Integrating AI into your business without selling your data to Big Tech

Integrating AI into your business is no longer optional. But you don’t need to surrender your data to Big Tech to keep up.

What started as hype has become a necessity to improve customer experience and enable your team to do more of what they do best.

However, AI is merely a tool to achieve this.

Success depends on mindset, experimentation, and choosing tools that align with your values, especially when it comes to privacy and data control.

In this blog post, we answer three questions on integrating AI into your business the right way.

We also offer a real-world use case with the Nextcloud Assistant to show you how to get started.

Integrating AI: Should you build your own AI solution?

The short answer? Probably not.

Unless you’re solving a unique, high-scale problem, building your own AI system is overkill. In fact, developing a custom AI solution can waste valuable time and money.

A company like Uber has its own AI technology because it has such a unique business model.

Take its dynamic pricing. To balance the supply and demand for its rides, it needs to crunch real-time information to feed its optimization algorithm.

This data includes past events, current supply and demand, time of day, weather conditions, and local happenings. The results of the AI-driven predictive model are then sent in real-time to customers and drivers.

While this offers an enhanced experience, it requires massive resources and highly specialized talent, while also introducing significant risks — from data privacy to bias and accountability.

It’s the kind of advanced AI model that most businesses don’t need.

Instead, focus on strategic integration. Identify repetitive, inefficient, or time-consuming tasks and match them with ethical AI tools that respect your data and privacy.

For example, generating translations, adjusting the tone of messages, or speeding up response time can all be done with existing tools.

These AI-driven solutions give your team smart tools to improve the customer journey and build trust — while avoiding the high costs and risks of custom AI development.

What AI tool is right for you?

At Nextcloud, we advocate for ethical AI: open, transparent, and designed for privacy from day one.

Take the Nextcloud Assistant — a locally hosted AI that lives inside your private cloud.

The Nextcloud Assistant integrates directly into your Nextcloud workspace, meaning your data never leaves your environment. No third-party surveillance. No training of AI models with your input.

And as you don’t have to hop around apps, it reduces distractions and allows you to focus on your core tasks.

For example, get email thread summaries right inside your Nextcloud Mail. Or summarize chat messages within Nextcloud Talk.

By aligning with strict privacy regulations and reinforcing digital sovereignty, the Nextcloud Assistant provides companies with a secure, ethical alternative to Big Tech’s closed systems.

If you do prefer to work with third-party tools like ChatGPT or Dall-E, you can still integrate these services directly into your Nextcloud.

The modular flexibility of Nextcloud Hub 10 ensures that you always have your preferred AI service at your disposal.

What can you expect from integrating AI into your business?

Companies that manage to integrate AI across their business operations will dominate the next decade.

Writing assistance, smart search and meeting scheduling are just a couple of intelligent use cases for implementing AI into your business.

The tools are here — the real challenge is a shift in mindset.

• Can you prioritize what work really matters?
• Can you empower your team to work with AI?
• Can you integrate AI in a way that reflects your values?

AI is not a silver bullet. But then done right, it unlocks growth, scalability, and deeper customer trust.

Getting started with AI: a 3-step plan

To successfully work with AI, start by rethinking your customer experience with clear, specific goals.

In this use case, we will look at how the Nextcloud Assistant offers AI multilingual support, directly from your workspace.

With hundreds of languages available, the Nextcloud Assistant can translate customer service messages directly from your workspace.

This helps you to:

• Enhance the customer experience
• Expand your market reach
• Strengthen brand affinity

Integrating AI into your business can be a challenge — so follow our 3 steps to maximize your time and resources.

1. Pick a small section of your customer journey to improve

Set yourself up for success by identifying a specific area for improvement and gathering the necessary data.

For our example of translating customer service messages for multilingual support, you’ll need:

• Past responses
• Brand guidelines
• Phrases or words to avoid

With this input, the Nextcloud Assistant can tailor its output to your business needs, ensuring results align with your current manual processes.

By using real-world use cases that match the AI’s output, you guarantee brand consistency, offering customer value and avoiding brand dilution.

2. Check and refine the Nextcloud Assistant’s output

Feed the Nextcloud Assistant your data to generate a translation.

Tools like the Nextcloud Assistant work seamlessly in the background, freeing you from other tasks.

Once you receive the output, review and refine it. Does the messaging match your brand style? Will it achieve the desired outcome?

For example, verify the accuracy and tone of your messages with the Nextcloud Assistant features «Context Chat», «Reformulate text», or “Change tone”.

Alternatively, start small. Instead of translating all messages at once, perfect one translation first and use it as a template for others.

3. Check and iterate regularly

While AI models such as Nextcloud Assistant enables you to execute everyday tasks faster than ever, you need to be agile and have an open mind to ensure long-term quality.

The AI-generated messaging system is not a “set and forget” tool. It needs human oversight to remain relevant.

Once you have set up your translated messages for customer support, you will have to monitor the results and improve the output.

Collect feedback from customers to refine your messages and enhance your support performance.

Over time, these adjustments drive innovation, ensuring your AI strategy builds trust and delivers global value.

Nextcloud Assistant: integrating AI, the smart way

These AI-driven improvements make customers feel heard and valued — giving your company a competitive edge.

However, providing multilingual customer support is just one example of the Nextcloud Assistant’s many smart applications.

Other use cases include summarizing emails, adapting the tone of voice of customer messages, scheduling emails, or automating calendar appointments.

All while keeping your data secure, under your control, and out of the hands of Big Tech.