AI and the small business newsletter: what it can and cannot do

An AI writing tool is a very fast drafter that has no idea what happened in your shop this week. That one fact decides what it can safely do for a newsletter and what it can't.

How the tool works inside

Most newsletter helpers sit on top of a large language model, a program trained on a very large body of writing. Wikipedia says they can typically produce text, shorten it, translate it and pick it apart.¹

The core trick is simple. GPT-style models, a common type of LLM, are pre-trained to predict the next word.¹ So when you ask for a newsletter intro, the tool isn't looking up your business. It picks words that tend to follow other words in writing like yours.

Fluent wording is what the method is built for, and it can still produce false statements.²

When it gets things wrong

The word for this is hallucination. Wikipedia defines it as an AI reply that states something false or misleading as if it were true.²

Fake citations are one example it gives.²

In a newsletter, the risky bits are the ones a tool can't know. Opening hours. Prices. The new hire's name. Whether the sale ends Friday or Sunday. Leave these out of your request and the tool may supply something that merely sounds right.

Where a tool earns its place

Picture a fast typist who has never walked into your shop. These are jobs that suit it:

• Suggesting topics when you're stuck, as in planning topics.
• Turning rough notes into a first pass, as in drafting an issue.
• Offering several subject line options, covered under subject lines.
• Shortening sentences you've already written, or shifting their tone.
• Pointing out repeated words and muddled phrasing.

In every case the facts come from you. The tool only handles wording.

Jobs that stay with a person

Some parts can't be passed on. The business answers for the newsletter, whatever wrote the words.

Truth of claims. Australia's consumer regulator says a business must be able to prove any claim it advertises.³ A tool that wrote the claim won't be the one asked to prove it. The routine for that is in checking facts, offers and dates.

Who you're allowed to email. The Australian spam regulator says a business needs consent before it sends marketing email.⁴ Other countries have their own rules, and the tool doesn't know which apply to your list. Links to the official regulators sit on the sending rules page.

What goes in. Whatever you paste is sent to another company's servers. Customer details need special care, and they have their own page on what to withhold from the tool.

Your voice. A tool can copy a tone. Only you can hear when a line isn't yours, and editing the draft in your own voice is covered separately.

Splitting the work

Keep the thinking that needs your knowledge of the business: what's new, what's true, what's on offer, who it's for. Hand it over as plain notes. Let the tool do a first pass at the wording. Then read every line as though a stranger wrote it, because in a sense one did.

Any fact in the draft that you didn't supply is unverified. Check it against your own records, or cut it.