Southwest Florida businesses expand use of AI tools

As global firms pour hundreds of billions into artificial intelligence infrastructure, the industry’s message is clear: Use AI or be left behind.

That message has not been lost on Southwest Florida businesses.

Over the last several years, AI adoption among professionals has been widespread but uneven, ranging from experimentation with chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to companywide enterprise systems.

“There is tremendous demand from businesses not just to get started but to really integrate AI into their daily workflows,” says Mark Bole, a Florida Gulf Coast University entrepreneurship instructor and faculty fellow for the school’s Ain Technology & Design Hub. 

Area businesses report using an expanding number of AI tools, including rapidly proliferating AI “agents” programmed to provide autonomous, personalized services.

Early this year, Naples-based Dragon Horse Agency launched an agentic AI platform designed to help businesses execute marketing and development strategies. Its Director of AI Valev Laube said AI agents can handle structured analysis and repetitive workflow tasks, helping businesses improve efficiency.

Marketing professionals are also using strategies to help clients appear in AI-based search engine results. That includes loading websites with detailed descriptions and multimedia content to which AI is known to respond. But AI summaries draw heavily on customer reviews, too, meaning traditional search engine optimization and word-of-mouth marketing still matter online.

“We have found that originality and genuine value are the true differentiators,” says Manny Gonzalez, senior director of web for Fort Myers-based Priority Marketing. “Search engines don’t buy from our clients, people do.”

An AI education sector propelled by e-learning startups such as Naples-based Writing.io has also emerged.

AI software “is spilling into almost every industry — and accelerating,” says Kevin Fleming, Writing.io founder and CEO. “Everything from drug development to product design, movie production to inventory management.”

As an AI business consultant, Bole said Southwest Florida real estate agents have been quick to adopt AI technology; writers, attorneys, coders and artists are among many other professionals using AI in various ways.

But even for AI experts in 2026, the technology remains experimental; industry best practices suggest AI responses are only as good as the prompts users provide. On the other hand, Bole said some of his less polished prompts have produced more interesting answers and sparked new ideas.

“You don’t know,” he says. “There’s no manual. You just have to experiment.”

Users say AI efficiently handles rote tasks such as spreadsheets and database analysis while also assisting with research, summarization and multimedia creation, often in a fraction of the time required by human professionals, even if the output can still appear recognizably artificial.

Not for everyone

For some businesses, AI’s transformative promises remain overstated. Surveys by Gartner suggest many clients feel pressured to adopt AI even when they doubt the investment is worthwhile.

“Our Gartner users basically are coming back in surveys saying that they’re not seeing a return on investment,” says Executive Partner Drew Doolin, a strategic adviser focused on crisis management, logistics and operational planning. “There is a lot of money being thrown at AI. And there are some efficiencies that are real, that are being realized. But from a CFO perspective, they’re not seeing the benefit yet financially. There’s a lot of hype, let’s say that. It’s supercharged hype on AI.”

In a LinkedIn post, Doolin said companies often abandoned generative AI projects because of “poor data quality, insufficient risk controls, rising costs and unclear business value.”

Other companies found more value in combining AI solutions with nongenerative machine-learning tools such as e-commerce recommendation engines or fraud detection systems.

Gartner also predicts an uptick in legal claims stemming from automated AI failures in “high-stakes sectors like healthcare, finance and public safety.”

Developing utility

Hype or not, some companies are going all in with enterprise AI services that offer greater data protection, processing power and other benefits — for a price.

“The cost is real,” says Brett Diamond, CAO and principal for Naples-based construction management firm DeAngelis Diamond. “Once you are running it at full capability across an organization, the bills add up fast. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it subscription. You must manage it intentionally.”

In 2025, Diamond launched Future Bylt, a tech company using AI, robotics and other capabilities for aerial site logistics and layout accuracy. As AI technology improved over the last year, Diamond said the company accelerated its use.

“The benchmark on the models has accelerated with new features being released weekly,” he says.

The company continues to use AI for tasks such as analyzing bids and comparing proposals. More recently, it deployed enterprise AI agents that help build custom web applications, delivering faster results for clients and partners. Diamond also instituted an AI ethics policy that team members must agree to before using the company’s AI agent.

Meanwhile, academics are training the next generation of AI-literate students, sometimes in partnership with tech companies.

In 2025, FGCU founded Dendritic as a regional resource for AI literacy and research. This year, Microsoft awarded FGCU assistant professor of computing and data science Vinod Ahuja a $45,000 TechSpark Fellowship to support the initiative. 

FGCU senior Alexis Figueroa-Baltazar, who is studying construction management, uses Togal.AI. The program assists with construction’s “takeoff” process by analyzing lengthy construction documents to estimate the types and quantities of materials needed for a project, he said.

“I always like to say [AI] is strictly a tool,” says Figueroa-Baltazar, 21. “As much as I wish it could dream and build a house for me, it’s not exactly there yet.”