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Weekend edition September 27, 2024 | Katelyn Keenehan

HumanAI: Leveraging AI, while keeping humans in the loop

One AI, two humans, and everyone on the marketing and sales team in the loop.

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to prove its impact on the corporate business sector. In fact, there are very few aspects of business that AI hasn’t touched. However, as companies begin fully integrating these new technologies, a common problem arises:  AI lacks the human touch.

In the world of marketing, there’s a certain level of empathy, understanding, and relatability behind campaigns. A marketing team is behind the social media material, which is aimed at other human beings. So, a start-up in Knoxville has created an AI-based content creation platform that keeps humans in the loop.

Human AI was founded by Charles (Chuck) Wilson and Preston Garland. The two are best friends, multi-time Co-Founders, and the heads of several successful ventures over two decades. Garland is the genius behind the technology and can build and code clean software within a matter of days. Wilson is the sales lead for the ventures that specialize in bringing those products to market.

“We have been constantly coming up with new things and new ideas together for a long time,” Wilson laughed. “But I would say we’re a good team.”

The company debuted at the “What’s the Big Idea?” pitch competition, which was hosted by the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center (KEC) in March. Then, the Co-Founders continued to scale the business during “The WORKS” accelerator over the summer. The program came to completion with a pitch competition in early September.

“Our platform is game-changing for many businesses because it can save them both time and money,” Wilson said.

For example, a corporation that pays a company to post 32 times per month across four social media platforms could pay in the ballpark of $3,000 per month for that service. Other businesses may pay for social media freelancers to post on an as-needed basis, yet still rack up big bills and lack a personal, consistent brand voice.

“We can scale this product from an AI perspective, keep the human interaction, and eliminate those pain points,” Wilson said.

After Garland designed the easy-to-use software and established a minimum viable product (MVP), Wilson got to work on sales. He called everyone he knew, took dozens of meetings, and got the product into the hands of companies that needed it. Today, Human AI has a handful of customers using the service every day.

“What we learned through that experience is that small business owners don’t have time to learn a new tool. Many of them are just trying to stay afloat,” Wilson said. “So, that’s when we really started to leverage AI for sustainability and created the model we have now.”

Today, Human AI runs the model in a uniquely personal way. They begin with an onboarding meeting with the company. This gives the team at Human AI the opportunity to fully understand the voice the company is trying to portray on social media. They feed data, service-line information, product descriptions, thought leadership, tone-of-voice, branding, and other elements into the model, which allows the AI to write specifically from the brand’s perspective.

The AI begins populating social media content for the brand and creates numerous campaigns.

Then, a member of the Human AI team reviews the content for errors, tone of voice, and effectiveness. Once approved, the content is sent to the business owner, marketing team, or media specialist to give the final stamp of approval on the content.

One AI, two humans, and everyone on the team in the loop.

In the marketing space, it could take a social media specialist anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to craft a social media post. Human AI’s model can create that post in fewer than 15 seconds.

Wilson said it speeds up a marketing team, increases small business efficiency, saves time, prevents headaches, and ultimately recovers a whole lot of money.

In addition to social posting, Human AI can also write blog posts from the perspectives of employees, business owners, and company brands.

To learn more about Human AI, visit the website, and watch them pitch at Startup Day 2024!



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