Artificial Intelligence services are helping Waikato businesses stay competitive while improving efficiency.

“My advice to all businesses, large and small, is to not wait,” said Houston Technology Group founder Alan Chew.

“The benefits of AI are immense and within reach. If you don’t act, your competitors will.”

Chew has run free generative AI workshops for not-for-profit groups in the region.

“The jaw dropping moments at such workshops are a wonder to watch.”

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Chew directed Houston Technology Group, based in Hamilton, to fast-track the roll out of AI solutions to medical clients.

The company built IntelliMed EzyScan to scan clinical records, summarise them and file the docu         ment in the appropriate place.

“In the four years that this technology has been deployed at clinics from Northland to Queenstown, it has managed to achieve accuracy of higher than 99 per cent and labour savings of a massive 63 per cent,” Chew said.

Chew’s company is also about to release VoiceSmart, an AI powered robot that answers the phone, makes appointments with GPs, orders repeat prescription and takes messages.

“VoiceSmart incorporates advanced security features to ensure caller identity verification,” Chew said.

Enlighten Designs chief executive Damon Kelly founded his design and technology company 25 years ago and has worked with AI since his University of Waikato days. He sees AI as both a threat and an opportunity.

“It’s both, if you don’t adapt to it, it’s a threat for sure, if you adapt to it then it’s an opportunity,” Kelly said.

Kelly shared a long list of what he called cool AI projects.

“We’ve developed awesome voice-to-text and text-to-voice technologies using large language models,” he said.

Enlighten Designs’ Synthetic Voice is used by multiple media clients.

“Synthetic Voice is making virtual voices that sound like humans or clone human voices, machine vision is being able to have computers recognise photos and videos and being able to categories it,” he said.

Enlighten Designs also uses machine learning to turn qualitive survey results into quantitative reports.

“We’ve turned messy survey data into clear, actionable insights that help businesses make smarter decisions,” Kelly said.

Partnering with Microsoft, Enlighten Designs has built tools that allow journalists to dig through massive datasets and uncover compelling stories.

Overseas, Enlighten Designs tech is being used for real-time monitoring of police scanners to map out key events.

Cambridge based Rocketspark spent six years developing its AI-powered website builder Flint.

In 10 minutes, Flint can build a website home page based on the input business name, industry, location and vibe. Web designers can choose from 32 Rocketspark templates or build their own.

Rocketspark began its AI journey in 2018. Johnson said it had to invest in AI to stay relevant.

Boutique communication, public relations and marketing consultancy Belle in Cambridge recently added Microsoft Copilot AI to its toolbox.

Belle director Charlotte FitzPatrick, who started the company in 2021, has been using AI writing assistant Grammarly for years to improve productivity.

“We’ve been trying to embrace AI, recently adding Copilot to our mix of AI tools, and we’re excited about its potential to help improve our processes and workflow management. Many repeatable tasks and processes can be optimised with AI.”

FitzPatrick and her team use Copilot to take notes, summarise large documents, and check spelling, grammar and tone.

“Ultimately, these tools enable our team to focus on our clients, their needs and goals, and the strategies to enhance their businesses.”

But AI can only ever help FitzPatrick’s team of creatives. It could never replace them.

“From a public relations and communications perspective, AI can help us work faster, better and be more informed, but brands, businesses and organisations need to consider authenticity,” she said.

“We’re in the business of influence, credibility and trust, whether it’s to engage communities and stakeholders, educate customers, increase product sales, shape reputation, impact policy, or manage a crisis, and audiences will call you out if they sense you’re not being authentic or truthful in your messaging.

“While AI is a useful tool, particularly to help write well-structured sentences and paragraphs, great communication that is relevant, informative and resonates with the audience will always need a human touch.”

Fitzpatrick is also concerned with how AI could be misused for the spread of fake news such as manipulated images, videos, and audio.

“Ultimately, fake news directly affects trust, reputation and credibility. We’re already seeing our industry shifting toward using better listening and analytics tools to detect fake news so that we can counter it with factual information.”

Those who use AI tools can spot their misuse, usually by people who are not necessarily used to crafting written content for publication in print or delivery as a speech.

“You can’t beat a human touch,” Fitzpatrick concluded.

“We want to engage audiences with genuine, relatable stories, and that requires good old-fashioned conversations with real people.”

- Courtesy of Waikato Business News