Art by Clark Miller via Midjourney
Earlier this year, executives at finance software startup Runway had an idea about how they could boost sales.
Using artificial intelligence from OpenAI and other software, Runway’s engineers built a tool that scanned a list of potential corporate customers and drafted custom emails based on information in each of the customers’ websites. To make the messages seem more realistic and human-looking, CEO Siqi Chen told his team to instruct the AI to include at least one typo in each email.
The software, which Chen says took one weekend to build, is now saving the 12-person sales staff dozens of hours a week, freeing them to spend their time engaging with customers who show interest in response to the AI-written outreach.