Pub & Bar 

The use of AI is becoming increasingly unavoidable in the modern workplace and its proficiency and range of uses is swiftly expanding. Whilst the AI opportunities for pubs and bars are plentiful, but there are also potential pitfalls to be aware of.

AI presents plenty of opportunities for pubs and bars and has the potential to make life easier for owners, operators and staff, and improve the overall operation of a venue.

Whilst some pubs and bars are making use of AI internally to make their onboarding of new employees slicker, or for staff scheduling their national teams, most visible use of AI is ‘customer facing’. AI has been used to develop marketing materials and social media posts. Some pubs and bars are using AI to tailor advertisements to a specific individual’s social media accounts or through email marketing. It is also becoming quite common for businesses in these industries to use Chatbots for reservations and queries to improve customer experience.

The integration of these systems makes customer experience more uniform, makes it easier it easier to manage administrative tasks and, reduces internal and third-party costs.  However, there are risks that businesses should be aware of when using AI or material generated by AI. Venues should have a clear understanding of their relationship with their AI service provider. The “wine making” diagram below helps explain where the risks lie.

The above emphasises the importance of pubs and bars reviewing their AI user terms and conditions to ensure that they are not falling foul of any data privacy or GDPR issues, and more importantly, if venues want to ensure retention of their IP and confidential information.

Missteps with AI can occur when using sensitive customer data, that may have been given to a chatbot or   retained for marketing purposes. Similarly, pubs and bars may feed in their trade marks, images or text that they have used to develop their web content with a view to obtaining marketing material and content. When this content is submitted, subject to the AI software being used, there is a risk that this material may no longer belong to the venue, and it will have no say in where it goes, who has access to it, or how it is used by third parties.

Rather than reacting to an issue or risk arising, venues should take charge of how AI is being used internally by its business; this could be by updating contracts with AI usage clauses so that employees are aware of the parameters of their usage, and separately by having an internal governance process. For businesses to protect their IP whilst using AI we would encourage venues to review their IP portfolios and seek trade mark registrations for IP that they are looking to protect such as slogans, logos or labels that meet the legal requirements. This will reduce the grey area around ownership of content put into AI software.

To-do list

• Review the agreement with the AI service provider to ensure ownership of IP that is processed through AI;

• Review your IP portfolio and consider if there is anything that can registered as a trade mark;

• Ensure employees understand how AI is being used and are trained in how to safely and effectively use it themselves.

Q&A

The tour starts at 8pm in Argentina on the 20 June and runs to the 2 August. The 3 test matches against the Wallabies all have a UK kick of time of 11am and are on Saturdays. Worth considering whether you want to open earlier and do brunch packages for people to book and use TENs if needed to extend the morning hours. Showing live sport does not require a licence to show films, but if you put TV’s in gardens do check there are no conditions preventing having speakers outside. 

This article was first published in Pub & Bar.