Square Adds Conversational AI Assistant to Business Technology Platform

Square has launched a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that can answer sellers’ questions about how to use Square’s business technology platform and about trends in their own business.

The AI assistant, Square AI, is available now in public beta for all sellers in the U.S. and is integrated into the Square Dashboard, the company said in a Tuesday (June 3) blog post.

“Our goal is to give each seller their own virtual employee that knows every bit of their business,” Willem Avé, global head of product at Square, said in the post.

When asked questions about using the platform, the AI assistant searches its knowledge base and provides step-by-step instructions, according to the post.

To answer questions about the seller’s business, Square AI uses the seller’s relevant data within Square to provide the answer. It can answer questions about sales, customers, staff and transactions, enabling sellers to optimize staff hours, identify slow-moving inventory, maximize top sellers and recognize top customers, the post said.

The company will expand these capabilities throughout the year, per the post.

“We believe the best data exploration is conversational,” Avé said in the post. “We want to enable sellers’ curiosity to understand different parts of their business.”

The AI is also built to protect sellers’ data, according to the post. To protect the data within the business, the AI assistant is only available for account owners and administrators. In addition, Square never sends sensitive information to model providers or partners, and it ensures no data processed by third-party companies is retained outside of Square systems or used for any type of training, the post said.

“With Square AI, sellers can trust that their data is protected by the same security infrastructure that safeguards billions of Square transactions,” Avé said in the post.

This new feature joins several AI-powered tools Square added to its platform in the past, including AI-generated product descriptions and AI-generated backgrounds for websites.

Block, the parent company of Square, Cash App and Afterpay, has been working on an internal AI initiative called “goose” that it describes as an “agentic system.” The company aims to make it the universal interface for Block’s employees and eventually its customers.

“By the end of this year, goose will act as a personal CFO for consumers and a COO for sellers,” Block CEO Jack Dorsey said May 1 during the company’s quarterly earnings call.