The problem is that most people don’t use it correctly.

They type in a one-line prompt, take whatever generic response they get and call it a day. They churn out AI-generated content and wonder why it doesn’t rank. SEO isn’t just about pushing words onto a page; it’s about trust, expertise and context. And AI doesn’t inherently have those things. But it can help you build them.

At its core, SEO is laborious: Keyword research, content creation, technical audits and competitor analysis. AI won’t do it all for you, but it can automate the repetitive, speed up the tedious and help you get more done for less. The key is knowing where and how to use it.

Before we go through some of the most effective – and creative – ways that you can use AI for your business’ website, let’s go through some common mistakes people make.

Mistake #1: Using one-line prompts and ending up with generic, low-value content

People assume AI can read minds. They give it vague prompts like: “Write a blog about the best SEO strategies.”

AI then pulls together a mash-up of generic tips from random blogs used to train its LLM (Large Language Model). Nothing that Google – or your audience – hasn’t seen a thousand times.

A better approach? Treat AI like an intern – give it clear instructions, context and a specific goal.

Try: “Write a 1500-word guide on SEO strategies for e-commerce websites. Cover technical SEO, product page optimisation and link-building. Keep it conversational, with real-world examples. Avoid generic advice like ‘use keywords’ and focus on advanced tactics.”

Now, AI has clear guidelines to follow. It knows the audience (e-commerce site owners), the tone (conversational) and the structure (detailed strategies with examples).

Don’t expect AI to do all the work while you sit back. After all, you wouldn’t tell a junior employee to write a report and expect perfection. You’d guide them and add your expertise. AI is no different.

Wrong ways to use AI:

• Ask for a full blog post and copy-paste whatever it gives.
• Expect AI to understand nuance without context.
• Use AI-generated content without fact-checking or editing.

Right ways to use AI:

• Use AI to brainstorm ideas and refine rough drafts.
• Guide AI with detailed prompts and clear instructions.
• Edit, fact-check and add human insight.

Mistake #2: Publishing AI content without trust signals

Think of AI like an eager student: It’s great at summarising existing information but terrible at establishing authority. A search engine isn’t just looking for content, it’s looking for content that deserves to rank.

What doesn’t work:

• AI-generated content with no real expertise.
• Articles that repeat what’s already ranking.
• Blog posts with no human perspective or unique insights.

What works:

• Adding real examples (case studies, first-hand experience or industry data).
• Using authoritative sources to back up claims.
• Injecting a human voice.

The above ‘What works’ examples are all ‘trust signals’, which will tell search engines that your content should rank higher.

Let’s say you’re writing about technical SEO mistakes:

A generic text would look like this: “One common mistake is not optimising site speed. A slow website can negatively impact rankings and user experience.”

A stronger, more trustworthy version would look like this: “A slow website doesn’t just frustrate users; it can kill conversions. In 2023, Google reported that if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, 53 per cent of mobile users will abandon it. One of our clients, an e-commerce store, saw a 27 per cent increase in sales just by reducing load time from 4.5 seconds to 2.8 seconds.”

See the difference? The second example contains real data and real impact. That’s what makes content credible.

How to use AI the right way for SEO

Most people just use AI for content generation, but that’s like buying a Swiss Army knife just to open bottles. AI can streamline keyword research, content strategy, technical SEO and competitor analysis, saving you time, effort and money.

The key? Use AI strategically: Feed it the right inputs, refine outputs and leverage its capabilities beyond content creation.

Let’s break down some ways you can use AI to make sure your business ranks.

Conducting keyword research

Many people approach keyword research like they’re shopping for groceries – grabbing items off the shelf without thinking about the full meal. AI changes that. Instead of looking at individual keywords in silos, AI helps you see the bigger picture – related terms, supporting topics and the entire search-intent funnel.

Most people blindly trust keyword research tools like Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner (GKP). But here’s the catch: Ahrefs relies on historical data and averages, meaning it doesn’t always detect emerging trends. GKP excludes many valuable keywords and often pushes advertisers toward higher CPC terms.

AI can process vast amounts of data and help uncover hidden opportunities. Say you’re selling smartphones. Instead of just targeting ‘best smartphones’, AI can:

• Identify related searches: ‘Best camera phone under $1000’.
• Surface supporting products: Screen protectors, fast chargers, wireless earbuds.
• Spot seasonal trends: ‘Best phone for Christmas 2025’.

Why does it matter? Because Google doesn’t look at a keyword in isolation – it looks at context. The better your content fits into a larger ecosystem of related queries, the stronger your SEO strategy.

Make transcripts of audio or video content

Do you have any audio or visual content on your website? Don’t just optimise titles and descriptions; turn your audio and video into transcripts for easy content. 

Use AI to transcribe and summarise videos for blog content. You can also extract key insights for FAQs, snippets or even social-media posts, which then link back to the main content on your website.

For example, a 20-minute podcast on digital marketing can be repurposed into:

• A 1500-word blog post.
• A Twitter thread of key takeaways.
• A LinkedIn post with insights from the discussion.

Use AI for schema markup

Help search engines better understand your website content by using schema markup. This step is often very intimidating for non-technical business owners. Even something as simple as JSON-LD can look like hieroglyphics. But structured data boosts visibility in search results with rich snippets, FAQs and star ratings, so you should be using it if you want to rank highly.

AI can generate schema for you, explain errors in schema markup, and fix or validate structure data before you implement it.

AI can generate:

• FAQ Schema
• Product Schema
• Event Schema

… but always validate it in Google’s Rich Results Test.

Check out competitors’ SEO strategies

If you want to see how your top competitors are optimising for search, there’s no need to manually check all of their blogs, titles and metadata. 

AI can visit your competitors’ site and scrape the top 10 ranking pages for a given keyword. It can analyse meta titles and descriptions, heading structures (H1, H2, H3s), common themes and formatting tricks. You can then use what you find to edit your own content. For example, if three of your top competitors use ‘2025’ in their blog titles, guess what? You should, too.

What AI can do:

• Analyse the top-10 ranking pages for keywords.
• Identify common themes in metadata, content length (word count), and keyword usage.
• Identify other content styles, like product comparison tables.

Say you want to scan a competitor’s page to see if they’re using structured data. Instead of digging through their source code, you can:

• Create a JavaScript bookmarklet that extracts schema markup.
• Click it while on their page.
• AI instantly summarises what schema they’re using and how it affects rankings.
• It saves you hours of manual checking and gives you instant insights into competitor SEO strategies.

Identify duplicate content issues

Google considers duplicate content as not having any value, small changes can make a big difference. AI can compare your content to your competitors’ and highlight similarities. Then, you can ask it to rewrite your content to be unique, keyword-rich and engaging.

Fix Google Search Console (GSC) errors

It can be hard to understand error messages if you’re not tech savvy. AI can act as an SEO translator for non-tech users by breaking down tech speak into actionable fixes in plain English. 

For example:

• Error: “Page indexed, but blocked by robots.txt”
• AI explanation: “Google tried to index your page but was blocked. Check robots.txt and remove disallow rules.”

Automate technical SEO Tasks

There are lots of small, repetitive, and/or technical SEO-related tasks that AI can help with. For instance, AI can:

• Create robots.txt
• Create sitemaps
• Create hreflang tags
• Check title tags
• Scan for broken links
• Monitor redirects

Handle Google warnings

Ever had Google flag your site with a site safety warning or a CrUX (Chrome User Experience) issue? It’s like getting a cryptic message from a mechanic: “Your car has an issue, but we’re not going to tell you exactly what’s wrong.”

Instead of seeing a Google warning and blindly tweaking code without understanding the root cause, or spending hours Googling solutions, hoping for a fix, use an AI-enhanced approach.

AI-enhanced approach:

1. Upload your source code to AI and ask it to diagnose issues.
2. Get an easy-to-understand explanation of what’s broken and how to fix it.

Using AI to reduce friction between funnel stages

SEO is not about just rankings, it’s also about moving users through the sales funnel. Most businesses lose potential customers because of friction between Tofu (Top of Funnel), Mofu (Middle of Funnel) and Bofu (Bottom of Funnel).

This friction can occur when you expect users to convert immediately after reading a blog without considering what might be stopping them from taking action.

AI can map out user journeys and identify gaps in content. It can suggest micro-conversions to move users smoothly from top of funnel to middle of funnel to bottom of funnel.

For example, say you have an e-commerce store selling running shoes. A blog post on ‘Best running shoes for flat feet’ is getting traffic, but people aren’t buying.

AI can help by:

• Analysing drop-off points (where users leave without purchasing).
• Suggesting content upgrades (like an interactive shoe selector).
• Optimising calls to action (for example, changing ‘Buy now’ to ‘Find your perfect fit’).

The key takeaway? AI isn’t just for content – use it for keyword discovery, technical fixes, automation, competitor research and more. The smarter you use AI, the further you’ll outpace those still doing everything manually.

• This article first appeared in issue 48 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine.

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The social media company’s apps have 3.43 billion unique active users globally and its AI-driven tools help create personalised ad variations, image backgrounds and automated adjustments to video ads, making it lucrative for advertisers.

A brand could provide a product image and a budget, and Meta’s AI would generate the ad, including image, video and text, and then determine user targeting on Instagram and Facebook with budget suggestions, the report said.

Meta also plans to let advertisers personalise ads using AI, so that users see different versions of the same ad in real time, based on factors such as geolocation, according to the report.

The owner of Facebook and Instagram, whose majority of revenue comes from ad sales, referred to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public remarks about AI-driven ads, when contacted by Reuters.

Zuckerberg last week stressed that advertisers needed AI products that delivered “measurable results at scale” in the not-so-distant future. He added that the company aimed to build an AI one-stop shop where businesses can set goals, allocate budgets and let the platform handle the logistics.

Social media firms such as Snap, Pinterest and Reddit are increasingly investing in AI and machine learning tools to attract advertisers in an intensely competitive ad market.

Meta’s shares were up nearly 1 per cent in morning trading, while stocks of ad giant Interpublic Group and Omnicom Group fell 1.9 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively.

Shares of France’s Publicis Groupe SA slid 3.8 per cent. US-listed shares of WPP, the owner of agencies GroupM, Ogilvy and VM, were down 2.2 per cent.

Technology firms such as Google and OpenAI have also launched video and image-generation AI tools, but their widespread adoption in advertising remains in doubt as marketers weigh concerns over brand safety, creative control and quality.

• Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo, of Reuters.

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But the new Shop with AI feature is already causing a lot of buzz among experts and businesses – and many think it’s part of a new age of automated shopping.

New innovations by OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google all essentially give shoppers their own personal assistant. Through conversation-style interactions, they learn – and store – a customer’s context, body shape, history, age, location and much more, and use this data to make hyper-individualised product decisions.

Not only that, but Google’s new shopping agents can purchase items for a customer. If a shopper wants to buy an item while it’s on sale, gone are the days when they would have to check in periodically – Google agents can now notify them when a discount is available. It can also repurchase products and services that a customer buys frequently, like toilet paper or lash appointments.

Retail expert Kelly Slessor thinks the adoption of these technologies by big players like Google signals the beginning of a new era.

“Agentic automation is going to disrupt everything in the next 24 months,” she told ISB. “This ability to automate processes, to remove the pain we go through whenever we’re looking for something, is going to change not only [the retail] industry, but every industry.”

How does agentic AI – like Google’s Shop with AI – affect buyer behaviour?

People are already outsourcing their research and decision making to AI – so it stands to reason that the same will happen with their purchases.

Marketer Matthew Forzan is already seeing a paradigm shift in the way customers are searching; they want to have a natural conversation with a search tool, not input keywords by themselves. 

“Now, customers are saying ‘I have a budget of x, I like x brand, what do you have for me?” he told ISB.

And AI isn’t just acting like a personal shopper; it’s also doing the research for your customers. Both Forzan and Slessor think this could push customers towards price-based purchasing decisions.

“If you ask your AI agent to buy you headphones and you don’t care where they’re from then a lot of the time price, delivery and bundles will inform it – I definitely think there’s risk there,” said Forzan. “We know there’s cohorts of people who definitely want to support small businesses, but if you’re looking at a user who’s never purchased before, that could be more the case.”

Slessor is concerned that AI Agents could make shopping a price game, removing emotional connection or brand loyalty from the equation.

“I can be on Instagram, see a pair of Converse, stick in to my [AI] agent and say, ‘When you find those same Converse on sale at this price, let me know, and I’ll buy them,’” she explained. “There’s no emotional connection, no urgency – I’m just literally waiting on price.”

Slessor added that negative reviews – and returns – could also be more common if customers can outsource these to AI. Customers who might previously not have been bothered to return an item, request a refund, or leave a negative review might now be more empowered to do so.

Will Google’s Shop with AI hurt or help small businesses?

It depends on who you ask – and on the business involved.

If customers aren’t shopping around themselves – that is, browsing online websites or search results – it could certainly stop them from discovering alternative options. Let’s say you sell a common item like toilet paper: Plenty of toilet paper brands offer comfort or sustainability, but unless you occupy a unique corner of the market (Forzan points to the purpose-led Who Gives a Crap as an example) agentic AI could reduce your product to a price point.

Slessor and Forzan both think that businesses with unique products – or unique angles – might have a better chance of discovery under these conditions.

On the other hand, because this is an emerging technology, there is a chance for small-business owners to jump on AI optimisation now before its widespread adoption. 

“There is, I think, a lower barrier to entry now,” said Forzan. “Because there is more opportunity to show up for these terms. It’s so conversational, so there’s an opportunity for small businesses to create content that competitors potentially don’t have…”

Small-business owner Gabi Saper is already taking action to optimise for AI. We previously spoke to Saper in an article about AI shopping overviews, where she mentioned setting up her website to target conversational queries. Now, she’s doubling down on her efforts to become an online leader in her product niche.

“We’re creating solid content, answering questions, and becoming that reliable source,” she told ISB. “…Whenever we make a video on a topic, we also make a blog on that same topic, and then we make an email, and then we put it on Facebook and YouTube.”

What can you do next?

Make sure your SEO is up to scratch: Good SEO will work on AI search tools as well as traditional search tools.

Use conversational language: AI tools are trying to interact in a humanlike way, said Slessor, and will prioritise content written in a conversational style.

Answer questions pre-emptively: For instance, use headings on your website pages that work as answers to common questions. Follow these up with a short, simple clarifying paragraph below. Then, don’t just answer the most common questions, but think about what someone would ask next. This pairing of pre-emptive questioning, clarifying paragraphs and supplementary questions is netting great results for Forzan’s small-business clients.

Don’t just rely on search as a funnel in: Diversify across platforms – the more you’re across, the more trust signals the agent can pick up on.

Get to know your customer avatars: AI agents will know everything about your customers, so you should too. Saper said that every quarter, she uploads customer reviews to build and adjust her three customer avatars. Every marketing move then speaks to at least one of these avatars. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment: Saper thinks that agentic AI will be like all the big tech shifts that came before it – kind to experimenters and first-adopters, less so to those who drag their feet.

“People have to be really open to leaning in, giving it a go, and not being afraid,” she said. “The most exciting thing is that we’re all learning at the exact same pace, this is new to all of us – and the ones that are going to succeed are the ones that aren’t afraid to step in and learn.”

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By 2025, AI is expected to add $315 billion to the Australian economy. But if you’re running a small business without an AI policy, that boom could come with a bust.

If you’ve used Canva’s Magic Write, Xero’s auto-categorise, or Grammarly’s tone checker, you’ve already invited AI into the workplace. No sci-fi takeover, no robots in the storeroom – just clever algorithms baked into the tools you use every day. But while AI can be a productivity game-changer, using it without clear guardrails could land your business in hot water. And that’s why every Aussie small business needs an AI policy.

Not next year. Not when you “have time”. Now.

Think of an AI policy like the digital equivalent of locking up the shop at night. It’s not about red tape, it’s about protecting your business from avoidable mess.

Without a basic plan in place, small businesses risk:

• Accidentally breaching customer privacy laws
• Publishing inaccurate or misleading content
• Making decisions based on biased or incomplete AI outputs

The case for commonsense guardrails

Policies often get a bad rap in small business circles – seen as something for the big end of town. But this isn’t about adding paperwork. It’s about reducing risk and giving your team (and yourself) clarity. A basic AI policy should include:

• What tools your team are allowed to use
• When and how to fact-check AI outputs
• What types of content AI should never be used for (e.g. legal, financial or medical advice)
• Who is responsible for reviewing and approving AI-generated content

Imagine the following: A regional NSW tourism operator uses AI to write a blog post promoting local drives. The tool recommended a route via a road that had been closed for months. The post is published unchecked, leading to lost bookings and frustrated customers. A simple policy could’ve prompted a quick double-check and saved the PR headache.

Big business is already on it

Westpac, SEEK, and Woolworths are just a few of the major Aussie brands already training their teams and rolling out AI usage guidelines. Why? Because they know the risks of getting it wrong – and the competitive edge of getting it right. Global rules are also tightening. In 2025, the European Union began enforcing the AI Act, which bans high-risk AI applications and introduces strict transparency requirements. Aussie businesses exporting, partnering overseas, or simply wanting to stay ahead will need to be aware of these emerging global standards.

Writing a policy is easier than you think

The good news? You don’t need to be a tech whiz or have a compliance department. A one-page AI policy can be enough to guide your team and avoid most of the common pitfalls.

At a minimum, your policy should:

• List approved tools
• Set boundaries around what’s appropriate for AI use
• Outline a simple “review before publish” process
• Nominate someone as the go-to person for questions

This isn’t about fear – it’s about future proofing your business, and its reputation. For a great starting point, check the Australian Government’s AI Ethics Principles. You wouldn’t let a new staff member open or close your business without training. You wouldn’t let someone write a contract without a review. So why let AI make decisions, write your content, or interact with customers without a second look?

AI can be an incredible business ally. But like any powerful tool, it needs some commonsense rules around it. An AI policy helps you and your team stay productive, compliant, and in control – not playing catch-up when something goes wrong. It’s not about being techy. It’s about being smart.

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SMEs that will be chosen to participate in this eight-week online program will have free access to research and development experts, industry mentors, and self-paced learning modules to help them turn their early-stage ideas into an actionable research plan and funding roadmap. 

Michelle Armistead, program manager for Innovate to Grow, said since its launch in 2020, the program has supported more than 650 SMEs nationwide.

“Australian SMEs are at the frontier of our digital and AI opportunity,” Armistead said “Whether you’re training large-language models, deploying robotics on a factory floor or hardening cyber-defences, the pace of innovation is relentless. Our role is to connect founders with the science, data and people they need to turn good ideas into investable research and development projects.”

Innovate to Grow: Digital Technologies and Artificial Intelligence is open to SMEs working in the following subsectors:  

• Artificial intelligence, including:
  • Computer vision  
  • Machine learning  
  • ChatGPT/large language models  
  • Natural language processing  
• Digital manufacturing  
• Quantum computing
• Cybersecurity  
• Robotics and autonomous systems.  

Applications close on June 1.

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The research has found that AI Literacy leads among the 15 fast-growing skills as more companies are looking for professionals with the ability to understand and utilise tools harnessing AI technology for business purposes.

Related to AI Literacy, proficiency in Large Language Models (LLM) is also a highly sought after skill. With generative AI taking hold in the workplace, the report noted that there is an increased demand for professionals (especially software engineers and data scientists) who can build and/or work with LLMs and other generative AI systems.

Demand for people with statistical data analysis skills are also on the rise as businesses need people to interpret and analyse statistical data in an environment increasingly relying on data-driven decisions.

Many businesses are also keen on identifying and nurturing new, potential customers for their growth and sustainability, which explains and increased demand for lead generation skills, especially among those who are tasked with business development and marketing operations.

And wiith retail and hospitality industries continuing to evolve, businesses in these sectors are seeking people (especially customer-facing staff) with proficiency in modern point of sales (POS) systems for efficient operations and improved customer experiences.

Also included in the inaugural LinkedIn Skills on the Rise report are the following hard and soft skills:

• Communication
• Adaptability
• Strategic thinking
• Customer service management
• Market analysis
• Regulatory compliance
• Conflict resolution
• Budget management

According to LinkedIn, it ranked these skills based on three pillars: skill acquisition (the rate at which members are adding new skills to their profile); hiring success (the share of a skill possessed by members who have been hired in the past year; and emerging demand (the increased presence of a given skill in paid job postings). Growth rates for all metrics are measured by comparing LinkedIn data from January 1 to December 31, 2024 to the same period in the previous year (January 1 to December 31, 2023).

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Survey respondents had a variety of concerns about adopting AI. These included data privacy, reputational impact, risk of law breaking, loss of intellectual property, and impact on work quality and productivity. 

But are these fears grounded in reality? The problem with AI is that products and services that use it are growing much faster than relevant education or legislation. In this article, we look at the facts relating to some common fears that small-business owners have about AI.

To help us, we brought in AI coach Leanne Shelton of HumanEdge AI. As an AI coach, Leanne has seen plenty of AI fear from small-business owners in her time. When we sat down with her, she confessed that her first encounter with AI was also fearful. She ran a marketing business based around copywriting when ChatGPT rose to popularity in late 2022. She began to worry that the free software, which could generate flawless text almost instantly, would make her business redundant.

“I thought, ‘Why are people going to invest in me when there is this free tool?’ ” she says. “There’s this new shiny thing that could replace me – so I did have that moment of freak out, going, ‘What does this actually mean?’ ”

What Leanne felt at this point – fear of being replaced by technology – is recognisable to generations of humans. It’s also one of the most fundamental fears that business owners have about AI, and AI-fear is what we will address first. 

Fear vs reality

Fear: AI will replace my products and services

Facts: It might.

Technological change will always affect the way we work. Leanne is an example of someone who had to pivot her entire career because of technological advancements. 

Countless inventions have disrupted industries throughout history. But it’s also a fact that, time and again, workers have found ways to adapt and thrive. Millions have done it before, and many more will do so in the future.

This has often meant upskilling or adapting existing talents to stay relevant. Though Leanne’s job fell victim to ChatGPT, she’s an example of this adaptation in action. In late 2022, after the launch of ChatGPT, Leanne bought a few books on the software to teach herself how it worked. One, a $57 book that contained 1000 chat prompts, made her realise how she could repurpose her copywriting skills in a new way.

“Businesses were just pumping stuff out [using ChatGPT] without the proper guidance or editing,” she recounts. “I thought, ‘If I take out the marketing point of view, with my experience, they’re going to be damaging their brand.’ I thought, ‘I can teach people how to make this content sound good at the output stage.’ ”

After studying up on Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Leanne started teaching other business owners how to leverage the technology without churning out texts that sound generic and robotic. Her copywriting business was shunted to the side as demand for her AI-training services grew, and she now makes a living solely from her AI coaching.

Moreover, her new business plays into the element that AI can never replace: the human touch. Her coaching service, HumanEdge AI, combines her AI expertise with her deep understanding of human behaviour as a marketer, which gives her business its true value.

“During COVID, we realised how much we yearn for human connections,” Leanne recounts. “We still want to speak to humans. I listened to a talk by [Australian consumer experience expert] Amanda Stevens last week…she’s like, people are going to want more, deeper relationship marketing, like, really going above and beyond.”

We are seeing this play out in current marketing trends. Later in this issue of ISB, we speak to marketer Maddi Ragno about the rise of “founder-generated content”, which is content that features a business’ founder front and centre. As the ubiquity of AI grows, so too will our desire to see real human lives and experiences.

Fear: AI can present security risks because it involves sharing data with third parties

Facts: Sharing data with AI does present security risks, and most experts recommend that you don’t do it. Trust-management platform Vanta recommended anonymising customer data before inputting it into AI, a practice that only a quarter of Australian businesses carry out.

Leanne advises her clients to avoid inputting sensitive information, whether it is their own or others’. She also recommends looking for ways to opt out of training your AI tool of choice. If you use the paid version of ChatGPT, for instance, you can create custom GPTs and opt out of your input being used to train models. There is also a “temporary chat” feature in ChatGPT, Leanne says, which will disappear a chat after you’ve used it, meaning the conversation won’t be used for AI training.

If you are after more guidance on how to use AI responsibly, the Government-backed ARM Hub AI Adopt Centre provides practical guidance specifically targeted at SMEs. Also, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has released new guidance to assist organisations and developers in navigating privacy obligations while using AI. Finally, the federal government has developed a Voluntary AI Safety Standard aimed at business. It’s also working on turning this into a set of mandatory AI guardrails, but it’s unknown whether this legislation will apply to small businesses.

Fear: If I use AI, I risk losing my IP, or plagiarising someone else’s

Facts: Yes, there are IP risks when using AI.

“Never trust what [the LLM] has been inbuilt with,” Leanne says. 

If you’re using an LLM to write content, she recommends giving it a list of sources to take from and asking it to reference the information it has used. Much of the content on these platforms has been unethically sourced, so if you have ethical qualms – or want to avoid potential litigation in the future – it’s safest to avoid taking content straight from LLMs as much as possible.

Leanne describes how she prompts ChatGPT to do this: “I say: ‘I’d like you to write this article for me, please ONLY’ – I use capital letters for ‘only’ – ‘Use these resources to write the article’. You can even go a step further and say, ‘Please provide a reference or advice when you have sourced from an article, then it’ll pop up’’ And you can always say at the end as well, ‘Just confirm, did you only use those sources?’ ”

Leanne is in contact with an IP lawyer who has moved into the AI space recently. She was told that IP comes down to “how much human goes into it”. If you use ChatGPT as an outline, or for inspiration, you are very unlikely to have plagiarised someone else’s work.

As for your own IP, the same goes for this as with your sensitive data. If you’re worried, don’t give it to your LLM – or opt out of training the AI, as described above.

Fear: I will have to overhaul my existing systems to introduce AI

Facts: “No, you don’t have to, at all,” Leanne says. “I say to all my students and audience members – just start small.”

“Starting small” could mean training up an LLM, like ChatGPT, on your brand’s products and services, and teaching it your brand voice, so it can write copy for you. It could mean using it as a brainstorming tool so you’re not staring at a blank page. It could also create email sequences or templates. There are many ways to leverage AI without overhauling your systems or forking out thousands of dollars on fancy AI-powered products. 

Fear: AI will worsen the quality of my work

Facts: This can definitely become true. But if you train your AI and use it well, it shouldn’t, Leanne says. 

“We’ve all seen that robotic, generic content flooding our inboxes and social media

feeds,” she says. “However, with proper training, AI-generated content should be unrecognisable. The crummy content we’re currently seeing is the result of ChatGPT (or similar) being misused by unintentionally misguided or misinformed individuals.”

Before you do anything with AI, she says, it’s key to spend time training your tool to thoroughly understand your business’ voice, values, and customers. Leanne recommends treating your AI tool of choice like a new junior assistant or intern who has just joined your team. 

“You wouldn’t start barking demands or handing over essential parts of your business to them on day one, would you? No, you’d start with an onboarding,” she pointed out.

Onboarding, in this case, means teaching your LLM everything there is to know about your business, from your products and services to your customer base. You can also feed it articles or posts you’ve written and ask it to learn your brand voice.

There are millions of tweaks you can make to your AI tool so that its output is just the way you want it. For instance, Leanne instructs her ChatGPT not to use certain words.

“We’re using only UK English, and none of those stupid AI words as well,” she says. “I told it to please never use ‘unlock’, ‘unleash’, ‘in today’s digital age’, ‘delve’, or anything like that.”

One last thing: When Leanne demonstrated some of the prompts she uses, I noticed that she often says ‘please’ to her LLM. The AI coach explains that there’s some evidence that AI responds better to polite requests. A study by Waseda University and the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project found that polite prompts can produce better responses.

“It’s also for when the robots take over,” Leanne jokes.

The robot takeover is a fear we won’t be exploring today; but hopefully, if we all learn to train our GPTs well, it won’t happen any time soon.

This article first appeared in issue 47 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine

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Figures from GoDaddy’s Venture Forward research initiative, which analyses over 300,000 Australian small businesses with 0-9 employees, show that 44 per cent of these small businesses are run by women, and 57 per cent of these female-led businesses were started in the last five years.

Among the country’s women entrepreneurs, the report noted that 27 per cent of women serve as the primary income earner for their household and 37 per cent have shared that their small business turns over more than $5,000 in an average month.

What does running a small business do for women?

Over half (56 per cent) of the female founders surveyed said that becoming a small-business owner has enhanced their quality of life, offering a sense of fulfilment and empowerment with the opportunity to pursue their passion.

And while only 27 per cent of female founders have expressed optimism on the state of the Australian economy, they are found to be more bullish about their own business’ prospects. In fact, 69 per cent are optimistic about their companies’ growth and success over the next six months, and 35 per cent plan to hire new staff in the next year.

Women are adopting AI for business tasks

Australia’s female founders are also noted to be at the forefront of the AI revolution, with 48 per cent agreeing that the technology will help them compete with larger businesses in the next year. In fact, many Aussie female business owners are using AI for tasks such as writing content (75 per cent), summarising information or text (62 per cent), and generating recommendations or strategies for their marketing or operations (45 per cent).

Suzanne Mitchell, GoDaddy Australia market lead, commented: “The theme for International Women’s Day 2025 is Accelerate Action. By shining a light on the successes of Australia’s female founders, that’s exactly what we hope to achieve. These women are contributing to local economies, creating jobs and supporting families.”

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A new Government-funded report by UTS (“In their words: perspectives and experiences of SMEs using AI”) has some of the answers.

It highlighted that small businesses are overwhelmingly using generative forms of AI, such as ChatGPT. The report’s small-business respondents also see AI as a free-for-all, unmoderated space. Small-business owners surveyed had largely not developed any benchmarks for responsible AI use, nor were they aware of AI government standards already developed by the Government.

“[I think Australian SME workers would value clear] rules and guidance, like checklists, on what they need to check to ensure they’re complying with relevant regulations,” said one respondent, who was an employee of a small business in the professional, scientific, or technical services sector.

Small-business owners are concerned about AI’s data risks

Many SMEs remain hesitant to go all in on AI due to concerns about data risks, including potential privacy issues related to the sharing of customer and private data with AI platforms.

“We just need to be mindful of not putting… confidential information into Chat GPT,” said one business leader surveyed.

The report also highlighted that many SMEs feel limited in their awareness and familiarity with AI, and would value greater education, training and support.

“Many of our staff, especially beyond the technical units, are tech laggards,” said Muhammad, a small-business leader in the information media and telecommunications sector. “AI will be forced upon them at some point. A lack of desire to understand benefits and risks means that at some point someone is going to use it badly, possibly leading to data breaches.”

Adam Berry, Deputy Director, UTS Human Technology Institute commented, “It is clear that Australian small and medium businesses are beginning to enthusiastically adopt generative AI, but in the process, they are confronting the real practical complexities of that adoption. They are seeing poor quality outputs, worry about sharing data, and are navigating a difficult and fast-moving space. 

Berry added, “We can do more to provide simple, practical, useful support to those businesses so that they realise the promise of AI, without becoming exposed to its risks.”

The UTS Human Technology Institute, who authored the report, is currently working on the Safe Artificial intelligence Adoption Model (SAAM) project. SAAM aims to build simple online tools and practical resources to help Australian SMEs capitalise on the benefits of AI while minimising exposure to risks.

What are SMEs really using AI for?

Two thirds of the small-business leaders surveyed used AI primarily for content generation, such as social media, ad copy, blogs, formal reports, emails, and more. Some also referred to activities related to optimisation and productivity.

The report noted that none explicitly discussed commonly cited AI use cases like predictive analytics, sales forecasting, supply chain optimisation, recommender systems, and robotics.

When asked about AI risks, nearly half of the responses from SME leaders identified concerns around AI accuracy and identified the need for oversight and review practices. One business leader said she was worried about the risk of potential brand damage.

“[There is risk of] potential brand damage from spelling and grammar that doesn’t sound like us,” said Mai, who works in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector.

“[I worry about the] accuracy of the information provided – [it is not yet] 100 per cent, so have to double-check,” said Dwayne, who works in the same sector as Mai.

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I know our small team wasn’t the only one who had mixed reactions to the rollout of Gemini in January across our Google Workplace.

The AI pop-up boxes were met with excitement by some team members, while others, like myself, had some trepidation. There are some benefits we are currently exploring, such as the ability to transcribe a meeting, with all attendees receiving a meeting summary at the end – a tedious task that is now streamlined and there is no, “Do you remember what name so and so said?”.

It also provides transparency to those unable to join a meeting to be able to catch up in their own time. Other features, such as summarising a long email thread or rephrasing content in Google Docs, are yet to be explored – but some prompts seem pointless and more time-consuming than manually checking yourself.

As a business owner, it is natural that I just should seek out tools that streamline processes and minimise admin and I am not one to shy away from this. But as a creative, I can’t help but feel AI is slowly killing skills we have refined for decades.

I have loved writing for as long as I can remember. When I was young, I would write short stories via pen and paper by torchlight, long after the lights went out. Writing allows me to make sense of my thoughts and I, like so many other writers, get a sense of enjoyment from creating something from scratch.

If you’ve ever experienced ‘flow’, the ability to get into a mental state of operation where outside distractions disappear and you almost feel a sense of ecstasy, you’ll get what I’m talking about. Not only that, but writing is the ability to connect with readers and convey certain emotions. It’s about storytelling. And so far, it seems the AI equivalent simply cannot connect with an audience in the same way.

Sure, the sentences ChatGPT or its equivalent provide are well-written and grammatically correct. But there is a certain emotion missing – which isn’t surprising considering it isn’t human-generated. Some may feel the PR profession is on its way out, seeing as you can get a press release written within a matter of seconds. But I can promise you that what you receive will not have the same emotion and personality as it would if a talented writer wrote it for you instead. Plus, relationships and understanding the news cycle all come into play.

Of course, there are benefits to AI which I can’t shy away from. I’ve had friends use AI to streamline different aspects of their lives. From meal prepping (I’ve tried this myself and admit the recipes are somewhat bland – pro-AI people will blame the way I briefed the platform) to writing business plans; if you weren’t a writer before you can now sound incredibly well-versed in almost any topic. You can even understand your macros without ever studying nutrition. On a surface level, you can appear much more skilled than you actually are.

As part of our hiring process, we would always ask shortlisted candidates to provide a body of written work. This was a fail-safe method in the early days: you could either write well or it wasn’t your strong suit. Following the introduction of ChatGPT, this became a lot harder – all applicants were now great writers and it was difficult to dissect who was using their brains or who was inputting a brief into an AI generator.

So, we switched to more strategic-based tasks, asking candidates to respond to a creative brief. I remember reviewing one of my application and being so impressed – the girl really seemed to know what she was talking about!. My excitement soon turned to disappointment when our operations manager did a reverse brief and received the same submission via ChatGPT. A follow-up interview confirmed our assumptions, with the candidate unable to provide any further thoughts than what was already provided.

Research shows that different parts of your brain are active at different stages of the writing process. It’s said that a neuroscientist could probably figure out whether you’ve been writing or not, just by looking at your brain.

This isn’t true just for creative pursuits, but for any tasks that require thinking or problem-solving. The ability to get better at these tasks requires practice. After all, the brain is a very active organ. Just like other muscles in our body, the brain required repeated exercise to to build strength.

So while AI is great at streamlining many facets of our lives, is it worth losing the skills that make us so unique as humans?

The phrase “fake it until you make it” has never been more prevalent. And, the more we utilise these machines, the more we are fine-tuning them. On January 30, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is briefing U.S. officials on the release of PhD-level AI capable of performing complex human tasks, which could revolutionise fields like health, science and education.

As someone who grew up alongside the internet, it was always thought that future generations’ biggest threat was social media. I often think back to my childhood and the excitement of starting a career and honing my skills. To sitting in lecture theatres and using critical thinking to analyse what I’ve been taught.

I often think about the world my daughter will grow up in and what her creative pursuits might be; whether she’ll experience the fulfilment of creating something from scratch or get the opportunity to experience flow in her creative endeavours. So, I asked ChatGPT whether my daughter would be using AI in 2050.

Naturally, it informed me that AI tools will likely assist her in creating art, music, writing, or even video content – acting as a ‘collaborator’ – and that AI-driven healthcare tools could monitor her health in real-time to predict potential issues. But its closing statement says it all, “The impact of AI will likely go far beyond just tools – AI could be embedded in most aspects of life, evolving in a way that makes it a natural part of her world.”

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