AI in trade businesses: where the tools help in the office and where the limits lie

In a snap survey of around 300 businesses conducted by the Münster Chamber of Crafts (Handwerkskammer Münster) in early 2026, 53 per cent said they were already using AI or were planning or considering its use. About a third actively work with it day to day. AI is used mainly in administration, marketing and customer communication. The businesses cited a lack of knowledge and training opportunities, as well as data protection and data security, as obstacles.

What AI tools are good for in everyday business

From a few bullet points, a language model can write a clear specification of work or the cover letter for a quote. The costing still belongs in your trade software. Language models are unreliable at calculations and occasionally produce figures that sound plausible but are wrong. You should therefore check quantities, measurements and prices yourself before sending anything.

For site documentation, many apps convert spoken notes into text and assign photos to the job. However, speech recognition mixes up numbers and technical terms, and a site diary with incorrect measurements is no help to anyone in a dispute.

AI can pre-sort incoming customer enquiries and add draft replies. As soon as appointments, prices or defects are involved, a human should send them.

Customer data does not belong in every tool

Names, addresses and photos from someone's home are personal data. If employees enter them into a cloud service, the provider generally processes them on behalf of the business. This requires a data processing agreement under Art. 28 DSGVO. Whether a provider offers such an agreement and whether it uses input to train its models is set out in its terms and conditions. In practice, this means using a business account with a data processing agreement or removing customer data before entering it.

Images from AI generators

Under § 2 Abs. 2 UrhG, only personal intellectual creations are protected. According to the prevailing view, an image generated largely autonomously by a program does not meet this criterion, but the question has not been settled by the highest courts. It is therefore likely to be difficult to prevent others from using such an image. Whether commercial use is permitted is governed by the tool's licence terms. Only real photos are suitable as references for your own work.

AI literacy has been mandatory since February 2025

Art. 4 of the AI Act has applied since 2 February 2025. Anyone who uses an AI system professionally is a deployer within the meaning of the Regulation and must take measures to ensure, to the best of their ability, that employees have a sufficient level of AI literacy. The Regulation does not prescribe a particular form of training, but the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) recommends documenting the measures. A practical starting point is a short written policy on which tools are permitted and which data must not be entered into them, plus an introductory briefing with the date and a list of participants.

Addendum (November 2026): Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 weakened Art. 4 in July 2026. Businesses must now take measures to support the AI literacy of their staff, but no longer have to ensure a particular level. The obligation itself remains in place.