The weeks leading up to Mother’s Day can be chaotic, and floral professionals, who are often short staffed, need all the help they can get. Enter: Artificial intelligence.

This year, floral pros are turning to AI to help customers write card messages and even script clever marketing emails.

Sam Bowles used ChatGPT to encourage Mother’s Day sales at the San Diego flower shop he manages. The general manager and creative director of Allen’s Flowers tasked the program with creating a poem that encouraged customers to place advance orders. He emailed the finished product to his customers:

Roses are red,/Violets are blue,/Ordering flowers early,/Is the best thing to do.

Mother’s Day is coming,/And flowers are great,/So don’t wait until the last minute,/Or you might forget and be late.

Ordering ahead of time,/Will make sure mom feels grand,/And ensure her bouquet,/Is just as you planned.

So don’t procrastinate,/Or you might regret,/Order you mom’s flowers now,/And you’ll never forget.

“I never would have sat down and attempted to come up with something like that from scratch,” says Bowles. “I mean, not that it’s brilliant poetry, but it takes time to rhyme and be cheesy.”

1-800-FLOWERS.COM., Inc. is also leveraging AI. The company recently developed and introduced a tool that composes personalized poems or songs based on user input. The tool, MomVerse, is powered by ChatGPT.

MomVerse enables users to select from genres such as poem, haiku, or song. Next, users select the recipient along with three of the recipient’s interests or characteristics.

Chassie Post, a 1-800-FLOWERS.COM customer in New York, recently tasked MomVerse with composing a poem for her mother, Lulu.

“It would have been a challenge for me to compose a Mother’s Day missive that seamlessly expressed my mom’s love for her pup, Nottie, the crooner Michael Feinstein, and the phrase ‘Not to worry,’ but it was no challenge for MomVerse,” says Post, who shared the following poem:

Lulu loves her pup Nottie,/always by her side with ease./“Michael Feinstein’s tunes are so jazzy!”/Not to worry, Nottie agrees.

“She got such a kick out of her Mother’s Day poem,” says Post. “I almost didn’t tell her that I got an AI assist.”

That reaction is exactly what the creators of MomVerse had in mind. Jason John, chief marketing officer of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, says the company wanted to use the technology to build relationships with their customers while helping them connect with their loved ones.

“People often do have a hard time coming up with the right words to express themselves,” says John.

It took a team six to eight weeks to develop MomVerse, which works on both computers and smart phones. MomVerse is free to use, with no purchase required.

While MomVerse was developed for Mother’s Day, John says the software may be modified and rebranded for non-holiday use, or pared down to create shorter, simpler messages on the website’s card section, he says. Whatever the future of MomVerse, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM will continue to experiment with AI such as ChatGPT to see how it can serve as a tool for the company and its customers.

“AI has been, and will continue to be, a component of our strategy moving forward,” says John. “Our success using this new technology as a customer engagement opportunity for Mother’s Day will encourage us to utilize similar functionality for everyday occasions and more, as we continue to help customers find new and creative ways to express themselves and connect with those they love.”

Want to learn how to leverage AI in your business? SAF is featuring sessions on AI at two SAF events in 2023: Next Gen LIVE! and SAF Phoenix 2023.

Laurie Herrera is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.