Godaddy On Tomorrow's World Today: A Deep Dive Into Generative AI

By Art Martori

Looking to launch an idea online? If so, be sure to check out a new episode from Tomorrow's World Today which aired on Science channel or Discovery Channel. You can also stream this must-see content on YouTube and tomorrowsworldtoday .

It offers an in-depth look at how GoDaddy Airo uses generative artificial intelligence to level the online playing field for small businesses. Watch the episode below to see all the ways generative AI can help your business (spoiler alert: it's a lot).

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Hope you enjoyed the episode! It had lots of great information. If you'd like to revisit any of it, we've also included a transcript for your convenience.

Transcript of GoDaddy on Tomorrow's World Today

Speaker 1:

On Tomorrow's World Today, we explore the cutting-edge advances that are shaping four different worlds. The world of inspiration, where the wonders of the natural world amaze and inspire us. The world of creation, where ideas come to life from traditional arts. The world of innovation, where ideas and inventions move us all forward. The world of production, where innovations are mass-produced to improve our lives. From Inventionland world headquarters, here's your host, George Davison.

George Davison:

In many industries, it's only the wealthy who can afford the new technologies. For example, when the automotive industry was created, it was just the rich people driving around in their cars until Henry Ford created the affordable car for everyone. Now, fast-forward to the early days of the internet, it was only those big players that could afford the luxury of going digital. But as technology evolved and the internet became more and more accessible, the game changed. Suddenly, there was a new era that dawned for small businesses and it opened up a world of possibilities in the digital realm. Today, we're in a digital landscape and it's teeming with possibilities. You see, small businesses have been embracing the power of digital marketing, and they're using templates to create websites, social media posts, and other online channels so they can connect with customers, drive sales, and even build brand awareness like never before.

But now, it's no longer a luxury. It's a necessity for success. Despite the prevalence of digital marketing though, around 46% of the small businesses in the United States still don't have a website. So today, you can start with a blank screen. And with just basic information about your business, generative AI platforms will work with you hand-in-hand to create a professional website, manage your digital marketing campaigns, and even expand your reach online.

So I'm going to send Greg to the world of innovation in Seattle, Washington, to explore how one company is empowering these small businesses to thrive in today's digital world.

Greg Costantino:

Small businesses are everywhere and they're all vying for your attention. There are over 6 million of them in the U.S. alone, but believe it or not, only 64% have websites. Now, as we move ahead into an increasingly digital world, having a strong online presence is more important than ever. And that's why we're here, at GoDaddy in Kirkland, Washington to meet with the experts and explore how they're creating customized solutions and user-friendly platforms that will help entrepreneurs enhance their digital footprint today and in tomorrow's world.

Let's head inside and talk to Gourav Pani. He is the President of U.S. Independence for GoDaddy.

Gourav Pani:

Greg, great to meet you.

Greg Costantino:

Great to meet you too. So Gourav, tell me a little bit about the history of GoDaddy.

Gourav Pani:

Since 1997, we've been helping our customers get online.

Greg Costantino:

At the beginning of the internet, which is where you were starting, getting online, getting a domain name, it was a really difficult thing to do.

Gourav Pani:

Yes, solving that hard problem of simplifying for others is where we found our space.

Greg Costantino:

So basically, you're helping people now do what you did. GoDaddy started as a very small business, and now look at you.

Gourav Pani:

It is so amazing to watch our customers thrive every day.

Greg Costantino:

Do you think that that web presence is as important now as it was back then?

Gourav Pani:

With customer expectations being one where they want to see everything immediately, being available online and offline is vital to small businesses.

Greg Costantino:

Excellent. Well, I can't wait to learn more. So what's next?

Gourav Pani:

You get to meet Laka Sriram, a Vice President of Artificial Intelligence. He's going to tell you what we are up to.

Greg Costantino:

Lead the way. Hey, Laka.

Laka Sriram:

Hey Greg. Nice to meet you.

Greg Costantino:

Great to meet you too. So Laka, artificial intelligence or machine intelligence as a concept has been around since the fifties, and what a lot of people may not realize is we've been using forms of artificial intelligence for quite a while now. I mean, every time you type a phrase into a search engine, you're using a version of artificial intelligence, but generative AI is a different animal. It is a leap forward. Tell me about the difference.

Laka Sriram:

You're right. AI has been there for decades now, and we actually use it in several aspects of our lives, starting in automobiles and video games and search engines and so on and so forth. Genitive AI is this new field within AI, which focuses on building new content. It gets trained on large language models, which are based on huge data sets, but it takes all of those data sets, it uses examples and identifies patterns and builds brand new content that's novel and that's not part of its training set at all.

Greg Costantino:

So it's not just a clearinghouse for data that already exists, it's not just making a recommendation, it's really creating something brand new.

Laka Sriram:

100%. It creates brand new. It takes in some of the cues from the user. Like at the beginning, the user can navigate and guide it in a certain direction, but it uses the training data and it builds brand new text, images, videos, software code, even that wasn't part of its training set at all.

Greg Costantino:

Wow. So this leads us right into what Airo is. So when GoDaddy was building Airo, you used generative AI to put together a platform that would bring generative AI to someone like me.

Laka Sriram:

We've used all the advancements that have been happening in generative AI across the tech industry, plus the experience that we at GoDaddy have had for the last 20 plus years, like working with small and micro business owners. So we've combined those two together, and we built this brand new experience and platform layer that helps every single small business owner with setting up their identity and presence from scratch till the end, everything is set up right off the bat and it's ready for them to use.

Greg Costantino:

I'd love to see that in action. Can I get a demonstration?

Laka Sriram:

100%. We should go meet with Nicki Hybner, one of our designers of Airo, and she can walk you through the end-to-end demo what actually Airo is, and she's right that way.

Greg Costantino:

How long did it take to get Airo up and running?

Laka Sriram:

Three months start to end.

Greg Costantino:

That's amazing.

Laka Sriram:

And Greg, here's Nicki. She can introduce you to Airo.

Greg Costantino:

Thanks a lot, Laka. Hi Nicki.

Nicki Hybner:

Hi Greg. Nice to meet you.

Greg Costantino:

Nice to meet you too. So I understand if I want to get a look at Airo, you are the person to show me.

Nicki Hybner:

Yeah, and I'd love to show it to you. I actually have a demo set up in the conference room if you want to follow me.

Greg Costantino:

Absolutely, lead the way Nicki, now that I understand how customer feedback and information actually went into the creation of GoDaddy Airo, let's make this a little bit more personal now. Help me put my business online.

Nicki Hybner:

Let's do it. Let's check it out. So one of the great things about Airo is that you can start with a simple idea. Any burning business ideas?

Greg Costantino:

Well, let's say I want to start a dessert shop.

Nicki Hybner:

Okay. So we will go ahead and type in, I want to open a dessert shop in Kirkland. And by hitting this button, we'll start to generate business names and domain name suggestions for this business idea that you have.

Greg Costantino:

Now, are all of these available and able to be used right away?

Nicki Hybner:

All of these are available. So if you like Satisfy Sweets, we can go ahead and add that one to the cart and complete the checkout process.

Greg Costantino:

And as quickly as that, I've purchased a domain name?

Nicki Hybner:

Exactly.

Greg Costantino:

Wow. Really couldn't be much easier than that.

Nicki Hybner:

Pretty simple. And in the background here, we're creating a couple of things for our customers. We're looking at the domain name and we're going to be making suggestions for how they can get started in a couple of different areas. We'll take a look at that in just a second. We take a moment to celebrate and continue. And here you'll see your business start to come to life for the very first time. That moment can be really intimidating, and by simplifying it, making it easier, we're helping more people get online and be confident about the business that they're doing there.

Greg Costantino:

So this is basically what my business is going to look like online. And we've done this in seconds.

Nicki Hybner:

Exactly. It's ready to publish. We have a website preview on the right-hand side here. By scrolling through these images, you can choose something that you like. Maybe that one works.

Greg Costantino:

Okay.

Nicki Hybner:

And If you want to make some customizations to your business name or your vertical, you could do that right here. We like this one, so we'll go ahead and hit publish. In just a few seconds, you'll be online for the first time.

Greg Costantino:

This is going to be the image of whenever people look for my sweet shop, this is what they're going to find?

Nicki Hybner:

Exactly.

Greg Costantino:

Well, what's next?

Nicki Hybner:

Once we're on the dashboard, there are a lot of other things our customers can do that Airo's generated for them. Things like a fully custom website, personalized email, branded logo, even engaging social posts. So if we come in here, we can take a look at a series of logos, choose one that we like, and if we wanted to, we could click here to customize it and add additional details to make it our own.

Greg Costantino:

So if I don't have any design experience of my own, Airo's going to help me generate that.

Nicki Hybner:

You don't need any design experience to do this. Most of our customers are not designers, they're not marketing experts, they're not web designers, so this gives them a series of starting points and they can just interact with a couple of clicks and customize that item. When you're ready, clicking continue, we'll update that logo and add it to your business so that it's ready to use on all of your different tools.

Greg Costantino:

And there were lots of options there. So that logo, even though it's been generated by Airo, there's a lot of opportunity for me to make that look the way that I want it to look.

Nicki Hybner:

Exactly. It's fully customizable and it includes all the input that you're giving us. Once you've completed your logo, we also apply it to your website. We generated a fully customized website for you. Your coming soon page is already live, but this is what you'd want to share with people when you're ready to launch your business completely. And by clicking this button, you could continue in and start editing that website.

Greg Costantino:

Okay. Where would we go from here?

Nicki Hybner:

We could jump in and take a look at some of our social posts. So by coming in here and clicking in, they'll get customized prompts that they can immediately publish to their social media accounts. So these are customized based on what we already know about their business, that category they chose, and some of the things that they've selected through the process so they can go ahead and publish these immediately.

Greg Costantino:

So Airo's basically putting together a marketing calendar for me, a schedule, of when things will appear on social media. So I would think that this would be really a great learning tool for somebody who's never done their own online marketing campaign or anything like that. Airo's going to give you suggestions about how to do it, and then as you learn, you'll be able to customize that more and more to your liking.

Nicki Hybner:

Exactly. It's not designed to totally remove your thumbprint on each of the products. It's designed to help you get started, to give you more time back to put into your business, to spend time with your customers and do the work that's most important to you.

Greg Costantino:

This is super exciting and this experience could not have been easier, but I'm going to get together with Katie. She's one of your actual customers, and we're going to talk about her experience. So Nicki, thank you very much.

Nicki Hybner:

Awesome. You're very welcome, Greg.

Greg Costantino:

Hi Katie.

Katie West:

Hi.

Greg Costantino:

So Nicki walked me through the process of using Airo to get my business online, and I know you have your own experience with GoDaddy AI, but first tell me a little bit about yourself and tell me about The Grand Lady.

Katie West:

Sure, sure. So in 2012, my husband and I got married at an old historic camp right outside of Chicago, and we just fell in love with this idea of creating a space where people could come together and celebrate some of life's most precious moments. And so fast-forward 10 years, we found the listing to The Grand Lady online and we went and visited it and immediately fell in love. And so we spent the next two years renovating the mansion and building the hall, building a flower farm, and we hosted our first wedding in 2021.

Greg Costantino:

That's amazing. And it's been really successful. How do you think that AI has helped you take those ideas and bring them into reality?

Katie West:

So being a small business owner is really challenging. You have 1,000,001 things to do always. And so I really relied on AI to help simplify the way I do the business. So one thing I really think about is being intentional about how much time I spend working in the business versus on the business.

So working in the business, we're showing people around, we're planting flowers, we're tending to clients and that sort of thing, which is all required and necessary. But the other side of it is working on the business, doing social ads, email campaigns and all of that. And so I've leaned on AI to help with a lot of our marketing efforts.

And so, one of the ways that I've used it is writing ad copy. And so rather than starting from scratch, I've actually just gone to AI and I've said, "Hey, I want you to write 10 high-performing ad copy headlines." Told them a little bit about my business and my target market, and it has generated it. And what I have found is that those ads perform much better than what I could have done on my own. And so it's just super effective and efficient.

Greg Costantino:

So you actually did work for GoDaddy at one time?

Katie West:

I did.

Greg Costantino:

So you do have a little bit more fluency with some of these things than the average person might, but do you think that someone like me with very little experience would be able to utilize these tools?

Katie West:

Oh, absolutely. GoDaddy has done such a great job at actually building the AI directly into the tools. And so you as a small business owner, you don't have to have extreme fluency. They've kind of taken out some of that for you and they've just created a really streamlined tool that allows you to actually use the AI, get the value, and gain the efficiencies as well.

Greg Costantino:

Excellent. Well, Katie, continued success and thank you very much.

Katie West:

Thank you.

Greg Costantino:

Hey Laka.

Laka Sriram:

Hey, Greg.

Greg Costantino:

Hey, thank you so much for setting up that demonstration with Nicki. Got to see how Airo works, and then heard from Katie about all of her success too. This looks like something new.

Laka Sriram:

We're continuously improving. We are leveraging all the advancements that are happening in generative AI and continuously feeding it into Airo. What he saw with Nicki was all the things that are there in the left-hand side, it addresses content generation in a whole complete way for the business owner, starting from an idea all the way to social payments and et cetera, are all done. It all exists right now. But what the next further evolution of Airo is about it as a tool evolves into a complete business partner. Making Airo into a tool such that it is constantly working on your behalf, on the customer's behalf, in order to improve the customer's business, in order to help them grow and thrive in the near future as well.

Greg Costantino:

So all of this, once it's implemented, your customers that have Airo, if they want to use this, they'll be able to?

Laka Sriram:

Yeah, this all becomes part of Airo. Like the go-to-market plan. It helps the customers with a specific set of steps when they want to launch any new product. And a chief marketing officer is about where Airo informs the small business owner on the steps that they should be taking in order to promote and grow their business. All of this happens behind the scenes without even the customer asking for it.

Greg Costantino:

Wow. It's super exciting. I really can't wait to see how it all shakes out once it's implemented. But in the meantime, I've got a hook up with Gourav and I've got a couple more questions for. So thanks a lot, Laka.

Laka Sriram:

Thank you, Greg.

Greg Costantino:

Hey, Gourav.

Gourav Pani:

Hey, Greg.

Greg Costantino:

I'll tell you, I've learned so much today. This has been really exciting. Now, artificial intelligence, AI, it's one of those hot topic buzzwords, perks people's ears up and raises some concerns. Are there any concerns that your customers should have about how their data might be being used?

Gourav Pani:

I'm happy to say there's nothing to be concerned about. All customer data will stay secure within our four walls.

Greg Costantino:

So basically Airo is just there to act as your assistant and getting you online so you can get back behind the counter because that's really how a small business survives?

Gourav Pani:

That's correct. Airo is your assistant that helps you get things done faster.

Greg Costantino:

Great. And Airo is not going to really do anything that I don't tell it to do?

Gourav Pani:

Airo will never do anything a customer doesn't tell it to do.

Greg Costantino:

Well, Gourav, now that we know that AI is our friend, what are some of the uses for generative AI that maybe exist right now but are not really being widely used?

Gourav Pani:

The one that I can think of that comes top of mind is going from the digital world to the physical world. Let me give you an example. Let's say you use generative AI to create an image of something you want to actually create a physical product out of. You take that image, you send it to a 3D printer, and it prints out a physical product for you.

Greg Costantino:

So somebody is inventing something in their garage, they would actually be able to have that sent out to a three-D printer and prototype it maybe numerous times and get that idea refined and then actually bring it to market?

Gourav Pani:

That's exactly it. The cost of ideation, prototyping just went down to such low levels that small businesses can do something that large businesses have been doing for a long time.

Greg Costantino:

Yeah. This is the kind of thing that you would have to turn to a manufacturer or a larger business to have that done. And every time you wanted to do a new prototype, there would be additional costs involved.

Gourav Pani:

Additional cost, additional time. All of those are getting saved for small businesses.

Greg Costantino:

That's amazing. So give me another example of what you're referring to.

Gourav Pani:

Let's take the example of advertising, for instance. In advertising, large corporations have had access to a lot of data for years that they can use to focus ads on very specific customers. Small businesses have never had access to that level of information until now. Generative AI allows small businesses to create curated ads that can be used to target very specific customers to meet their end goals.

Greg Costantino:

So really this has become an end-to-end process where somebody can create something in their garage, test it, prototype it, bring the final product that they want to manufacture, and then take the whole thing through the marketing and advertising, get it online, and then decide exactly how far they want to scale up for manufacturing?

Gourav Pani:

That's exactly it, from concept to the hands of the customer through generative AI.

Greg Costantino:

Wow. Well, I guess we're only limited by our own creativity.

Gourav Pani:

That's truly it.

Greg Costantino:

Well, I've got to get back to Pittsburgh. This has been amazing. You mind showing me out?

Gourav Pani:

I sure can. Thank you.

Greg Costantino:

So Gourav, this really has been fascinating and you have a great team here. But I do have one last question for you. Where do you see a small business in tomorrow's world?

Gourav Pani:

Tomorrow's world belongs to tomorrow's generation. And what tomorrow's generation wants is a high level of personalization and speed of service. Generative AI will unlock bespoke products and services to be delivered to customers with the ultimate level of delight.

Greg Costantino:

Excellent. Well, do you see any compromises involved, as more and more small businesses in incorporate AI?

Gourav Pani:

As more small businesses start to use generative AI, it'll become the new normal and our world will change for the better forever.

Greg Costantino:

Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to the future, but in the meantime, I've got to get home.

Gourav Pani:

Let me show you out.

George Davison:

Well, that's another episode of Tomorrow's World Today. See you next time.

And remember, tomorrow's world is where inspiration and creation drive innovation in production.

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