In the glow of a purplish-pink background, Nat Choprasert stares at her ring light.
She holds a desk microphone in her right hand and uses her left to tap the record button on her phone. Then, in 35 seconds, she explains how to trick AI detectors with an essay or blog post written by ChatGPT.
Choprasert uploaded this video to TikTok on Dec. 19, 2022, and the response altered her career.
“Everyone knows about ChatGPT now, but at the time when it first launched, I did one video about it, and it got a million views,” Choprasert says. “And that’s when I was like, ‘Well, I should probably create more content about that.’”
Two months before posting the viral video, Choprasert had sold her ecommerce tea business, Life of Cha, and was struggling to find a niche as a business consultant. The million-plus views of her TikTok video made it obvious that artificial intelligence was where she could stand out.
Over a year later, Choprasert is an AI and automation specialist for businesses on a mission to demystify AI. She founded Future AI Lab, helping companies implement AI to save time and grow revenue.
Although generative AI is an infant industry, Choprasert has already positioned herself as a pacesetter in AI education. She speaks at conferences worldwide and shares her learnings with more than 400,000 social media followers and 18,000-plus newsletter subscribers.
What makes Choprasert different in the erratic AI news cycle is her belief that the human touch makes AI transformational in business.
Humanized Automation
When clients come to Choprasert for help implementing AI, their questions run the gamut.
“They’ll say things like, ‘Can you automate my entire business?’ or ‘Can you automate my entire department?’” Choprasert says. “I need to burst their bubble and bring them down to earth a little bit.”
That’s when she explains to clients the strategy of humanized automation. The concept is that AI does 60 to 70 percent of the foundational work, and humans complete the finishing touches.
“It doesn’t come across as automated even though [AI] did a majority of the work,” Choprasert says. “That way, you get the benefits of being genuine but also saving a lot of time in the back end.”
For example, when Choprasert receives sponsorship inquiries for her personal brand, Brand Nat, or Future AI Lab, she uses AI tools to create custom quotes and automatic email drafts. Then, Choprasert adds a personal touch to the emails.
“Say, for example, you’re an expert marketer. You know that the content that ChatGPT or Claude comes out with, whether it’s going to work or not, is because of your experience. And so all you need to do is ask the right questions, see the answers, and then direct it toward where you want it to go because you know what the end result should look like or have an idea at least,” Choprasert says. “We still need humans at the end of the day when driving AI.”
“We still need humans at the end of the day when driving AI.”
Choprasert relates the inflection point of generative AI to the invention of the car. Automobiles changed the course of society, but you still need a human in the driver’s seat.
For now.
Choprasert understands the feeling when she bursts clients’ bubbles. She gets the urgency—if AI had been around when she was leading her first business, it would have forced her to change how she ran it.
Don’t Skip: How to Use AI to Start a Business
Starting Over With AI
Choprasert has a thread in ChatGPT called “Business Coach GPT” that she chats to when she has a problem. She says if she started her ecommerce business again today, she’d use ChatGPT as a co-founder.
“If you tell ChatGPT that you want to build a $100,000 [ecommerce] business, tell it who your target market would be and what your product is, all the information that you have about yourself, and then you would ask it, ‘Ask me 10 questions in order to create a business plan or a business strategy for me,’” Choprasert says. “And that way, ChatGPT will understand your situation and come up with questions for you that you can answer.”
But when Choprasert started her tea business in 2015, she couldn’t get up to speed with a ChatGPT prompt. She had to learn by herself. Well, almost by herself.
“I was listening to Foundr [Podcast] actually while packing my tea as a solopreneur, doing everything myself,” Choprasert says.
Although she sold the tea business in 2022, Choprasert remembers how lonely the first few years were. It wasn’t until her husband suggested she market the business on TikTok that Choprasert felt connected to other entrepreneurs.
“I ignored it for a year because I thought TikTok was just for kids and people doing dance routines and stuff like that,” Choprasert says.
Initially, she posted content about Life of Cha but saw limited engagement.
“But then I went back to the idea of talking about my business learnings and my journey and everything that I wish that I knew prior to starting a business, which I had to learn the hard way through experience and lots of money lost,” Choprasert says.
Under the Brand Nat TikTok account, she started building momentum on the platform. She even reached 100,000 views on a video that showed her stealing a former competitor’s customer list after they went out of business.
“I just really enjoyed talking about that aspect in marketing on TikTok and connecting with people that found the content really useful, which sort of gave me a lot of happiness,” Choprasert says.
She applied her learnings to Life of Cha, which boosted the business’s profile enough that she was able to exit in the autumn of 2022.
Then, on Nov. 30, 2022, ChatGPT was released publicly. And like millions of early adopters, she started experimenting with generative AI.
When her first video on ChatGPT broke a million views, she knew it would be a great idea to double down on AI learning.
“So many opportunities have come my way because I was just putting out organic, value-driven content,” Choprasert says.
Because of the popularity of her short-form videos and free newsletter, business owners started seeking out her help.
Where to Implement AI in Your Business
Choprasert uses her experience as a founder to help others leverage AI to free up more time and do things more efficiently. She teaches ecommerce founders to implement AI across four pillars:
- Automation
- Content Creation
- Data Analysis
- Coaching
First, she suggests connecting tools like Zapier and ChatGPT to automate your customer service, sales funnel, and client communications. For example, when Choprasert ran her tea business, she spent eight hours daily communicating with wholesalers. Today, founders can follow up with leads at any cadence sequence they want by using a chatbot and email software, saving valuable time instead of hacking away at email into the night.
Content creation is the most common use of generative AI. But ecommerce founders can also use the tools to create professional-looking product photography and descriptions that would have taken hours and thousands of dollars when Choprasert launched her first business.
While ChatGPT works well for research and strategy, Choprasert suggests using Claude as a content assistant for developing scripts, hooks, and ad copy.
“ChatGPT, it kind of feels very salesy, very promotional. But Claude eliminates that process [and is] less salesy [and] less promotional,” Choprasert says.
Another pain point that Choprasert struggled with when running her ecommerce business was analyzing data. Today, AI assistant tools like Shopify Sidekick can help founders quickly sort through spreadsheets of data and offer recommendations to improve an ecommerce store or social ads.
“Having really data-driven insights is very valuable, especially with AI being able to interpret it in a simplified version,” Choprasert says.
“Having really data-driven insights is very valuable, especially with AI being able to interpret it in a simplified version.”
Finally, AI can serve as a co-pilot. It’s an implementation that is crucial to Choprasert’s day-to-day work.
“I’ll go to it and say, ‘Here’s my situation, here’s the problem, my dilemma, what should I do?’ And it will give me a guided structure to how I should approach the problem,” Choprasert says. “It all comes down to how much relevant information you give it for it to be able to understand what you’re trying to achieve.”
Choprasert believes that understanding comes from a willingness to try.
Try and Try Again
Every week, it seems there’s a new AI tool to solve a problem. It can be daunting even for someone like Choprasert, who swims in AI every day.
She suggests you try.
“One of the things that I wish I knew earlier or while I was going through that business journey and [that is] still relevant today is to try a lot of things because the more you try, the more you see what works, what doesn’t, and the market will tell you if it’s actually good or not,” Choprasert says.
No surprise, she uses an AI tool to keep trying. Feedly is a platform that aggregates news sites based on a given search topic, which helps Choprasert immediately know what new AI tools she needs to review for her newsletter or next viral video.
Simply trying to use AI pays off for her work and her clients. She says the clients who are trying AI tools are the ones who implement and make major changes to their business that impact the bottom line.
Take it from someone who’d go back and do it differently. Don’t be afraid of AI; try it.
Keep Learning: AI Tools That Can Actually Help Your Ecommerce Business
Ecomm AI Apps for Beginners
- Make your product photos look studio professional quality with Pebblely and Adobe Firefly.
- Write hooks that get clicks with Claude.
- Sort through your inbox with SaneBox.
- Build internal “how to” guides and training with Tango.
- Get automatic data insights with Sidekick.
- Scale your customer support by creating your own GPT.
- Hire a fee-free business coach with ChatGPT.
