Ashland business believed to be first in town to use AI in day-to-day operations

But when Etsy, Howdy Owl’s main retail platform, changed its advertising strategy in 2021, its sales plummeted.

The Lofings now run Howdy Owl on their own, having just moved operations from Lincoln back to Ashland. With a downsize in personnel comes many challenges. One of them, Brett Lofing said, is customer service.

“In this world today that we’re in, everybody wants answers,” he said. “This can be the person that is searching at 3 a.m. for something online, and they’re ready to purchase, but they got a question. Well, I’m not up at 3 a.m. answering emails.”

That’s where Brown Bacon AI comes in.

The tech company is collaborating with Howdy Owl in what is believed to be the first use of generative AI in an Ashland business’ day-to-day operations, using an AI chatbot that automatically answers customer service questions.

Tony and Aimee Arnold, who are also based in Ashland, have developed the patent-pending SomAI, which was created to help restaurants and other food-related businesses.

When customers email Howdy Owl with a question, they get a reply in about a minute. Lofing said he has Howdy Owl’s version of SomAI set up to review the answers that are generated before they are sent to customers.

“Our engine is very, very specific to only your business. So it really stays in that box,” said Tony Arnold, the CEO of Brown Bacon AI.

What makes SomAI different from other AI services like ChatGPT, Tony Arnold said, is that it only generates answers based on information given by the business owner, and doesn’t collect data on the users who send in questions.

In Howdy Owl’s case, all the information comes from its website.

Tony Arnold also said SomAI simultaneously works alongside other services like ChatGPT to supplement its answers with relevant information that isn’t in the provided materials.

“Most restaurants aren’t going to have the winemaker info and the soil type, but yet, you can ask that to our AI, and it will tell you about who the winemaker was,” Tony Arnold said.

Brett Lofing said SomAI has helped him and Kate Lofing free up time to focus on orders and creating pieces, while also saving them money on hiring a customer service employee. Brown Bacon AI has plans starting at $500 a month.

Although the Lofings have started to focus more on selling their products locally, Howdy Owl still fulfills orders from around the country, Brett Lofing said, adding that SomAI will work even when a question has a dialect from another region.

“The AI software doesn’t care. It still answers it, and it does it in a way that we would answer it,” Lofing said. “Sometimes better than what we would do.”

Beyond SomAI, the Arnolds have also developed AImee, a separate AI model that provides basic medical information for users also in a chatbot form.

“AI, it’s one of those things, it’s not going away,” said Brett Lofing, who started using ChatGPT about two years ago to help him write website content. “It’s one of those things that is evolving so quickly, and you have to embrace it as a business owner.”

In the future, Brett Lofing said he hopes to use SomAI to power the search engine on the Howdy Owl website.

Aimee Arnold, the CMO and CWO (chief wine officer), of Brown Bacon AI, said AI has the potential to create a boom in the opening of small businesses.

“Everyone’s got some sort of idea, they just don’t necessarily know how to implement it, or they don’t know how to hire the people,” Aimee Arnold said. “AI is there and can help you walk through that, and, in a lot of ways, it can help people achieve that dream of being a business owner.”