How To Start A Business Using AI in 2025

Imagine this: Jerry is drowning in his 9-to-5. No matter how much effort he puts into the constant onslaught of work, all he gets is more tasks and more flack from his boss—without much of a pay increase. He has spent years cultivating his career, but these days he’s just hoping to survive layoffs so he doesn’t have to face the prospect of job hunting again.

If Jerry’s story strikes a nerve, you’re not alone. According to a 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center, around 12% of the US workforce is dissatisfied with their jobs. So, what can you do about it? 

The generative AI boom offers a new solution: Now you can start a business using AI. A 2024 global survey from McKinsey & Company found that 72% of organizations have adopted AI in at least one business function. So what’s stopping you from building your own small business with AI as your sole partner?

In this article, we’ll teach you how to start a business using AI, share expert tips and tools, and discuss the pros and cons of AI entrepreneurship to help you decide if this is the right path for you. 

Ready to start your business? Create your website today or learn more about Shopify’s tools for selling online and in person.

Start a business using AI in 6 steps

Learn how to start a business using AI by following this step-by-step guide. 

1. Generate ideas using AI

When we say you can start a business using AI, we mean you’ll be able to use the power of artificial intelligence from the very beginning. After all, coming up with an idea for a business that matches your skill set, interests, and lifestyle can be a pretty big barrier to getting started. 

Start brainstorming with a simple AI prompt, such as: “You are a business coach who is helping me start a business with no money. I want you to keep asking me questions until you can give me 10 personalized business ideas that I can run remotely on my own.”

Treating AI as a partner rather than a boss or employee is important for building a business that can thrive in the long term. Share your existing ideas and give it feedback on the ideas it provides. That will help you narrow down your list of options and find the one that best matches your skills and interests. 

Since you’ll be leaning on AI at every stage, you don’t need to have a ton of prior knowledge about your business concept. That said, having some sort of background and passion for what you land on is definitely a plus. That interest will keep you going during any tough times and make you a stronger collaborator with your AI partner.

“I can type in a stream-of-consciousness idea and have it produce enough of a workable base to go into the cycle of retooling,” says Alex Pilon, Senior Developer at Shopify, on the AI prompting process.

2. Conduct market research with AI

Market research can be absurdly time consuming. It involves gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data from a bunch of different sources. Each step is highly detail-oriented and requires deep knowledge of statistics to draw any sort of meaningful insights. 

All that could take an expensive data analyst months to do manually; AI can complete it in seconds. You can use AI market research tools to identify market trends, evaluate competitor strategies, segment your target audience, and forecast demand for your product ideas. 

“Delegating our tasks is essential for us being able to scale and to achieve some level of sustainability. We have to be able to introduce technology into that process,” says Jamila Wright, co-founder of Brooklyn Tea.

But keep in mind: The accuracy of the AI’s insights depends on the quality of the data it processes. Plus, because it can’t think creatively, AI might miss things like cultural context. In other words, AI market research tools can do the heavy lifting, but it’s up to you to interpret the results and fill in the gaps. 

This is one of those areas where having prior knowledge about your chosen AI business idea will come in handy. For example, you might be able to catch key nuances about your target audience or competitors that only a person with life experience in your chosen niche could understand. 

3. Create a product with AI

You might have guessed that AI would come in handy for those first two steps in how to start a business using AI. But did you know you can actually design a product using AI, too? 

Whether it’s a physical or digital product, you can use AI technology to bring your creative concepts to life—no design experience or boatloads of cash necessary. 

Here are a few examples of products you can develop with AI:

• Write an ebook: We’ve all got a story to tell—we just don’t all have the confidence in our writing skills to tell it. Generative AI has made writing so much more accessible and efficient. Think of it as a ghostwriter who can put your ideas into words. 
• Produce royalty-free music: While royalty-free music is already a thriving market, it tends to sound pretty generic and disconnected from the actual use cases. With the help of an AI music generator, you can improve royalty-free music catalogs by acting as a composer for all sorts of business niches.
  
  
• Develop digital templates: Maybe you’ve worked in HR for the past 12 years and know exactly what companies are looking for when they’re reviewing résumés. You could give a template generator very specific instructions about what it should look like. Once you’ve tweaked it to your liking, it only takes a few minutes to set up an Etsy storefront and list your product for sale. 
• Develop blueprints for a physical product: Have you ever felt like a bazillion-dollar company stole an idea straight out of your brain? With AI, taking those “what if” ideas and transforming them into tangible products is easier than ever. For example, you can pop your sketch into 3D model generators. Describe its dimensions, materials, color scheme, and functionality. Then, iterate upon its design until it perfectly matches your vision. 

4. Brand your business with AI

If you aren’t the creative type (or just don’t know much about how to build a brand), AI can really come in handy. There are dozens of brand generator tools that can eliminate the high costs of branding firms and designers from your budget. 

To start, you’ll need to come up with your brand values as well as brand prompts (descriptive adjectives that succinctly describe your brand). With that information, you can use business name generators and logo generators to create a cohesive brand identity that matches your vision, as well as the expectations of your target audience. 

Before making any commitments, ensure the business name you choose is available as a domain and across all relevant social media platforms.

5. Start selling with AI

There’s a lot AI can do to streamline sales and set up your ecommerce store. Since the process of selling online doesn’t really ever stop once you open your online store, delegating any of these tasks can make a big impact on your time and resources.

AI website builders can set up a professional, user-friendly online store that’s optimized for retail in minutes. The best versions of these tools enable you to easily customize your store design to match your branding, generate product descriptions, and optimize your website design for mobile devices. 

Building an online store isn’t the endpoint it used to be—you’ll need to make your products available across multiple sales channels to capture consumers where they are. But there are AI tools that enable you to manage your listings from one central hub. That way, you won’t have to rely on manually updating them, which mitigates the chances of human error.

6. Market your business using AI

As a small business owner starting a business with no money, it’s totally understandable if you’ve worried that the deck is stacked against you. How are you to compete with companies that can dedicate millions of dollars to marketing their products?

AI marketing tools give you a leg up, handling the marketing tasks that would typically require a team of specialists. With the wide variety of AI models available, you can build and run an entire marketing campaign without blowing your entire budget. 

According to a 2024 survey of over 10,000 Shopify merchants, 50% plan to use AI for content creation. This is a clear sign that this technology is revolutionizing how businesses approach marketing.

“Because we’re a small business, we don’t have the money for a copywriter and a digital marketer,” says Alfonso Wright, co-founder of Brooklyn Tea. “AI really does give you a shortcut to having some of these tools at your disposal.”

Expert tips for using AI to start your business

To help you make the most of this opportunity, Alex Pilon shares his expert tips:

Learn about AI

Before diving headfirst into using AI for business, it’s crucial to understand how AI works and what it’s best suited for. “Have an understanding of how an LLM [large language model] actually functions and, therefore, what it is inherently good at,” Alex explains. By learning about the different types of AI and the fundamentals of how it operates, you’ll be able to use it to its fullest potential.

Be realistic about AI’s limitations

Although AI can solve certain tasks, it lacks the contextual awareness, intuition, and critical thinking that humans bring to problem-solving. “AI appears to have human-like reasoning and decision-making skills, but I am not so convinced of this,” says Alex. Instead, AI operates by analyzing patterns in data rather than genuine understanding or problem-solving. Alex encourages a healthy dose of caution when using AI, especially if you aren’t training it yourself. 

Use AI to get you over the finish line

AI is a powerful tool for bridging gaps in your skills and pushing projects across the finish line. “One of the more significant but less obvious opportunities is that AI can give anyone of any skill level a springboard into an area outside of their expertise,” Alex explains.

Pros and cons of using AI in your business

To help you decide whether to start a business using AI, let’s discuss the benefits of AI as well as the risks of AI in ecommerce.

Pros

Reduces human error

Because AI operates on logic and algorithms, it isn’t as likely to make casual mistakes like humans do. You’ll get consistent, reliable results that don’t vary from day to day.

Boosts operational efficiency

AI is dynamite at automating repetitive tasks. Fewer hours lost to busywork headaches frees up your time to focus on the big picture. 

Less biased

AI is trained by people, so it isn’t completely unbiased. That said, AI isn’t informed by emotion or personal experience like people are, so it can provide a slightly more objective perspective. 

Cons

It isn’t human

Although its robotic nature is often what makes AI so useful, it can also be a drawback. AI is great at tasks that involve data and patterns, but it can’t think creatively.

Ethical concerns

Like all good things, AI isn’t a guilt-free pleasure. People rightfully have concerns about issues like data security, copyright infringement, and AI’s environmental impact.

Dependency

AI isn’t infallible. It can malfunction or provide downright inaccurate information (known as AI hallucinations). It’s essential that you think critically about AI creations every step of the way and also fact-check whenever in doubt. 

Free AI tools to help you run your business

AI tools for writing

Whether it’s creating or refining content, these AI writing tools will speed up the process:

• AI Book Generator functions as a ghostwriter, turning your jumble of notes into a structured ebook in a snap.
• Originality.ai is the editor for your AI writers. It prevents plagiarism, checks for accuracy, and evaluates the content for readability. 
• Jasper has dozens of marketing-related AI functions, but it’s particularly effective as a copywriter. It can produce long-form blog posts that help you improve your site’s SEO, compelling social media posts, and clickable ad copy.

AI tools for imagery

These AI image generators will help you create visuals for branding, marketing, and selling using your art prompts:

• Midjourney is a favored image generator among artists for its dreamlike imagery. 
• Adobe Firefly creates professional-grade images and supports detailed editing. It’s also useful for developing existing images and even developing videos using AI.
• StarryAI not only allows you to upload your own training images to teach it about your aesthetic preferences, but it also allows a higher degree of control over the creation process than some other models. 

AI tools for marketing

Boost your marketing efforts with these AI marketing tools:

• Surfer has AI SEO tools for optimizing existing content for search engines, inserting internal links, making AI-generated content sound more human, and scoring your on-page optimization. 
• Ocoya not only produces social media content, it also handles scheduling and analytics.
• Rasa.io generates a personalized newsletter for each subscriber on your list. It provides email marketing analytics and even allows you to choose advertisers to work with to monetize your newsletters.

AI tools for ideas

When you’ve hit a wall, these tools will help you brainstorm:

• Idea Generator provides a starting point for turning murky ideas into workable plans.
• ChatGPT is the bot that kicked off the generative AI craze, so we would be remiss if we didn’t mention it. “It’s useful for solving blank slate problems,” says Alex. “I can type in a stream of consciousness idea and have it produce enough of a workable base to then go into the cycle of [developing that idea].”
• Ideanote will be your innovator whenever you’re running on fumes, sparking ideas and inspiring creativity when you need it most. You’ll want to keep it in your back pocket as your business grows.

AI tools for branding

These AI design tools generate logos and other brand assets:

• Canva’s Magic Studio will keep your brand assets consistent. After setting up your brand kit, you’ll be able to generate assets based on those guidelines. Then, you’ll be able to save those designs to your brand kit for future use.
• Looka creates an entire brand kit, including your logo, colors, and fonts. It’ll also create business cards, a social media kit, brand guidelines, a website, and more.
• Naming Magic will help you brainstorm names for your business.

AI tools for productivity

Get organized and optimize your busy schedule with these tools: 

• Zapier connects all your platforms (more than 7,000 apps available!) to streamline your workflow. It has dozens of AI capabilities to help you get more done faster. It even has an app that tells you how to automate certain workflows to help you take full advantage.
• Notion AI will function as your backup memory when you’re running on fumes. You can import data from many apps, including your Google Drive and project management boards, and easily search all of it to find what you’re looking for. 
• Reclaim AI will prevent your busy schedule from overwhelming you. It allocates time slots on your calendar for tasks based on their priority and deadline. It also prevents burnout by scheduling breaks and helps coordinate meetings with clients and collaborators.

AI tools for selling

These AI ecommerce tools will help with selling:

• Marketplace Connect is an app that keeps the listings in your Shopify catalog updated across other marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.
• Wondr AI can upload your product to your Shopify store along with keywords, product descriptions, prices, and hashtags. It’ll also post on socials for you. 
• Gobot is an AI app that converts customers with guided selling quizzes and AI-powered customer service chatbots.

AI tools for product development

With these tools, you’ll be able to create things to sell:

• Vizcom transforms sketches into renders and 3D models. From there, you can 3D-print the designs or send them to a development company.
• Printify has over 1,000 generic products that you can add your own designs to as well as a built-in image generator to help you come up with the designs themselves. Connect the products to your Shopify store and Printify, a print-on-demand supplier, will handle the printing and delivery for you. Just sit back, relax, and watch the money roll in.
• .bubble is an app development platform that doesn’t require any coding skills. To sell your app on your store, download Filemonk or Skypilot from the Shopify App Store. They protect your creations with watermarks and IP alerts.

AI tools for business development

Here are a few AI tools for business that’ll help you with things like legalization, writing a business plan, and evaluating the competition:

• Contractable will write legal contracts that you can personalize to your needs. Thoroughly read what the app produces to ensure accuracy, legal compliance, and alignment with your specific requirements.
• Frederick AI helps you build the backbone of your business. With nothing but a few notes about what you want to create, it does all the market research and analysis necessary to build you a business plan. It’ll even write you a pitch deck and develop a landing page for you. 
• Crayon tracks competitor activity on multiple channels and keeps you informed with regular email updates. It also tracks market trends and analyzes competitor strategies.

Get started right away on Shopify

Shopify’s AI tools make it easier than ever to launch and grow a digital business. Users have access to tools that edit images, write product descriptions, build customer relationships, and much more. Let AI handle the heavy lifting, so you can focus on the parts of your business that only you can bring to life.