OpenAI democratizes AI for small businesses with new tools, but Substack's AI detection feature signals rising trust concerns. Ashley and Daniel break down what these developments mean for creators, SMBs, and the future of platform policies in under 10 minutes.
OpenAI democratizes AI for small businesses with new tools, but Substack's AI detection feature signals rising trust concerns. Ashley and Daniel break down what these developments mean for creators, SMBs, and the future of platform policies in under 10 minutes.
Links:
OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT for Small Businesses, bundling AI training, workflow templates, and integrations with Shopify, Intuit, and Slack. (Tech Radar)
Substack’s new tool tells you who’s been writing their newsletters with AI (TechCrunch)
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Ashley Coffey (00:00.088)
Hello and welcome back to AI news that you should know about for July twenty-eighth. I'm your host, Ashley Coffey
Daniel Hill (00:06.857)
And I'm Daniel Hill. There's a lot of AI news out there. We cut through the fluff to give you the most important stories as quickly as possible. Today on the show, we'll be talking about OpenAI, unveiling ChatGPT for small businesses, which includes bundling AI training, workflow templates, and integration with other apps. And we'll also be talking about Substack's new tool that tells you who's been writing their newsletters with AI.
We'll be covering all of that on our show today, but first here's a quick word from our sponsors.
Ashley Coffey (00:41.57)
Welcome back. Let's dive in. All right. OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT for small businesses, bundling AI training, workflow templates, and integrations with Shopify, Intuit, Slack, and more. This is coming from Tech Radar. We will link it in the show notes. That way you can read it if you would like. But the scheme is primarily an education process and will focus on training in-person academies and practical guides. OpenAI will also launch a dedicated
agents and partnerships to support small business workflows too. They recently launched GPT Work Platform with features and software vendors pushing its latest tool through the program, claiming that GPT work and codex are now set to have combined 10 million users.
And after OpenAI realized that in late 2022, after they had their significant public interest when they launched ChatGPT, they spent the following years improving their models. And as we've seen, things have changed. No longer the golden child in the room. But I did notice that this seems to be a response to what Anthropic did, where they launched a program specifically to help nonprofits.
through education, academies, workflows, and connecting them with specialized consultants in their areas, all for free. So it seems like this is probably in response, OpenAI is response to anthropic doing that, but for small businesses, what are your thoughts, Daniel?
Daniel Hill (02:12.168)
I actually like this. I think this is a smart play. If you're a small business, likely you have Google Workspace or Microsoft Office 365, and maybe you are using their AI tools. Why would you necessarily use OpenAI's tools? Well, if they train you, if they make it easier for you to do that, if they explain it better in a way that you can do more things because you understand what the tool is capable of, that actually is a win for open AI in the long term because.
They're convincing small businesses to invest in their tools instead. So I actually think this is smart. One other thing I noticed in this article is that it links to OpenAI's small business AI jams, which are local business owner events where they have training, hands-on instruction, and support from other fellow business owners who are using OpenAI's tools. I think that's also really smart because training is expensive, it's hard to understand what's
possible, what's capable with some of these tools. They're changing constantly. That's why we have this show. So giving small business owners those tools to stay up to date and get versed in their products, I think is also very smart.
Ashley Coffey (03:20.354)
It is. It's a good business decision because who doesn't want to grow their business, right? but also I think it's interesting because I use all the tools and I've noticed that open AI, because I started using it so early on, and because I've refined it so well to know the different hats that I wear, that it's it's optimized for like my work, even though I also have Gemini within my Google workspace. But transferring all of that over into anthropic and getting it to understand the context and relevance.
I have very little confidence in because it's going from a competitor to another. So I like that they're focusing on small businesses because they need all the support they can get right now. Myself being one of them, small business owners, high five if you're listening. But this is interesting because some of the support will offer webinars demonstrating how to use ChatGPT work. It'll offer prompt engineering guidance and other interactive guides in the in-person events that Daniel mentioned will be held across the US through OpenAI Academy.
So if you haven't learned about those resources yet, definitely dive in. This seems like a really great thing that's coming your way.
Daniel Hill (04:23.348)
We'll link to all of those in the show notes.
Ashley Coffey (04:26.264)
All right, we're gonna take a quick break when we but when we come back, we'll be talking about Substack's new tool. It tells you who's been writing their newsletters with AI. Ooh, I can't wait for this one.
Daniel Hill (04:40.018)
Welcome back. Continuing with our stories, Substack's new tool tells you who's been writing their newsletters with AI. By way of background, when there's a writing task that you have to do, a lot of people these days just use AI to write it. And I think about the worlds that we live in now where you are expected to have a podcast, a YouTube channel, create social media posts every day, and have an email newsletter. It's tough not to use AI to take at least one or all of those tasks off your plate, especially if it's writing an email newsletter.
Some email newsletters companies are even leaning into having AI generate those email newsletters for their subscribers. By way of news, Substack has launched this feature, which now shows you which of your favorite newsletters are being written by using AI. They announced an integration with an AI writing detection software called Pangram that allows users to scan posts, comments, and replies on the Substack app to see an estimate.
Of how much of the content was written by a human versus how much was written by AI. This article makes the point that in the short term, this move might be bad for Substack's business because it could expose many of the newsletters on Substack that aren't written by people. It could potentially damage the reputation of Substack if, for instance, 95% of its newsletters were generated by AI. But from a long-term perspective, this helps to keep Substack free from.
AI slop newsletters. It helps build trust from the readers that what they're reading was written by a human, or at least, if not written by a human, to understand when it was written by an AI. This feature will be available for Substack's app for any post, note, reply, or comment above 100 characters. Substack will also allow writers to include an optional AI note where creators can disclose their use of AI.
Which is something I actually also think is a great idea. Ashley, what is your take on this?
Ashley Coffey (06:40.194)
Well, I don't like Substack, but I do like this move because I bet you that over half of the newsletters that come out of Substack are AI generated. I always like to remind people that bot traffic has outpaced human traffic on the internet. And most of what we're reading is slop. So, like the whole point of a newsletter is to stay up to date and to not have to read through a ton of stuff. So if AI is generating a ton of stuff, then you've lost the whole point.
So that's interesting. I do get your point about the reputation part, but also it's a good reminder that this is why you should have your own newsletter that's not tied to a company in which you don't know if they're gonna be here today or tomorrow and their content moderation policies are questionable. so it's interesting to see this happening. I'm assuming that other like MailChimp probably is gonna do the same. But I feel like with those third-party tools, that's a lot of transcription and energy to be used.
So we'll see if this is welcomed or resisted.
Daniel Hill (07:40.733)
interested to hear and I don't to necessarily go into this right now, but your reasoning for not loving Substack, I have my reasons. I'm not sure that they are the same reasons. I feel like Substack has given a lot of writers an opportunity to earn revenue, but also they've had some situations where they've been okay with certain people writing certain kinds of content on the platform that I personally would not be okay with. And
feel quite justified in not liking them because of that reasoning.
Ashley Coffey (08:12.492)
Exactly. That's my non-negotiable. I don't like a platform that allows Nazi hate speech. Just we'll just put it out there. Because that's not I don't I don't align with that. And I don't like a company that allows that to happen. That's very dangerous actually. So that's where I draw the line. And that's a good reminder that we have free will to choose the tools that we use and don't use. And it's a good reminder to be conscious of these conversations with the other tools that you use as well.
Daniel Hill (08:36.732)
Absolutely. And if you find out that a tool that you like, that you use, that you support does something you don't agree with, you have the right to go to a different tool instead because of that reasoning.
Ashley Coffey (08:46.86)
Yeah, I left X whenever Elon Musk took over because I didn't agree with firing the entire accessibility team. and that was my choice. And if you go to my Twitter profile, my last tweet was twenty twenty one. so good good point there is that you get to choose. So thank you for mentioning that, Daniel.
Daniel Hill (09:04.894)
That's exactly it. All right, that's it for our AI news that you should know about this week. You can find links to everything we've talked about in the show notes. And if you can, please take a moment, find us on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. The link to do that is in the show notes, but you can also search for AI news you should know about on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. It doesn't cost you anything. It only takes a minute and it really helps us to grow the show.
Ashley Coffey (09:29.422)
We're not joking. When we see a new review come in, we do a little happy dance. So know that it means a lot to us when we see something come through. But even more importantly, we love hearing your feedback. And if there's anything you want us to discuss on the show, please do reach out to us. We're very accessible. You can find me on Instagram at Ashley RCoffee89, where you can sign up for my free monthly AI newsletter that delivers in your inbox each month.
Daniel Hill (09:53.471)
Thank you for listening and come back next time for more AI news you should know about.