“The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.” — John Lasseter
Running a micro-business often means juggling a dozen hats (like De Bono on a bad day), and finding time to maintain a consistent tone of voice requires effort. New tools like Claude AI’s custom styles feature, which allows you to fine-tune AI responses to match your unique voice, reduce that effort. It’s been possible to do with some training and workarounds, but this feature makes it easier.
Whether you’re drafting a proposal or writing your newsletter (!), Claude’s new feature makes sure your communication reflects your personality. It’s like hiring a personal copywriter who gets you. Custom styles help maintain that crucial edge of professionalism and authenticity. The best part? You can tailor these styles not just for your brand or personality but for specific contexts, ensuring you’re always speaking the right language to the right audience.
In practice, the output is pretty good and it’ll sound like you. You just need to give Claude some examples of what you’re looking for first. I recommend editing it yourself, of course, but it’s a decent time-saver.
Interesting Links
Amazon Rufus: Your New Shopping Assistant
Amazon’s new AI-powered assistant, Rufus, leverages the company’s vast product database to answer queries, offer product comparisons, and make personalised recommendations. It’s now available in the US, UK and a few other countries, aiming to make online shopping more informed and convenient. Don’t expect it to find you the ideal item just yet though. It’s a bit flakey.
Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol
Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) creates a universal standard for connecting AI systems to external data sources securely. This innovation simplifies data integration for businesses, enhancing the effectiveness of AI-driven operations. It’ll make system integration and automation with your existing software much easier.
Perplexity AI’s Shopping Features
Perplexity AI introduces tools like “Buy with Pro” for streamlined checkout and “Snap to Shop” for visual product searches, blending product research and purchasing in one platform. Like Amazon Rufus, it’s not great (yet). But as people start to use AI models more for research, you’ll want your products to be discovered. There’s a Perplexity Merchant Program to help you do that, but you need to apply. Remember, Amazon just pumped billions into Perplexity, and this is a joint initiative with Shopify, so if you sell physical products, you should explore it.
