AI is everywhere at the moment - if you haven't heard of it you must have been living under a rock. As a florist, you can use AI to enhance your operations, improve customer experiences and boost your sales. Below we've explored how AI can be a game-changer for florists.
What is AI?
AI stands for artificial intelligence. There’s a lot of AI already in the world and no doubt you'll have come across some form of AI in your everyday life, perhaps without even realising! From the algorithms which power your Netflix recommendations to image identification on smartphone cameras like Google Lens (Android) and Visual Lookup (iPhone) - it's everywhere!
The AI we’re seeing popularised and talked about the most are AI Chatbots. These fall into two main categories:
Text Based or Natural Language Processing - AI systems that you type requests in everyday language into (rather than computer commands), which process that information and return results in natural language.
Image Creation or Generative Models - which can create new images based on a text prompt, again, using natural language.
Both of these types of AI use ‘prompts’ to generate the content.
What is a Prompt?
A prompt is a piece of text that is given to an AI system to generate a response. Prompts can be used to ask questions, give instructions, or provide information. The AI will then use the prompt to generate a response that is relevant and informative. Prompts are important as changing the wording of your request will change the results that you get. The more specific you are, often the better results you will get.
Which AI is the best to use?
There are a few AI companies out there with different specialities - some are free, and some have paid-for versions. We’re covering a couple of the big ones we’ve tried out here to give you an overview.
Text-based (Natural Language Processing)
Chat GPT – probably the most famous artificial intelligence at the moment from OpenAI. ChatGPT is good at having natural-sounding conversations with users on a variety of topics; it can explain difficult topics in simpler terms, generate creative text from poems to emails and it learns and remembers previous information you’ve told it in conversation.
Bard – Google’s experimental AI which can generate text, proofread, translate languages, summarise information, answer questions by accessing information through Google Search and even write jokes (they’re very bad though).
Image Creation (Generative Models)
DALL-E 2 – from the same people behind ChatGPT. This image generation AI can create realistic and creative images from text descriptions. From our experience it’s not always accurate with the prompt you put in and in order to get what you’re after you do have to be quite specific. The drawback with the free version of this tool is that you’re only allowed 10 requests per month, though you can pay to have more. On the free version, because it’s popular, it’s also sometimes hard to get access to as so many people are accessing it at the same time.
Midjourney - known for its ability to generate very high-quality images. This looks to be one to look out for in the future. The drawback of this at the moment is that it’s still being tested; lots of people have been trailing using it even though it's not been officially launched to the public yet.
How can AI help you in floristry ?
We’ve thought of a few examples for prompts you could give AI to help you in your florist business.
1. Ask it to write a social media post for you
Coming up with new, original captions for social media posts which sell you and your business can be tricky, particularly when you're already so busy. Our Social media content plan for florists with examples blog has some great tips but if you're still struggling AI might be able to help.
2. Ask it to generate hashtags for your social media posts
Hashtags are a great way to get your content found by other people. The best way to use hashtags effectively is to make sure you’re using relevant, popular, trending hashtags and to not use exactly the same ones every time. We've covered Hashtag best practices on our Social media tips for florists article.
But coming up with new hashtags with every social post can be hard. So why not get a little help from AI?
3. If you don’t have an image available, ask it to generate one for you
Taking and using your own photos is the best option, but sometimes you just don’t have the right photo.
The prompt we used for DALL-E 2 to create these images was: “a photograph of a flower bouquet which includes the flowers: daucus, nigella, stocks, limonium, ranunculus, sweet william, alongside foliage: choisya, camellia and mint”.
Whilst it's not quite accurate as we're missing some of the flowers, it takes a lot less time than creating and photographing a bouquet from scratch - not bad, right?
4. Ask it to generate a reply to an email for you
Short on time or don't know what to say? Get AI to help start off an email. We'd recommend you always check what it comes out with and add in more relevant personalised information that the AI doesn't know, but this beats staring at a blank screen unsure where to start!
5. Ask it to proofread for you
Got an email that needs to be perfect? Or if you’re generating documentation or policies to share with staff, it’s always good to have a second pair of eyes to check it reads right. Both Chat GPT and Bard will come back to you with suggestions.
Top tip! One thing to note is the spelling reverts to American English rather than UK English, so watch out for that!
Usage Rights
Once you’ve generated something, you’ll be wanting to go ahead and use it, right? Well good news, at the time of writing this article (July 2024), for the systems mentioned, everything that is generated from your prompts is free to use for personal use and for commercial use but be sure you check the specific rights stated on the AI you use as this may change.
Drawbacks?
As with any new technology, there's lots still being figured out and there will be a number of pros and cons for using AI that we haven’t covered.
There are currently lots of questions around the ethics of AIs and around copyright of any text or imagery that it creates. There's also a question over if AI will in future lead to unemployment as it replaces the jobs of some humans. Some other specific drawbacks you should consider are:
1. The information is not guaranteed to be correct
Each AI software will have its own disclaimer which will tell you this, but it's important to remember that the information it returns cannot be guaranteed to be 100% accurate. They may sometimes generate inaccurate or misleading information because they do not actually ‘know’ information. They search for answers on the internet or from the data they are trained on. If the information is wrong, or from unreliable or a biased source then it will still return it as an answer, so beware of this.
2. Using AI to generate wording can sometimes be stale
AI is great at forming sentences that are grammatically correct, but it doesn’t have the creativity, or the ability to think outside the box that humans do because it is, after all, a computer programme. Without the human element, the writing it generates can sometimes come across as emotionless and the emotion in language is what people relate and connect to. If what you’re writing is a sales tool and needs to connect to your audience, It may be an idea to get started with an AI prompt, but then edit it yourself and inject some personality into it.
3. They are only as good as the prompt you give them
An AI system does not know the background of what you’re doing, so asking it to write a social media post for your floristry business, it doesn’t know about any local knowledge or happenings that could resonate with your local audience. You may specialise in only British-grown flowers, but if you don’t tell it this in the prompt then it won’t know that this is a huge, unique selling point of your business.
4. Security
If you use Bard or ChatGPT, the information is sometimes reviewed by individuals at the company, or used by the AI to learn further and may be used as a response to someone else's request, so make sure you don't share any private or sensitive information with it.
In Summary
AI is a rapidly evolving field, and as it changes, it is likely to have a profound impact on our lives and be used in many different areas. There are so many ways you can get AI to help you that we can’t even begin to list out the possibilities here and we’re sure there’s plenty we haven’t even thought of. AI has the potential to make our lives easier, more efficient, and more productive. Some of this article was even written with the help of AI.
It's important to remember that AI is just a tool and doesn’t replace what humans can do and our own creativity. Try it out and make use of it, but always check what it comes out with before you use it.
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Special thanks to the Floristry Trade Club for letting us use their imagery to create this article.
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