As an academic researcher, I am used to research. I understand the fundamentals of gathering information, questioning assumptions and trying to separate useful evidence from noise. I have also taught business at university, so I have spent plenty of time discussing strategy, markets and entrepreneurship. But artificial intelligence AI, as we now casually call it has changed the practical side of starting a business in a way that I could hardly have imagined a few years ago.
For a startup or entrepreneur, AI can be an extraordinarily powerful tool. The first advantage is research. Modern AI platforms can help you explore an industry, understand competitors, investigate economic and political factors, compare products and suppliers, study consumer trends and examine the market surrounding a particular idea. What once might have involved days of searching through websites, reports and documents can now become a much more interactive process. You can ask a question, challenge the answer, dig deeper and then follow another avenue entirely. It is rather like having an enthusiastic research assistant who is available at three o'clock in the morning and never complains about the coffee.
The second advantage is visualisation. An idea inside your head is one thing; actually seeing it is something completely different. AI tools can generate concept images, packaging ideas, videos, advertisements, charts and visual presentations. For someone developing a product, this can be incredibly useful because you can experiment long before committing thousands of pounds to manufacturing. You can ask: what might this wrapper look like in burgundy rather than blue? How might this chocolate bar look on a shelf? What would a promotional photograph look like? Even graphs and business data can be presented in ways that are far more engaging than the traditional spreadsheet chart that appears designed primarily to send people to sleep.
Then there is a third area which is becoming increasingly powerful: AI can actually help build things. It can assist with software, costing tools, marketing systems, websites, apps, data analysis and many other business functions. It can even help with music and creative production. Some of these uses require more advanced skills and careful supervision, but the direction is obvious. AI is moving from being something that simply answers questions to something entrepreneurs can use as part of their working toolkit.
Lady Jasper has benefited enormously from this. AI has helped me visualise the brand, explore logo and packaging concepts, create product imagery and videos, investigate the chocolate industry, examine suppliers and costs and turn ideas into something that can actually be seen and discussed. That ability to move rapidly from a thought to a visual concept has been particularly valuable. When building a new brand with limited resources, being able to experiment before spending money is a considerable advantage.
But there is a very important warning attached to all of this: AI does not replace human expertise.
AI can sound extremely confident even when it is wrong, incomplete or missing an important practical detail. I experienced this myself when thinking about developing a reduced-sugar chocolate bar. I asked an AI system to suggest an appropriate sugar level. The recommendation sounded perfectly reasonable. There was only one problem: when I discussed it with my chocolate consultant, I discovered that reducing the sugar to that level would have created serious problems. Sugar does more than make chocolate sweet; it contributes to the structure, texture and overall eating experience. The proposed bar could have ended up bitter, poorly textured and quite possibly a very expensive lesson in why chocolatiers exist.
That experience summed up the relationship I believe businesses should have with AI. Use it to research. Use it to explore. Use it to calculate, visualise, question and experiment. But then speak to the accountant, the lawyer, the manufacturer, the designer, the chocolatier or whoever has genuine professional expertise in the area. AI can make an entrepreneur considerably better informed, but it should not make us believe that expertise has suddenly become unnecessary.
There should certainly be no embarrassment about entrepreneurs using AI. In many areas of business it is rapidly becoming normal. A small company simply cannot employ a researcher, designer, analyst, software developer, market researcher and creative studio every time the founder has an idea. AI gives smaller businesses access to capabilities that were once largely available to much bigger organisations. Used intelligently, that can help level the playing field.
Perhaps the biggest benefit, however, is that AI encourages experimentation. You can ask What if? and actually see an answer. You can test an idea, reject it, change it and try again without every experiment carrying a large financial cost. For a startup, where money is limited but ideas are plentiful, that is enormously valuable.
Of course, there are limits. AI doesn't taste chocolate. It doesn't meet customers. It doesn't build relationships with suppliers. It doesn't possess the judgement that comes from spending twenty years working in an industry. And it certainly doesn't take responsibility when something goes wrong. Those things remain very human.
But it can help us imagine what might be possible.
And in my case, it has done something particularly unusual. I began with an idea for an African-inspired chocolate brand and a fictional character called Lady Jasper. Through AI, I have been able to give that character a face, a personality and a world around her.
So perhaps the strangest part of this entire entrepreneurial journey is that, thanks to AI, Lady Jasper is now sitting next to me.