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I run a small business in Hanoi. At the end of the day, business owners like me must put profits first. For basic marketing and graphic design work, AI just does a much better job than many young people do.

I used to pay my media team more than VND700 million a year, not including year-end bonuses. And, as is often the case with young people in this line of work, they liked to have fun, so they fiddled with their phones “for inspiration,” listened to music or browsed social media on their laptops during work hours. They did deliver some results, but nowhere near enough to justify their paychecks.

In 2024, I restructured the business. I got rid of the media team and replaced them entirely with tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. My wife and I also spent a week learning the basics of design and video-editing apps like Canva and CapCut. Now, we can use ChatGPT to generate images and develop marketing plans, then use Gemini to create promotional videos and scrutinize the content produced by ChatGPT.

My wife and I make compilation videos ourselves with CapCut. For advertising banners, signs and branding, we connect our Canva account with the two AI tools to do the work for us.

I spend $40 a month on the two AI tools and around VND420,000 on the other two apps. That brings the total cost of all the subscriptions to just VND18 million a year. The output is no worse than what that VND700-million-a-year team used to deliver.

AI has helped business owners like me maximize our profits. What else are we supposed to do? The benefits AI brings are simply too great. I am just sharing this honestly as a small-business owner.

*This opinion was submitted by a reader and translated into English. Readers’ views are personal and do not necessarily match Read’ viewpoints.