Want to start a business? AI can help, business owners say

New artificial intelligence tools are making it easier to start a business, fueling entrepreneurship and potentially job growth. AI can write a business plan, conduct in-depth industry research, generate marketing content , design logos, prototype new products, and otherwise help launch or scale up a new enterprise, said Chris Franco, an entrepreneur who has used AI extensively in growing his New York-based marketing and customer acquisition firm, Woodridge Growth. "You can do anything you can imagine. There's nothing holding you back," he told CBS News. "There's no excuse not to start a business in this age." In recent years, new business formation across the U.S. has surged to its highest level ever, according to Census Bureau data. Solo founders are driving much of that growth, according to an analysis of Census data from Stripe Economics. AI is slashing the cost of starting and running a business, said Torsten Slok, chief economist at asset management firm Apollo Global Management. "That's because you can more easily write a business plan with a large language model, use agents to do work, so that's likely the reason the economy is becoming more dynamic for entrepreneurs," he added. …