Gusto Opens Waitlist for AI Assistant for Small Business Owners

Gusto will soon add an artificial intelligence-powered assistant called Gus to the human resources (HR), payroll, benefits and compliance platform and products it offers for small business owners.

The company opened a waitlist and said it will make the AI assistant available to customers and partners soon, according to a Wednesday (Sept. 11) blog post.

“Gus can provide business owners with quick answers to their most frequently asked questions — like their compliance requirements or what they need to do to file their taxes,” Gusto co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Edward Kim said in the post. “It can also give them personalized insights specific to their own businesses, based on their information on the Gusto platform. And Gus can help quickly execute tasks on business owners’ behalf — while giving them final approval on any actions taken.”

Business owners can ask Gus questions in plain English, such as: “How do I onboard a new employee?” The AI assistant will provide step-by-step instructions along with a link to a relevant support article from Gusto, according to the post.

When providing personalized insights about the business, Gus will run a report, deliver insights in natural language and provide a link to a full report, the post said.

Other tasks the AI assistant can perform include approving employees’ paid time off requests or changing an employee’s salary. In each case, it will ask for the business owner’s approval before completing the action, per the post.

“While Gus is still early in its development and capabilities, we believe in the coming months, we’ll be able to quickly expand its capabilities and skillsets, so it can help business owners achieve more,” Kim said in the post.

There is a growing number of AI assistants in the marketplace, PYMNTS reported in May. With potential applications of the technology ranging from email management to virtual shopping assistants, custom AI assistants could become indispensable tools for businesses looking for ways to automate processes.

In one deployment of the technology, global payments network and shopping assistant Klarna said in May that over 87% of its employees use generative AI in their daily work. The company added that its internal AI assistant, Kiki, was answering 2,000 employee questions per day.

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