If you want to spend less time on your side hustle, artificial intelligence could lend a helping hand, some experts say.
The technology can help research trends, write copy and remix music. YouTubers use it to generate audio and visuals in a fraction of the time it takes to make original content. People with print-on-demand shops use it to generate new images for their products with minimal effort.
"I think [AI tools can] save time and generate revenue," says Jaeden Schafer, a software engineer and serial side hustler who co-hosts the "AI Hustle" podcast. "You still need a human that understands the whole process ... but I [can do things] faster, and it contribute directly to [parts of my side hustles] that drive revenue."
"I think anyone in almost any job can produce [content] at least three times as fast," he adds.
AI technology is becoming increasingly cheap and easy to use. But Schafer's observation comes with a caveat: The more experience you have producing the kind of content you want the AI to create, the more ease you'll have guiding and correcting it.
"Most people will likely have new tools in their tool belt to work better, faster, smarter, cheaper with some AI assistance," says Nick Loper, a side hustle researcher who runs a blog called Side Hustle Nation. "But AI alone is not a business make. You still have to figure out your product or service and find people to sell it to."
Specifically, AI can help make side hustles more efficient and lucrative in a few particular ways, industry experts say:
Brainstorming and summarizing
Generating ideas and consolidating information are two of the most common AI chatbot applications, according to a Gallup study published last year. Both functions can help people with side hustles, particularly if they want to figure out what content will resonate with their audience, Schafer says.
When Schafer started his podcast, he told ChatGPT: "Give me 20 questions people might have about AI and side hustles," he says. "I knew that those were the top questions people were asking, and I that could create episodes around those topics in a way that would organically get a lot of traction to the podcast."
If a chatbot gives you 20 ideas, it's likely a handful will be worth pursuing. And while most experts say you shouldn't rely on AI to conduct research for you — the technology doesn't consistently produce factually accurate results — you can certainly use it to summarize any research you've conducted yourself, says Loper.
Recently, Loper surveyed his community of people with side hustles, and included an open-ended question for people to submit the biggest challenges they faced in started and building their second streams of income, he says.
The chatbot summed up the responses in record time, he says.
In 2023, New York-based public relations consultant Nicole Cueto told CNBC Make It about her vacation-planning side hustle. She booked flights, made reservations and planned excursions — and used AI to research places she'd never personally visited, cutting her workload in half, she said.
"I've been to Paris a thousand times, but if I have a client that wants to discover the depths of the city from an old school perspective, I don't really know how to do that [from personal experience]," said Cueto. "So, I'll type in, 'Give me a budget-conscious guide to Paris that incorporates historical neighborhoods where politicians lived in the 1880s.'"
Then, she fact-checked the results, researched its suggestions then built her customer's individualized itineraries, she says.
Content creation
Sometimes, the most time-consuming part of writing — emails, website copy, sales pitches — is simply creating a first draft. Let AI do that for you, says Kathy Kristof, founder of the SideHusl.com blog. She uses chatbots to complete tasks she's "not particularly good at, like [writing] pitch letters, headlines and descriptions for my website," she says.
"While I still see AI making a lot of mistakes, picking up errors or outdated information, using AI to create a first draft of something that's then reviewed and edited by human intelligence seems like a no-brainer," Kristof adds.
She's in good company: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang uses chatbots to produce first drafts, too.
"I give it a basic outline, give it some PDFs of my previous talks, and I get it to write my first draft," Huang said at a Wired event last year. "It's really fantastic."
Loper and Schafer say they've spoken to print-on-demand and digital product business owners who've used generative AI to create first drafts of images. The results are often imperfect, so the designs usually have to be tweaked in apps like Canva.
The audio results aren't flawless, either, Loper says. He recently interviewed "Robo-Nick" — a combination audio bot and chatbot, trained to mimic his voice and speaking style — on his podcast, "The Side Hustle Show." He fed the bot hours of his podcast, YouTube and audiobook files, then asked ChatGPT to act as him while answering a series of questions for the episode, he says.
The bot's pitch and speaking cadence were similar to Loper's voice, he says, but he could still easily distinguish between it and real recordings of himself.
"It's definitely getting closer, but it didn't sound like me," says Loper. "It also made up that my first job was a mobile car washing business."
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