Sandu Media > Articles

Can AI Harm Your Business?

AI is a bit of a buzz word at the moment, with all the major players from Google to Facebook and Apple racing to provide the latest version of their Large Language Model systems and incorporate "AI" into all of their products are services. On the surface this seems great, especially from a consumer perspective, but there are several caveats to take into consideration before asking Gemini or ChatGPT to do all your work for you.

Social Media Content

Social media requires a lot of content, and through regular posts and advertising this can be a great way to engage with customers. It's very tempting then to have AI do all the work. Unfortunately there are a couple of pitfalls to this that many companies fall into. Firstly, image generation is a great part of many LLMs, but the problem is that the images all share a certain style and look obviously generated. This subtracts heavily from your unique brand and makes all businesses look alike. The models learn from multiple images across the internet, so the art style they use ends up being a combination of everything that looks soulless and indistinct. That's not to say you can't or shouldn't use AI image generation, but use it carefully and sparingly if you need to.

Another aspect that social media themselves are pushing quite heavily is the ability to create content text. Similarly to the images they create, AI systems use an amalgamation of different writing examples, so they have their own style of writing. This is probably a bit less obvious than the images, but it's still very recognisable. Again, you can certainly use these features, but use them sparingly. Using your own voice and writing style will actually make you stand out against the multiple companies using boring, generated text.

Blatant AI images are usually a yellow-brown hue with a cartoony visual style and often have visual flaws such as objects facing the wrong way or impossible physics. The writing style is often harder to detect, but an overuse of emojis and lists tends to give the game away. While neither of these are a problem it can be quite jarring once you notice it and can look unprofessional if misused. At best it just looks bland and not very unique.

Software Development

Very recently, people have been using AI models to create code and scripts for software and websites. Often this can work, but it's usually unoptimised, or at best unlogical. If the user has no prior understanding of coding or what the code is doing it can actually be dangerous in some cases. Due to the nature of AI learning algorithms, attackers have even been able to inject malicious code into AI results. If taken for gospel, this can be seriously damaging to website or app that the code has be used for. "Vibe coding" is a recent term used for software created entirely using AI, and it's proven to be unreliable at best.

Search Results

With Google Search now implementing AI, you are often shown an AI summary before the actual search results. This seems like a great, time-saving feature, but often these summaries are completely off the mark and often downright incorrect. The information, as with all AI systems are scraped for sources across the internet, which themselves may not be correct as these sources are ultimately created by humans with the ability to say anything. The problem with AI models is that, while usually correct, they will state with certainty that the results they provide are correct and factual even if they are not.

When using AI summary features on search results be aware that the statements shown can we wildly incorrect. They are simple search results packaged together to seem believable, when the sources they are acquired from may be incorrect to begin with.

In Conclusion

AI models are not perfect, and certainly not infallible. They are useful tools, and you should think of them as such. Rather than imagining them as a sentient robot that you would send in to paint your bathroom, you should imagine them as a paint sprayer that you can use to speed up the job. You would still need to use traditional methods to paint around tricky areas. Use AI to enhance your work, not do your work.

When it comes to the image of your business, it's important not to come across as lazy or incompetent, so there's still merit to going down the proper avenue for things like your website, branding, and content. In particular, your website is something that should be clean, professional and stand out.

If you need help with images, content, or coding services we can provide a solution that works as it should and fits your brand. Contact us today!