Throughout my career as a multi-decade entrepreneur, spanning various sectors such as marketing, finance, and technology, I have predominantly relied on bootstrapping to establish my companies, without the aid of artificial intelligence technologies. Although I valued the support of friends, my professional network, and mentors, I never had the advantage of utilizing tools like ChatGPT or other AI programs to assist me.
Looking back, I wish I had access to such AI resources! Today’s entrepreneurs are fortunate as they have numerous cutting-edge AI technologies at their disposal, many of which are available for free. Leveraging these technologies has allowed me to enhance my companies’ development and provide exceptional customer satisfaction.
According to a recent survey conducted by IBM, 35% of businesses are already implementing AI, and an even larger portion is actively exploring the potential of integrating AI technologies. To remain competitive in the future entrepreneurial landscape, embracing AI is becoming increasingly crucial.
In this article, I’ll share some of my favorite AI technologies, aside from ChatGPT, that can elevate your entrepreneurial projects to the next level.
1. Gen-2 by Runway
The AI technology that I particularly admire currently is Gen-2, developed by Runway Research. Rather than being a single technology, it constitutes an extensive collection of AI-powered tools capable of completely revolutionizing your creative endeavors. Here’s a brief glimpse of what Gen-2 can achieve for your business, instantly and with just a simple click of a button:
- Text-to-image generation
- Text-to-video generation
- Instant photo colorization
- Instant audio transcription into English
- Text-prompted image correction
The best use cases for Gen-2 are as follows:
- Creating lifelike or cartoon-style videos for marketing campaigns
- Creating social media-friendly images for social marketing posts
- Generating human-like text for written marketing projects
- Transcribing audio recordings of meetings or interviews into written text to save time
On a personal level, I find myself relying on Gen-2 almost on a daily basis. For marketers and creative professionals like me, it has become an essential and virtually indispensable tool.
2. Stable Diffusion and ControlNet
For mind-blowing images to enhance your marketing materials, social profiles, or banner ads, I highly recommend harnessing the magic of Stable Diffusion. In my view, this technology stands as one of the finest text-to-image AI services available on the internet, albeit with a steeper learning curve, particularly when using its add-on, ControlNet, which broadens its capabilities. Here are 3 ways to use Stable Diffusion AI to create amazing images
Personally, I rely on Stable Diffusion for generating incredibly lifelike images, as I believe it’s a superior choice compared to using stock images. From an SEO perspective, relying on stock images, especially common ones used in numerous other content pieces, can adversely impact your search engine rankings. Hence, I prefer utilizing Stable Diffusion to create completely original image content rather than resorting to stock image services.
3. Quilbot
Here’s a user-friendly Chrome extension that requires no prompt engineering skills. Quilbot is an exceptional paraphrasing tool capable of rephrasing any text with near-flawless accuracy in a matter of seconds.
However, it’s crucial to exercise ethical use of this tool and refrain from plagiarizing or stealing others’ ideas. Instead, Quilbot serves two legitimate purposes:
1. As an alternative to Grammarly, it performs spell checks and improves tone and grammar.
2. It serves as an SEO tool, refreshing or rephrasing old content to optimize search engine rankings.
4. Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO has been in existence for several years, pre-dating the ChatGPT-led consumer AI revolution that took place last year. Despite its long history, it is only now receiving the well-deserved recognition it merits. In essence, Surfer SEO serves as an optimization tool, ensuring that your on-page elements, such as text, metadata, titles, formatting, and images, are utilized to perfection to enhance your search engine performance.
This tool is reasonably priced, and since 2019, numerous knowledgeable SEO specialists have been utilizing it. Personally, I can vouch for the effectiveness of Surfer SEO, as I run each of my blog posts through its Content Editor before publishing. However, it’s essential to exercise caution, as Surfer SEO might occasionally “over-optimize” certain aspects. Hence, it’s advisable not to apply all of the tool’s recommendations to every blog post you create.
5. GraphMaker
Any written or social content becomes significantly more valuable when accompanied by charts, tables, and graphs that effectively visualize numerical data. The challenge lies in creating original and visually appealing graphs and charts, especially for those who are not well-versed in mathematics.
Thankfully, GraphMaker comes to the rescue, making it incredibly easy for me to swiftly create captivating graphs that add immense value for my readers. For instance, by inputting inflation rates over time alongside the U.S. exchange rate against the British Pound Sterling, I can generate a wonderful line chart illustrating how inflation affects the strength of the U.S. dollar.
While explaining a subject to your readers is valuable, presenting visual aids elevates the understanding even further. I highly recommend using this tool to visually demonstrate numerical phenomena to your audience, as it is a fantastic way to capture their attention.