Your Business Uses AI. Does Your Insurance Cover It?
Most business insurance policies don’t cover AI mistakes, and new regulations are creating compliance risks you need to address now. Today’s edition explains the insurance gaps and regulatory updates, shows you how to monitor your visibility in AI search results, and covers practical tools that save hours of work.
Word of the Day: AFFIRMATIVE AI COVERAGE
Affirmative AI Coverage is specialized insurance that explicitly protects businesses against liability from AI-generated mistakes, biased outputs, or incorrect recommendations. Unlike traditional insurance policies that often exclude AI-related risks, this coverage is specifically designed for businesses using AI tools.
Real-world examples of AI risks:
A consultant delivers a report with AI “hallucinations” (false information), and the client sues for damages
Your AI hiring tool inadvertently screens out qualified candidates based on protected characteristics, leading to discrimination claims
An AI chatbot gives a customer incorrect medical or financial advice, resulting in harm
Your AI system makes a pricing error that costs your business thousands
Why this matters: With 92% of small businesses now using AI for research, marketing, customer support, and hiring, you’re exposed to new liability risks. Standard professional liability, errors and omissions, and general liability policies often have “silent” exclusions for AI, meaning they may not cover you when AI makes a costly mistake. Affirmative AI Coverage fills this gap with explicit protection.
What’s covered: These policies typically protect against errors from both your own AI tools and third-party AI services you use, including automated decision-making errors, machine-generated bias, and incorrect AI outputs.
Action step: Review your current insurance policies to see if AI use is covered or explicitly excluded. If you use AI for customer-facing work, hiring decisions, or professional recommendations, ask your insurance broker about affirmative AI coverage options.
Learn more: Read about Counterpart’s expanded coverage in today’s “In the News” section.
Skill of the Day: Using AI to Monitor Your Brand in AI Search Results
Customers are increasingly asking AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews for recommendations instead of traditional Google searches. This means your brand needs to show up in AI-generated answers, not just search engine results.
Here’s how to check and improve your AI visibility:
Test how AI describes your business - Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google Gemini: “What are the best [your industry] companies in [your city]?” See if your business appears and how it’s described.
Use Ahrefs Brand Radar - This new tool shows exactly how your brand appears in AI search results and tracks mentions across AI platforms. Visit https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar to monitor your AI presence.
Optimize for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) - Unlike traditional SEO that focuses on keywords and backlinks, AEO means creating content that directly answers customer questions. Since you’re the expert on your business, focus on comprehensive FAQ pages, clear service descriptions, and customer reviews.
Update your Google My Business (GMB) Profile - AI tools pull heavily from Google’s knowledge graph. Keep your business hours, services, and descriptions current and detailed. Make use of the GMB “Post” feature as often as possible.
Why this matters: Research shows 65% of consumers plan to use ChatGPT for searches instead of search engines. If AI doesn’t know about your business or gives inaccurate information, you’re losing customers before they even reach your website.
Action step: Spend 30 minutes this week testing how different AI tools describe your business, then update your online presence to improve those results.
Tools and Tips
#1: Synthflow Voice Agents for WhatsApp Business
Synthflow now provides AI voice agents that answer WhatsApp calls for businesses, handling bookings, routing, and follow-ups automatically. The service operates 24/7 without requiring a human to answer every call.
Why it matters: Missed calls cost real sales and damage customer trust. This tool stops that revenue leak while freeing up staff time for more valuable work, especially for businesses that can’t staff support at night or on weekends.
https://synthflow.ai/whatsapp-business-calls/
#2: Salesflow - LinkedIn and Email Outreach Automation
Salesflow is a platform that automates multi-channel outreach campaigns across LinkedIn and email, allowing small teams to scale lead generation without hiring more salespeople. The tool schedules and runs campaigns safely at low cost.
Why it matters: Automating repetitive outreach gets you more meetings and builds predictable pipeline without growing headcount. This is particularly valuable for service businesses that rely on consistent prospecting.
#3: Gamma Prompt Library - 100 Ready-to-Use AI Prompts
Gamma analyzed millions of presentations from 70M+ users and built a free prompt guide with 100 tailored prompts organized by profession. Categories include sales automation, marketing campaigns, lesson plans, and more, designed for how people actually work.
Why it matters: Instead of struggling to figure out what to ask AI, you can use proven prompts that generate professional presentations, reports, and documents immediately. This dramatically reduces the learning curve for AI tools.
#4: Gamma Lab Education Platform (Beta)
Gamma’s new education platform offers comprehensive training from Gamma 101 basics to advanced selling techniques, all in one place. The platform is currently available in beta for free.
Why it matters: Most business owners know AI tools exist but don’t know how to use them effectively. Structured training helps you maximize your investment in AI subscriptions and actually get value from them.
#5: Ahrefs Brand Radar - Monitor Your Brand in AI Search
Ahrefs launched Brand Radar, a tool that shows exactly how your brand appears in AI search results and answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. It tracks mentions and helps you optimize for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), not just SEO.
Why it matters: As customers shift from Google to AI for research, your visibility in AI answers becomes critical. This tool helps you discover what AI says about your business and fix inaccuracies before potential customers see them.
https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar
#6: Adobe Firefly + Google Nano Banana Pro Integration
Adobe integrated Google’s Nano Banana Pro image model into Adobe Firefly and Photoshop, offering unlimited image generations through December 1, 2025 for Creative Cloud Pro and Firefly plan subscribers. The model excels at text-based editing, resolution upscaling, and generating factually accurate visuals.
Why it matters: If you have designers on staff who use Adobe Creative Cloud, this new tool dramatically accelerates their workflow. Your design team can now generate multiple concept variations instantly, upscale images without quality loss, edit specific elements with text prompts, and produce more work in less time—allowing them to focus on creative strategy rather than repetitive editing tasks.
https://www.adobe.com/products/firefly/partner-models/google-gemini-nano-banana.html
In the News
#1: California AI Employment Regulations Take Effect October 1, 2025
California rolled out new rules changing how employers can use AI for hiring, managing, or evaluating workers. The regulations affect any business operating in California or hiring Californians, requiring changes to hiring forms, HR practices, and vendor contracts.
Why it matters: If you have employees or applicants in California, you’ll need to update policies and training to avoid fines and protect workers. These rules signal what’s likely coming in other states, so getting ahead of compliance now prepares you for broader changes.
#2: Google Research Shows Short AI Training Boosts Adoption
Google’s “AI Works” 2025 research found that even a small amount of practical AI training leads teams to use AI tools more effectively. The study shows training, not just buying tools, is the key step toward useful adoption.
Why it matters: A short, focused training session for your staff can speed up tool adoption, save time, and get quicker returns on AI subscriptions. This validates the low-cost, high-impact approach to AI implementation.
https://publicpolicy.google/resources/ai_works_2025_en.pdf
Ps. If you’d like to schedule training for yourself or staff, just reply to this email or comment below and we’ll get something scheduled.
#3: Small Businesses Adopting AI to Fight Burnout
Local entrepreneurs across the Finger Lakes are discovering that AI tools can prevent burnout rather than replace workers. One marketing consultant reduced her workweek from 70 hours to 60 hours using AI task management, then used the saved time to hire a part-time designer, creating a new local job.
Why it matters: The narrative that AI only eliminates jobs is incomplete. Small businesses are using AI to reclaim time, reduce owner burnout, and actually create new positions by freeing capacity for growth. This shows AI as a tool for sustainable business building, not just cost-cutting.
#4: Small Businesses Using AI, Automation, and Connectivity to Compete
Small businesses in regional markets are embracing AI, automation, and modern connectivity tools to stay competitive in 2025. Even firms in smaller towns are now accessing affordable technology that was once too costly or complex, from AI-powered marketing to automated workflows and cloud software.
Why it matters: The competitive landscape has shifted. Small businesses in any location can now compete with larger corporations using the same technology. Size no longer defines success, adaptability does. Businesses that adopt accessible AI tools early gain significant operational advantages.
#5: Counterpart Expands AI Liability Insurance Coverage
Insurtech company Counterpart expanded its Affirmative AI Coverage to help small businesses address emerging liability risks from AI use. With 92% of small businesses now using AI, traditional insurance policies often exclude coverage for AI-generated mistakes, decision errors, or biased outputs. The new coverage protects against AI hallucinations, misclassified exposures, and flawed recommendations.
Why it matters: As you adopt AI tools for customer service, hiring, or operations, you’re exposed to new liability risks that standard insurance may not cover. This specialized coverage protects your business if AI makes a costly mistake, such as providing incorrect recommendations to clients or generating discriminatory hiring decisions.
#6: Wall Street Journal Highlights Small Business AI Success Stories
The Wall Street Journal featured several small businesses putting AI to practical use: a Chicago hospitality business uses ChatGPT for pricing adjustments that previously took hours, a San Francisco cooking school has AI handling 90% of customer emails with minimal editing, and a Minneapolis apparel firm used AI to write website code that would have required hiring a developer.
Why it matters: These real-world examples show AI delivering immediate, measurable value for everyday business tasks. Small, incremental efficiencies like these compound into significant time and cost savings, proving AI adoption doesn’t require massive investment or technical expertise.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/these-small-business-owners-are-putting-ai-to-good-use-f790d5a9
#7: DoorDash and OpenAI Launch Small Business AI Jam
DoorDash and OpenAI partnered with SCORE to launch the Small Business AI Jam, a nationwide series of hands-on workshops helping over 1,000 small businesses build custom AI tools. Events took place in San Francisco, New York City, Houston, Detroit, and Miami, with participants learning to create AI assistants for marketing, scheduling, inventory management, and customer communication.
Why it matters: This initiative makes AI accessible to Main Street businesses without technical backgrounds. By providing hands-on mentorship and ready-to-use tools, the program helps small businesses compete with larger enterprises that have dedicated technology teams. Virtual sessions continue through January 2026.
https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/openai-small-business-jam
#8: NCSL Tracks State AI Legislation Across All 50 States
The National Conference of State Legislatures compiled a comprehensive summary of AI-related bills introduced across states during the 2025 session, showing where local rules are developing. The report tracks legislation affecting hiring, consumer protection, data privacy, and business operations.
Why it matters: If you operate in multiple states or sell to customers across state lines, this helps you spot emerging legal risks and compliance requirements. State-by-state AI regulation creates complexity, but this resource helps you plan contracts, policies, and expansion more confidently.
https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/artificial-intelligence-2025-legislation
Final Thought
The business leaders who win in 2026 won’t be the ones with the most AI tools. They’ll be the ones who train their teams, comply with regulations, and use AI to reclaim time rather than just cut costs.
Start with one tool from today’s list and one hour of training for your team. Small steps compound quickly.
— Scott