Speaker 1: Welcome to AI assembled the top AI news for small business.
Speaker 1: I'm Chris daily and each week I bring you the
Speaker 1: most important AI developments that can transform your business. Let's
Speaker 1: dive into this week's top stories.
Speaker 2: Open ai made what may end up being the most
Speaker 2: consequential small business move of the week, and it has
Speaker 2: almost nothing to do with chatbots. On June third, open
Speaker 2: ai announced Codex for every role, every tool, every workflow.
Speaker 2: Until now, Codex was an AI coding tool aimed at developers.
Speaker 2: The new release blows that boundary up. Codex is now
Speaker 2: positioned as an AI agent for product managers writing and
Speaker 2: testing product specs, for lawyers drafting and reviewing contracts, for
Speaker 2: data analysts writing and executing queries, and for operations teams
Speaker 2: automating repetitive cross system tasks. In plain English, open ai
Speaker 2: is taking a tool originally built to help engineers write
Speaker 2: code and pointing it at every job inside a small
Speaker 2: business that involves repeatable workflow. For a small business owner
Speaker 2: who has been wondering whether to hire that next coordinator,
Speaker 2: that next bookkeeper, or that next contract reviewer, this is
Speaker 2: the kind of release that should make you pause before
Speaker 2: you post the job ad The practical advice this week,
Speaker 2: pick one workflow in your business that takes more than
Speaker 2: an hour, repeats more than once a week, and crosses
Speaker 2: two or more software tools. That is the workflow Codex
Speaker 2: was just rebuilt to attack. Test it on that single
Speaker 2: workflow before you scale anything. The businesses that win the
Speaker 2: next twelve months will not be the ones using the
Speaker 2: most AI tools. They will be the ones who replace
Speaker 2: their three most expense of manual processes. First across the Atlantic,
Speaker 2: London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced a twelve million pound government
Speaker 2: investment to help London's small businesses adopt AI. The announcement
Speaker 2: came at London Tech Week and is a three year
Speaker 2: program four million pounds per year, funded through London and Partners,
Speaker 2: the Mayor's Growth Agency. The plan offers AI readiness assessments,
Speaker 2: expert mentoring, workshops and tailored adoption guidance directly to small
Speaker 2: and mid sized firms. Why this matters even if you
Speaker 2: are not in London. The UK government's own data shows
Speaker 2: that fewer than one in six UK small businesses currently
Speaker 2: use AI tools sixteen percent, even though nearly two thirds
Speaker 2: say AI will be critical to their competitiveness within five
Speaker 2: years Cohn's program is the largest single city publicans investment
Speaker 2: in small business AI adoption announced anywhere in the world
Speaker 2: this year, and other major cities are watching. New York, Toronto, Sydney,
Speaker 2: and Singapore have all floated similar ideas. For an American
Speaker 2: or Canadian small business owner, the takeaway is to start
Speaker 2: watching your own local economic development office. The money is
Speaker 2: starting to move. AI readiness grants, vouchers for advisory and
Speaker 2: subsidized training are quietly showing up in city and state
Speaker 2: budgets right now. Call your local small business development center
Speaker 2: this month and ask one question, are there AI adoption
Speaker 2: grants or programs available to a business of my size
Speaker 2: and sector? The answer is changing fast. And one more
Speaker 2: story from the people side of the ledger. Mark Cuban
Speaker 2: took to X on June second to argue directly to
Speaker 2: college graduates and job seekers that small businesses are desperate
Speaker 2: for AI teens, and that job seekers should start their
Speaker 2: search there, not at big tech. Cuban's argument is pointed
Speaker 2: small businesses create roughly sixty percent of new jobs in
Speaker 2: the US every year, only about fourteen percent of all
Speaker 2: businesses have actually embedded AI across their operations and most
Speaker 2: small ones do not have a dedicated AI budget, not
Speaker 2: because they don't want one, but because they don't have
Speaker 2: anyone in house who knows where to start. Cuban pushed
Speaker 2: back hard on the idea that AI is reducing small
Speaker 2: business headcount. He said, they are not using AI to
Speaker 2: cut jobs. They are using it to do things they
Speaker 2: didn't have time to do before. That distinction matters for
Speaker 2: small business owners listening. The implication is that your next
Speaker 2: great hire may not be the most experienced person you
Speaker 2: can afford. It may be the youngest, cheapest person on
Speaker 2: the market who is fluent in AI tools and willing
Speaker 2: to learn your business. That higher pays for itself the
Speaker 2: moment they automate one weekly task you used to dread.
Speaker 2: Look at recent grads, look at career switchers, and screen
Speaker 2: for AI fluency the same way you screen for spreadsheets.
Speaker 2: It is now table stakes.
Speaker 3: Now to a really specific data point that landed this
Speaker 3: week into its twenty twenty six AI Impact Report, which
Speaker 3: we covered broadly last week, has a deeper finding that
Speaker 3: deserves its own conversation because it goes to the heart
Speaker 3: of where small business AI dollars are actually being spent.
Speaker 3: Forty six percent of all small businesses now use AI
Speaker 3: specifically for marketing. That is roughly one in two, and
Speaker 3: it is colliding with one of the oldest cost barriers
Speaker 3: in small business. A traditional full branding package logo, visual identity,
Speaker 3: brand guide, marketing assets runs anywhere from twenty thousand to
Speaker 3: one one hundred thousand dollars at a mid tier agency.
Speaker 3: A custom business website on top of that runs another
Speaker 3: eight thousand to forty thousand. For most of the thirty
Speaker 3: six million small businesses in the US that has always
Speaker 3: been out of reach, AI is now compressing that production
Speaker 3: phase from months to days and from tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of dollars to almost nothing. But and this is the
Speaker 3: important part, the people who run AI powered design platforms
Speaker 3: are themselves warning that AI gets you only about eighty
Speaker 3: percent of the way. The final twenty percent, what your
Speaker 3: brand stands for, who it is talking to, and what
Speaker 3: feeling it needs to leave is still a human decision.
Speaker 3: The risk if you skip that twenty percent AI generated
Speaker 3: assets drift, fragment and quietly destroy brand and consistency over time.
Speaker 3: The practical move this week, before you generate a single
Speaker 3: new logo or landing page with AI write a one
Speaker 3: page brand brief, who is the customer, what promise are
Speaker 3: you making? What feeling should your brand leave? Then let
Speaker 3: the AI run and judge every output against that one page.
Speaker 3: That is how a small business gets a six figure
Speaker 3: looking brand for free, without ending up looking like everybody
Speaker 3: else who also used the same AI. Story two in
Speaker 3: this block, and a quietly important one for service businesses.
Speaker 3: On June third, Alternative Payments and Ledgerway announced a strategic
Speaker 3: partnership that brings AI powered accounts receivable automation to more
Speaker 3: than five thousand small businesses across North America. Ledgerway is
Speaker 3: a modern tax accounting and advisory firm with roots going
Speaker 3: back fifty years, serving small businesses across Georgia, Florida, Texas,
Speaker 3: and California. Alternative Payments is an AI driven business to
Speaker 3: business payments platform. Through the partnership, all of Ledgerway's small
Speaker 3: business clients get access to AI workflow automation for invoicing,
Speaker 3: secure online payment portals, automated cash reconciliation, real time payment tracking,
Speaker 3: and direct integration into accounting and ERP systems. Why this
Speaker 3: matters beyond just these five thousand businesses. This is the model.
Speaker 3: Small businesses don't usually buy AI software directly. They get
Speaker 3: it bundled through the accountant, the bookkeeper, the trade association
Speaker 3: or the franchise. Watch your own accounting firm or your
Speaker 3: industry association. In the next ninety days, the odds that
Speaker 3: they announce a similar partnership are now very high if
Speaker 3: yours doesn't ask them why, Because here is what the
Speaker 3: AI is actually fixing. Small businesses across the country spend
Speaker 3: an average of thirty hours a month chasing unpaid invoices manually,
Speaker 3: that number drops by more than half once AI handles
Speaker 3: the reminders, the reconciliation and the payment options. For a
Speaker 3: service business with one or two people in the office,
Speaker 3: that is the difference between hiring an extra person and
Speaker 3: not and quickly the broader theme this gives us. A
Speaker 3: company called Utilisoft also announced this month an expansion of
Speaker 3: AI development services specifically for franchisees and small businesses, which
Speaker 3: is another version of the same story AI capabilities being
Speaker 3: delivered through trusted, industry specific channels rather than sold directly
Speaker 3: to overworked small business owners. The takeaway across all of
Speaker 3: this in twenty twenty six, small businesses are not adopting
Speaker 3: AI by reading product pages and trying a free trial.
Speaker 3: They are adopting it by upgrading the platforms they already
Speaker 3: trust their accountants, portal, their franchise system, their payment processor,
Speaker 3: their customer relationship system. The buying pattern has shifted from
Speaker 3: evaluate the AI tool to accept the AI feature inside
Speaker 3: the tool I already pay for. For a small business owner,
Speaker 3: that means three things this quarter. One audit which platforms
Speaker 3: you already pay for and ask each one what AI
Speaker 3: capabilities they have added in the last six months. Two,
Speaker 3: pick the two or three you use daily and turn
Speaker 3: those AI features on. Three stop trying to buy AI
Speaker 3: as a separate line item. The platform you already use
Speaker 3: has almost certainly added it. A second Open AI story
Speaker 3: this week, and this one is aimed directly at the
Speaker 3: small business worry that has slowed AI adoption more than
Speaker 3: any other. On June second, OpenAI rolled out something called
Speaker 3: chat GPT lockdown mode. Lockdown mode lets a small business
Speaker 3: owner or team admin lockdown chat GPT's risky capabilities, live
Speaker 3: web browsing, deep research mode, agent mode, file downloads, and
Speaker 3: certain web derived image features. When lockdown mode is on,
Speaker 3: chat GPT cannot reach out to the Internet during a conversation,
Speaker 3: cannot pull files in or out, and cannot run autonomous
Speaker 3: agent loops. The reason this matters for small business it
Speaker 3: removes the single most common objection. A small business that
Speaker 3: handles client data, health information, financial records, or anything regulated
Speaker 3: has been told for two years by their lawyer or
Speaker 3: compliance officer that chat GPT is too risky to bring
Speaker 3: inside the company. Lockdown mode is OpenAI's direct answer to
Speaker 3: that lawyer. If you have been told no on chat
Speaker 3: GPT inside your business because of data risk, this week
Speaker 3: is the right week to reopen that conversation. There is
Speaker 3: also a related story that broadens the picture. On June second,
Speaker 3: open AI's frontier models and codex became available on Amazon
Speaker 3: Web Services, and Xai separately launched a feature called Connectors
Speaker 3: inside GROC, which links the AI directly into SharePoint, Outlook, OneDrive,
Speaker 3: Google Workspase, Notion, GitHub, and Linear Translation. The wall between
Speaker 3: general purpose AI chatbots and your actual business data is
Speaker 3: coming down on every major platform. At the same time,
Speaker 3: for a small business owner, you no longer need to
Speaker 3: copy and paste your work into a chat window.
Speaker 2: The AI now reaches into your tools where the work
Speaker 2: already lives. That is, the unlock that turns AI from
Speaker 2: a curiosity into the operating layer of your business. So
Speaker 2: here's the bottom line on this week. The investment, the policy,
Speaker 2: the talent market, and the tooling are all moving in
Speaker 2: the same direction at the same time. Open ai is
Speaker 2: opening AI to every job, not just developers. The Mayor
Speaker 2: of London is putting twelve million pounds behind small business adoption.
Speaker 2: Mark Cuban is publicly telling new graduates to skip big
Speaker 2: tech and go work for small businesses with AI skills.
Speaker 2: Five thousand small businesses just got AI powered accounts receivable
Speaker 2: automation through their accountant overnight, and the security objection that
Speaker 2: lawyers have been hiding behind for two years just got patched.
Speaker 2: There is no weak left to wait and see. Here
Speaker 2: is your five step action plan for the next thirty days.
Speaker 2: One pick one workflow in your business that takes more
Speaker 2: than an hour, repeats weekly, and crosses two software tools.
Speaker 2: That is the workflow you test Codex or a similar
Speaker 2: agent on. First, stop trying to aiifi everything at once.
Speaker 2: Two Call your local small Business Development center, your Chamber
Speaker 2: of Commerce, or your state Economic Development and ask whether
Speaker 2: they have AI adoption grants, vouchers or subsidized training available.
Speaker 2: The money is starting to move, get on the list
Speaker 2: before it is announced publicly. Three write a one page
Speaker 2: brand brief before you generate another AI asset, customer promise feeling,
Speaker 2: run every AI output against it. That single page is
Speaker 2: the difference between a six figure looking brand and a
Speaker 2: generic one. Four Ask your accountant, your bookkeeper, your franchise system,
Speaker 2: and your payment processor a single question. What AI features
Speaker 2: have you added in the last six months. Turn on
Speaker 2: the ones you are already paying for. Stop buying duplicate
Speaker 2: AI tools you do not need. Five. If you have
Speaker 2: been holding back on chat, GPT or any frontier AI
Speaker 2: because of data risk, look at lockdown mode this week
Speaker 2: and reopen the conversation with your compliance lead. The objection
Speaker 2: that stopped you a year ago is no longer the
Speaker 2: same objection today. That's the brief.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's AI assembled the top AI
Speaker 1: news for small business. If you found this valuable, share
Speaker 1: it with a fellow business owner. If you want a
Speaker 1: hands on group that you can work with on your
Speaker 1: specific AI needs, consider joining Business Success Academy at Freshmediaworks
Speaker 1: dot com slash BSA until next week. Keep innovating and
Speaker 1: keep it real,