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Artificial Intelligence

How to use AI to start an online business

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Nearly every online business now touches artificial intelligence at some point. Research from 2025 shows 78% of companies worldwide use AI for at least one business area. Smaller businesses report higher usage, with 89% saying they use AI each day. Over 280 million businesses worldwide now run at least one AI tool, and many use them for three different functions on average. In the United States, private investment in artificial intelligence reached $109.1 billion for 2025.

AI platforms can manage many repetitive or time-consuming parts of building and running a business. Here is how new founders use them:

  • Automating tasks such as billing, emails, and order fulfillment
  • Generating product descriptions, marketing content, and blogs
  • Providing support through chatbots and helpdesk systems
  • Handling customer and sales data, so owners see where to improve
  • Tuning online store content for better search engine ranking

Automate operations and cut costs

Automation suites like Zapier AI and Make fold into online shop tools, email platforms, and marketing systems. These let founders set up triggers for actions. For example, a new order in the store can start a workflow: send a confirmation, log the sale, and update inventory. The owner does not need to touch anything. This reduces manual work, speeds up tasks, and can lower costs.

Email marketing and analytics also work better with AI. Mailchimp AI and Klaviyo can predict which emails each customer is most likely to open. The tools then send messages at the best times and segment users by what they want to read. SurferSEO and SEMrush help with keyword research and content optimisation. Founders can attract more visitors by following their recommended strategy.

Recent studies show that businesses using AI in marketing and sales see up to 50% more leads, spend 60% less time per sales call, and reduce overall costs by up to 60%. In email marketing, 41% of marketers report earning more revenue when they use AI.

Content generators make publishing easier

AI content platforms such as Jasper, Copy.ai, and Gemini can write product pages, s, and help guides in minutes. Store owners do not need to hire a large writing team or spend hours creating new articles. These platforms use information given by the founder to write content based on keywords, brand tone, or target questions.

A direct-to-consumer skincare brand increased its revenue from $100,000 to $2,000,000 by using Jasper AI for product descriptions, blog content, and email copy, along with SurferSEO for search growth. The company published three times as much content and lowered its costs by over 75%.

Many founders rely on AI-generated support tools as well. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Intercom can answer common customer questions, process refunds, or recommend products based on a shopper’s past orders. This keeps response times quick and frees up the business owner to focus on other work.

From market research to launch: A step-by-step to using prompts 

Owners use AI throughout the business process. Here are practical prompt examples used by successful founders:

  1. Find a business idea: Ask the AI to suggest new business ideas based on what is selling on Amazon. For example: “Suggest ten online business ideas based on current bestsellers and size of those markets.”
  2. Validate interest: Ask the AI to read one-star reviews and summarise what people complain about in your product category.
  3. Write a business plan: Ask: “Create a one-page plan for a subscription fitness app for Millennials. Include key features, pricing, and launch plan.”
  4. Make content: Request: “Write a 500-word blog post on AI in ecommerce, ending with an offer to join a newsletter.”
  5. Welcoming customers: Use: “Write ten onboarding emails for people who bought a productivity tool. Answer likely questions and offer support links.”

Choosing the right tools for each stage

When you start an online business, it is common to test different tools side by side. For example, someone may use Jasper to write product pages, SurferSEO or SEMrush to adjust keywords, and AI Website Builder platforms to quickly assemble storefronts. Many people try several options before they find a set that works for their goals.

Some founders also mix in unique AI solutions, such as using Gemini for blog articles or Tableau Pulse for early-stage analytics. Trying a range of tools early on helps you build a process that fits your needs, budget, and skill set.

Case studies of small teams using AI tools

Smaller businesses and solo founders gain an advantage from AI. A SaaS founder built a niche app by using ChatGPT for customer questions and Notion AI for automated help guides. Gemini wrote landing pages. This owner offered around-the-clock support and content like bigger rivals, all without hiring a large staff.

A digital marketing agency switched to AI for project management, using Make for automation, ChatGPT for campaign ideas and reports, and analytics bots for real-time campaign data. They doubled their client count.

Data and analytics: Smarter decisions

Google Analytics AI, Tableau Pulse, and Microsoft Power BI Copilot help founders turn site clicks, sales, and customer messages into charts and reports. These tools find trends, spot gaps in the sales funnel, and let owners see which ads work best or why users quit a checkout process.

Experts suggest using these insights before spending heavily. For example, new founders can run AI-powered market research with prompts to summarise Amazon complaints or social media comments. This finds problems to solve or gaps left by competitors without running focus groups or big surveys.

Avoiding common pitfalls

AI can replace many manual tasks, but experts such as top incubators warn that automation can hurt if it removes all human touch. Clear branding and direct customer support are still important. Owners should blend AI with real staff to keep support personal and branding unique.

Ethics also matter. Founders who train AI tools with their own brand voice, customer questions, and up-to-date data will stand out. Avoid over-automation that leaves users confused or alienated.

Building a process that works

Owners now run smarter shops with fewer staff. Workers using AI report a 66% daily productivity gain. Investment in generative AI added $1.4 trillion in market value and raised profits by 45% in four months for global firms. Mastering AI prompts and keeping the customer at the center of decisions leads to faster launches and more efficient growth.

A founder named Sarah Kim, who built a large ecommerce company, says clear prompts, rapid testing, and keeping a true brand voice are keys to leading in online business. Owners who spend time learning their AI platforms, fine-tuning prompts, and responding to user feedback can build and scale new ventures with less capital and less risk.

Author: Musfiqur, founder and CEO, Rankpa.com

(Image source: Unsplash)

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Artificial Intelligence

Zuckerberg outlines Meta’s AI vision for ‘personal superintelligence’

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has laid out his blueprint for the future of AI, and it’s about giving you “personal superintelligence”.

In a letter, the Meta chief painted a picture of what’s coming next, and he believes it’s closer than we think. He says his teams are already seeing early signs of progress.

“Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves,” Zuckerberg wrote. “The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable. Developing superintelligence is now in sight.”

So, what does he want to do with it? Forget AI that just automates boring office work, Zuckerberg and Meta’s vision for personal superintelligence is far more intimate. He imagines a future where technology serves our individual growth, not just our productivity.

In his words, the real revolution will be “everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, experience any adventure, be a better friend to those you care about, and grow to become the person you aspire to be.”

But here’s where it gets interesting. He drew a clear line in the sand, contrasting his vision against a very different, almost dystopian alternative that he believes others are pursuing.

“This is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output,” he stated.

Meta, Zuckerberg says, is betting on the individual when it comes to AI superintelligence. The company believes that progress has always come from people chasing their own dreams, not from living off the scraps of a hyper-efficient machine.

If he’s right, we’ll spend less time wrestling with software and more time creating and connecting. This personal AI would live in devices like smart glasses, understanding our world because they can “see what we see, hear what we hear.”

Of course, he knows this is powerful, even dangerous, stuff. Zuckerberg admits that superintelligence will bring new safety concerns and that Meta will have to be careful about what they release to the world. Still, he argues that the goal must be to empower people as much as possible.

Zuckerberg believes we’re at a crossroads right now. The choices we make in the next few years will decide everything.

“The rest of this decade seems likely to be the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take,” he warned, framing it as a choice between “personal empowerment or a force focused on replacing large swaths of society.”

Zuckerberg has made his choice. He’s focusing Meta’s enormous resources on building this personal superintelligence future.

See also: Forget the Turing Test, AI’s real challenge is communication

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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Artificial Intelligence

Google’s Veo 3 AI video creation tools are now widely available

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Google has made its most powerful AI video creator, Veo 3, available for everyone to use on its Vertex AI platform. And for those who need to work quickly, a speedier version called Veo 3 Fast is also ready-to-go for quick creative work.

Ever had a brilliant idea for a video but found yourself held back by the cost, time, or technical skills needed to create it? This tool aims to offer a faster way to turn your text ideas into everything from short films to product demos.

70 million videos have been created since May, showing a huge global appetite for these AI video creation tools. Businesses are diving in as well, generating over 6 million videos since they got early access in June.

The real-world applications for Veo 3

So, what does this look like in the real world? From global design platforms to major advertising agencies, companies are already putting Veo 3 to work. Take design platform Canva, they are building Veo directly into their software to make video creation simple for their users.

Cameron Adams, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, said: “Enabling anyone to bring their ideas to life – especially their most creative ones – has been core to Canva’s mission ever since we set out to empower the world to design.

“By democratising access to a powerful technology like Google’s Veo 3 inside Canva AI, your big ideas can now be brought to life in the highest quality video and sound, all from within your existing Canva subscription. In true Canva fashion, we’ve built this with an intuitive interface and simple editing tools in place, all backed by Canva Shield.”

For creative agencies like BarkleyOKRP, the big wins are speed and quality. They claim to have been so impressed with the latest version that they went back and remade videos.

Julie Ray Barr, Senior Vice President Client Experience at BarkleyOKRP, commented: “The rapid advancements from Veo 2 to Veo 3 within such a short time frame on this project have been nothing short of remarkable.

“Our team undertook the task of re-creating numerous music videos initially produced with Veo 2 once Veo 3 was released, primarily due to the significantly improved synchronization between voice and mouth movements. The continuous daily progress we are witnessing is truly extraordinary.”

It’s even changing how global companies connect with local customers. The investing platform eToro used Veo 3 to create 15 different, fully AI-generated versions of a single advertisement, each customised to a specific country with its own native language.

Shay Chikotay, Head of Creative & Content at eToro, said: “With Veo 3, we produced 15 fully AI‑generated versions of our ad, each in the native language of its market, all while capturing real emotion at scale.

“Ironically, AI didn’t reduce humanity; it amplified it. Veo 3 lets us tell more stories, in more tongues, with more impact.”

Google gives creators a powerful AI video creation tool

Veo 3 and Veo 3 Fast are packed with features designed to give you the control to tell complete stories.

  • Create scenes with sound. The AI generates video and audio at the same time, so you can have characters that speak with accurate lip-syncing and sound effects that fit the scene.
  • High quality results. The models produce video in high-definition (1080p), making it good enough for professional marketing campaigns and demos.
  • Reach a global audience easily. Veo 3’s ability to generate dialogue natively makes it much simpler to produce a video once and then translate the dialogue for many different languages.
  • Bring still images to life. A new feature, coming in August, will let you take a single photo, add a text prompt, and watch as Veo animates it into an 8-second video clip.

Of course, with such powerful technology, safety is a key concern. Google has built Veo 3 for responsible enterprise use. Every video frame is embedded with an invisible digital watermark from SynthID to help combat misinformation. The service is also covered by Google’s indemnity for generative AI, giving businesses that extra layer of security.

See also: Google’s newest Gemini 2.5 model aims for ‘intelligence per dollar’

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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Artificial Intelligence

Forget the Turing Test, AI’s real challenge is communication

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While the development of increasingly powerful AI models grabs headlines, the big challenge is getting intelligent agents to communicate.

Right now, we have all these capable systems, but they’re all speaking different languages. It’s a digital Tower of Babel, and it’s holding back the true potential of what AI can achieve.

To move forward, we need a common tongue; a universal translator that will allow these different systems to connect and collaborate. Several contenders have stepped up to the plate, each with their own ideas about how to solve this communication puzzle.

Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is one of the big names in the ring. It attempts to create a secure and organised way for AI models to use external tools and data. MCP has become popular because it’s relatively simple and has the backing of a major AI player. However, it’s really designed for a single AI to use different tools, not for a team of AIs to work together.

And that’s where other protocols like the Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) and the Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A) come in.

ACP, an open-source project from IBM, is all about enabling AI agents to communicate as peers. It’s built on familiar web technologies that developers are already comfortable with, which makes it easy to adopt. It’s a flexible and powerful solution that allows for a more decentralised and collaborative approach to AI.

Google’s A2A protocol, meanwhile, takes a slightly different tack. It’s designed to work alongside MCP, rather than replace it. A2A is focused on how a team of AIs can work together on complex tasks, passing information and responsibilities back and forth. It uses a system of ‘Agent Cards,’ like digital business cards, to help AIs find and understand each other.

The real difference between these protocols is their vision for the future of how AI agents communicate. MCP is for a world where a single, powerful AI is at the centre, using a variety of tools to get things done. ACP and A2A are designed for distributed intelligence, where teams of specialised AIs work together to solve problems.

A universal language for AI would open the door to a whole new world of possibilities. Imagine a team of AIs working together to design a new product, with one agent handling the market research, another the design, and a third the manufacturing process. Or a network of medical AIs collaborating to analyse patient data and develop personalised treatment plans.

But we’re not there yet. The “protocol wars” are in full swing, and there’s a real risk that we could end up with even more fragmentation than we have now.

It’s likely that the future of how AI communicates won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution. We may see different protocols, each used for what it does best. One thing is for sure: figuring out how to get AIs to talk to each other is among the next great challenges in the field.

(Photo by Theodore Poncet)

See also: Anthropic deploys AI agents to audit models for safety

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Continue Reading

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