many examples of the type of content you want to create: images, text, etc. The AI system analyzes those examples to learn the patterns and styles within them.
Once you understand these templates, you can give them high-level instructions like “Create a product description for an outdoor barbecue” or “Generate a logo for a landscaping company.” The generative AI system then uses what it has learned from the examples shown to produce new content that follows a similar style.
The output generated by artificial intelligence still requires review and refinement by humans. However, generative AI can produce initial drafts that save time compared to creating content from scratch. And it can generate many options so that humans can choose the best one.
How generative AI can help small businesses?
Generative AI tools are still new, but they offer numerous benefits for small businesses:
- Save time and money on content creation. Generative AI can produce initial drafts of marketing materials, designs, customer communications, and more. This reduces the workload for employees and freelancers.
- Increase creativity and productivity. Generative AI allows companies to produce more content at a faster pace. This way, they can create more marketing campaigns, design more products, answer more customer questions, etc.
- Automate routine tasks. Generative AI can do repetitive creative work like generating product descriptions, designing logos, writing basic customer service responses, and more. This frees up human workers for higher-value tasks.
- Produce more options. Generative AI systems can generate many options based on the same instructions. This gives companies more choices to find the best solution.
- Level the playing field. Generative AI tools are becoming more accessible, allowing small businesses to produce content at a scale previously only possible for large corporations.
Generative AI will not replace creative workers anytime soon; however, when used appropriately and supervised by humans, it can potentially increase small businesses’ productivity and creativity. With the right implementation and governance strategies, generative AI could become a powerful tool in your company’s toolkit.
