EVENTS
Expert panel- the Tees Business LIVE event featured( from left) Circle Cloud’ s Tom Roberton, Durata’ s Lewis Cobb, Ryze’ s David Smith and Peter Wilcock from Latos.
PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH
Tees Business LIVE: November 19, 2025
RIVERSIDE STADIUM, MIDDLESBROUGH
IN ASSOCIATION WITH RYZE AGENCY
RAISING YOUR GAME
How AI can help your business: tips offered by expert panel
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show of hands suggested there’ s still some way to go to integrate AI into the business world.
But after most delegates at the latest Tees Business LIVE event indicated they needed to learn more about it, a panel of experts gave valuable advice on how to raise their AI game.
More than 100 delegates attended Boro’ s Riverside Stadium for the AIthemed Tees Business LIVE event, organised by Tees Business in association with leading Stockton-based digital and brand specialist Ryze Agency.
To discuss the topic of AI in business, a four-strong panel of experts was assembled: Circle Cloud MD Tom Roberton, vice-president for sales and marketing at AI data centre firm Latos Peter Wilcock, head of modular data centre projects at Durata Lewis Cobb, and founder and CEO of Ryze David Smith.
And all four were happy to lift the lid on how they use AI – and recommend more savvy ways for Tees businesses to use it too.
An initial show of hands indicated around three-quarters of those attending actively used AI in their day-to-day business – although nearly 100 % said they would like to know more.
And David felt that“ obvious” AI
6 | Tees Business
tools such as Chat GPT weren’ t to be underestimated.
He said:“ One thing it helps with is to get an idea or something off the ground, instead of going from a complete standing start.
“ It speeds up the process of thought and then, at the end of it, it can help you refine it, prove it or quality check it, as opposed to running it by someone else or relying on yourself.
“ We use it throughout some of the more remedial things we do. We used to manually comp a background into an image because you have to make it bigger or go outside of what was actually captured, but AI is able to come in and speed up that process.”
Tom Roberton said at Circle Cloud, which prides itself on quickly fixing clients’ cybersecurity issues, AI helps recommend and match the most appropriate team member to a particular task.
And he urged businesses to find out more about AI for themselves, saying:“ Go and understand the different types of AI that are out there.
“ People can get intimidated by it, thinking they need to learn, technically, how it works, but you don’ t.
“ Just scour and understand the different types of AI that are available and what they do, not how they do it.“ You’ ll know your business better than anyone. You’ ll start spotting opportunities, because at the minute, everyone thinks AI is just language models and Chat GPT, but there’ s vision, there’ s document processing and there are different things it can do.”
Peter Wilcock of Latos said AI could help inform investment decisions.
He said:“ The problem with your own business is you talk about it like it’ s your child and, unfortunately, nobody cares about your child, so you have to talk about somebody else’ s child, and I find it really useful for that.
“ Otherwise, I’ ve got to go and find a world-class hedge fund manager in New York.”
And Durata’ s Lewis Cobb pointed out that even those who thought they weren’ t currently using AI probably were.
He added:“ I use it for boosting performance. I forget things all the time, so the ability to have a copilot, which basically tells me what I’ ve got to do that day, or how I’ ve got to do things and in what order, or to fill in the gaps when I’ m writing reports for clients or proposals, things I don’ t miss out, that’ s where I’ m using it.
“ It becomes a buddy, and that’ s how you need to look at it.”
Tees Business LIVE events are delivered by Tees Business in association with series partner the North East Chamber of Commerce.