Square, the financial services platform, is making a significant move towards embracing generative AI technology. They’ve recently unveiled ten new generative AI capabilities aimed at improving customer content creation, onboarding, and setup. All of these features are now available, with some accessible through Square’s beta program.
This shift towards AI can be seen as an effort by Square, and its parent company Block, to revitalize the Square platform after a challenging year and declining performance. Revenues from Block’s Cash App have seen a sharp decrease, while Afterpay, acquired for $29 billion in 2021, has reported substantial losses. Block’s Bitcoin revenue has also fallen in line with the cryptocurrency’s price decline. Additionally, Square is facing growing competition from various directions, including Fiserv’s Clover, Toast, and Stripe.
In response to investor dissatisfaction, Square is now introducing generative AI features to boost its platform.
One of these new AI-powered features, called Menu Generator, enables restaurants to create a “full menu” on Square in a matter of minutes, offering particular benefits to new restaurant sellers who are not yet ready to upload a menu during the onboarding process. The generated content is not fully automated and allows for human edits before publishing to avoid inaccuracies.
Square has also incorporated generative AI into generating personalized email copy for customers and generating website copy, including headlines and entire blogs based on text prompts. These features are aimed at saving time and personalizing content, although concerns have been raised about the quality of AI-generated descriptions.
Other AI-driven enhancements include the auto-assignment of menu items to kitchen categories and station screens in the Kitchen Display System, automatic import of service details in the Appointments scheduling system, and suggestions for sellers based on insights about their business in the point-of-sale platform. Additionally, Square’s team communication tool and business-customer messaging platform now offer AI-generated announcements and responses.
Square is positioning these generative AI capabilities as a step forward in technology, indicating that they aim to be a leading technology partner in enabling the seamless and intuitive use of AI.
Overall, Square is leveraging generative AI to enhance various aspects of its platform and provide additional value to its users. However, as with any AI application, there are considerations about data quality, user preferences, and potential challenges related to automated content generation. The success of these AI features will depend on how well they address these factors and provide a positive user experience.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Indiana Sphere journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.
