Where to start with AI

I talk to a lot of business owners who feel like they've missed the boat on AI. You haven't. Most people using it are still working it out as they go, and some days that includes me.

These six are short on purpose. Read one with your coffee, try the thing it suggests, and come back for the next one when you've got a minute.

What it is, and what it isn't

The tools everyone's talking about (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) are what's called large language models. You type something in and it writes something back. It's read an enormous amount of text, so it's very good at sounding like it knows what it's talking about.

That last bit matters. It's predicting what a good answer looks like, which is usually right and occasionally confidently wrong. I think of it as a very quick, very well-read new hire who's never set foot in your business. Great at a first draft, and you'd still check their work before it went to a customer.

Is it safe to put my stuff in?

Mostly, yes, if you change one setting and use a bit of common sense. Some of the free versions can use what you type to train future models unless you switch that off, and there's a whole guide on how further down the Guides page.

The common sense part is not pasting in anything you'd be upset to see in someone else's inbox, like bank logins, a staff member's medical stuff or a customer's card details. For everyday things like drafting a quote or tidying up an email, I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the rest

Straight up, for most small business jobs they're all good enough. ChatGPT is the one most people have heard of. Claude tends to write in a more natural way, which is why I use it for most of my writing. Gemini is handy if your business already runs on Google, because it sits inside Gmail and Docs.

Pick one and stick with it for a month. You'll learn a lot more from using one properly than from hopping between three.

Where it gets things wrong

It makes things up sometimes. The polite word for it is "hallucinating". It'll give you a statistic, a bit of law or a quote that sounds right and isn't, and it won't tell you it's guessing.

So anything with a number, a date, a name or a legal bit in it, check. It's also not great at maths in its head, and it won't know what happened last week unless it's searching the web. You're still the one who signs it off.

What it costs to run

You can do a surprising amount for free. The paid versions of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are each about US$20 a month, and mostly what you're paying for is more use before it cuts you off, plus the better models.

Use the free version on real work for a couple of weeks. If you keep hitting the limit, that's your answer, and if you don't, keep your money. The ones to watch are tools that bundle AI into something else and charge a lot more for it, so ask what they do that the US$20 one doesn't.

What it means for your staff

This is the one people worry about. Where I've landed, for small businesses anyway, is that it takes the jobs nobody wanted (the admin and the endless chasing) so the people you've got can spend more time on the work that actually needs them.

Your team will still have feelings about it, and some of them are probably already using it on their phones. There's a guide on having that conversation too.