Top 8 Examples of Profitable AI Business Ideas

Most users of generative AI think of it as a “content generation” tool. While that’s the most popular use case, it’s not the only one. AI has made huge strides across industries, including music and entertainment, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, software development, and more.

Here’s a cross-section of artificial intelligence business ideas to pique your interest, no matter what industry you’re in.

1. Personalized fitness and nutrition plans

Personalization is one of the most powerful tasks AI can perform. It can study trends, understand input, and personalize the output at scale. The first AI business example leverages this capability.

AI-powered fitness and nutrition apps tailor health and wellness practices for each user based on their age, gender, activity level, health goals, and dietary preferences. These apps can:

• Recommend meal and exercise plans
• Suggest lifestyle changes
• Coach users through habit-forming exercises
• Help you quit smoking or other unhealthy habits
• Remind users to take their supplements/medications.

Unlike traditional fitness apps, AI-powered apps can adapt to the user’s changing needs and lifestyle. For example, if the user has reached their weight goal, the app can automatically change the workouts to maintain the current state.

2. Predictive Maintenance for Manufacturing Plants

AI is increasing the impact of the Internet of Things (IoT). AI-driven predictive maintenance solutions use sensors and devices to monitor industrial equipment. Based on the collected data, the AI-based predictive maintenance application predicts when a machine is likely to fail.

This allows companies to perform maintenance tasks before failures occur, avoiding downtime and costly repairs. This is particularly beneficial for industries such as manufacturing, aviation, and energy, where the cost of equipment failure can run into the millions. However, a predictive maintenance application involves more than just software. It requires a series of networked sensors, which can represent a significant upfront investment. 

3. AI for Travel and Hospitality

Travel companies and hospitality platforms like Airbnb and TripAdvisor have long leveraged AI to create personalized travel experiences for users. AI analyses customer data (preferences, past behaviours, reviews) to suggest personalized travel destinations, accommodations, flights, activities, and restaurants. This helps travellers make decisions quickly and enhances their overall experience.

However, there’s still a lot more work to be done in this space.

Some issues that have not yet been resolved are:

• Destination Decisions: Choosing the right vacation destination based on preferences, seasons, events, costs, and more
• Budgeting and Planning: Planning the entire vacation, including flights, hotel stays, visas, activities, shopping, etc., within the budget
• Group Travel: Balancing the availability, preferences, and needs of multiple people on a group trip
• Contextual recommendations: Suggest events/tours based on season, time of day, location, etc.

Since the travel industry is a competitive space, your best bet is to build enhancements and sell them to multiple organizations. For example, you could build a custom automation solution for a hotel chain that integrates with their ERP.

Kim B, Founder, Kims History Travel

4. AI-Driven Marketing and Advertising

Digital marketing is all about intent and relevance. AI-powered advertising software can optimize this by delivering highly targeted ads, product recommendations, and marketing messages.

• Predictive emails: AI tools can send personalized emails to users at the right time, based on their interactions with your products across channels.
• Time-limited offers: IoT devices can identify a customer entering a store and offer timely discounts to encourage impulse purchases.
• Personalized Catalogs: AI can create personalized catalogs of products that a customer might like on your massive e-commerce website.
• Contextual advertising: AI can process large amounts of data to present ads based on customer preferences and browsing context.
• Time-specific notifications: Mobile apps can integrate AI tools to deliver notifications at the right time and in the right language to influence user behaviour.

In addition to building AI products, you also have the opportunity to become a niche AI ​​marketing technology agency for specific clients. You can create AI marketing solutions tailored to their needs. For example, you can build a bot to track the performance of certain keywords or generate reports on market developments, creating products that give them a competitive advantage.

5. AI and Gaming Industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way we experience games. AI can also learn from how players play. It watches the choices players make and adjusts the game’s difficulty accordingly. This ensures that players stay engaged without feeling like the game is too easy or too hard. Games can be challenging yet enjoyable for everyone.  However, there’s still a lot more work to be done. For example, to make the game’s world feel more realistic and alive, developers can use AI to change the environment based on the player’s actions. They can design games, where weather can shift, or the game world might change to reflect the story. That will make the game more immersive and exciting.

Stephen Dove, CEO, CMO, Games Latest News

6. AI-Driven Agricultural Solutions

AI has the potential to play a critical role in modernizing agriculture. AI-powered systems can analyse data from soil sensors, weather forecasts, and satellite imagery to optimize agriculture on multiple fronts.

Some of the main AI use cases are:

• Recommendations on when and how much to water crops
• Suggestions for when to plant or harvest
• Strategies for managing pests
• Data-driven decisions on farm management and farmer productivity

As an AI product, you have the option to charge a subscription fee directly to farmers. However, in this market, you can also create a B2B model by partnering with NGOs or community organizations for revenue-sharing models.

7. AI-based smart home management

Smart home management is one of the fastest-growing sectors in AI. Big companies like Google Nest and Samsung SmartThings are creating solutions to manage everything from temperature control to lighting and security.

Some of the most compelling use cases in home management are:

• Manage devices by turning them on and off remotely.
• Customize lighting colour, warmth, and brightness
• Optimize energy usage and efficiency by automatically adjusting or turning off appliances that are not in use.
• Monitor for unusual activity and alert owners to potential threats.

Typically, smart home apps are sold by the device manufacturer.

For example, if Samsung or Xiaomi manufacture robotic refrigerators or vacuum cleaners, they also provide a mobile app to control them.

Business Tip: If you are building an AI-based home management system, it would be a good idea to partner with device manufacturers or implementation companies to bundle your products with them.

8. AI-powered fashion recommendations

One of the biggest challenges in e-commerce is returns. Customers buy products to try out and return those that don’t fit. Worse still, products like makeup that can’t be returned—even if they’re not the right fit—create buyer’s remorse.

AI-powered fashion apps aim to solve this very problem. Here are some app ideas you can create.

• Size Recommendations: Based on a customer’s stated sizes, past purchases, and product information, make accurate recommendations with AI.
• Virtual Try-On: For products like shoes, lipstick, clothes, etc., use AI and virtual reality applications to allow users to try on products virtually before buying.
• Reference Books: Using the customer’s purchase history, recommend accessories that pair well with their current wardrobe.

With all this data, your AI product can also predict future fashion trends, helping retailers stay ahead of the competition. Just make sure you get user consent before using it.

Conclusion:

Since the launch of ChatGPT and similar large language models (LLMs), AI is everywhere.

Every workplace tool and productivity platform now has AI. Apple integrates Artificial Intelligence into iOS and macOS, and AI-first tools are emerging across industries and use cases.

However, we are just at the beginning of a huge opportunity in the AI ​​market. As the next generation of software products, AI startups will redefine the business of technology. If you want a piece of this pie, it’s time to develop your best AI business ideas ahead of the competition.