Important points
AI tools for work span several categories, including knowledge management, project management, communication and collaboration, content creation, and image generation.
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AI tools for work include options such as Notion AI, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Asana, Zapier, Fireflies.ai, Otter AI, Grammarly, Jasper, and Canva AI.
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According to Microsoft and LinkedIn’s 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, 75% of knowledge workers (professionals with extensive experience and knowledge bases that contribute to their success) use generative AI in their work. [1]the most reported uses are saving time, prioritizing work, and increasing creativity.
Read this article to explore 24 AI tools for work across major categories and learn how each tool can help increase productivity and streamline your workflow. To build core AI skills for your career and get the credentials you need on your resume, consider enrolling in the Google AI Professional Certification on Coursera. In just 8 hours, learn how to apply AI tools to essential and transferable skills such as data analysis, communication, and research.
Understanding AI productivity tools starts with understanding what AI can do for you. Different tools are suitable for different tasks. For example, some AI tools are specifically designed to assist with data analysis, while others can create visual content based on written requests. Others can transcribe notes and automatically put together a presentation based on a set of information.
According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of AI report, here are the specific impacts AI will have on the lives of professionals. [2]:
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By using generative AI, marketing professionals save an average of more than two hours per day.
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75% of marketers report that AI and automation can reduce the time they spend on manual tasks like data entry and scheduling.
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47% of marketers are using AI for email marketing and newsletters, and 82% of them report positive ROI.
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38% of marketers use AI to create long-form content such as articles and blog posts.
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Spend less time on manual tasks and more time on value-added tasks.
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Increased efficiency and creativity
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Improving your ability to make data-driven business decisions
With these benefits in mind, you’ll find the most value in AI tools that can reduce the time you spend on everyday tasks like managing email, assigning tasks to team members, creating collaborative documents, and organizing to-do lists. Read on to learn more about the practical applications of AI productivity tools.
Find AI tools to help you manage the big picture of your entire workflow, or take advantage of specialized solutions to help you manage specific tasks. Find AI tools for work that help with knowledge management, project management, collaboration and communication, content creation, image generation, and more. Within these categories, you can find a wide range of and specific tools that will help you increase your daily tasks.
Before using an AI tool, it’s important to review your company’s AI usage guidelines and follow the rules regarding inputting sensitive company information into an AI tool or large-scale language model.
1. Expert AI assistant for knowledge management
You can train AI models on your company’s data, files, or applications like your email inbox. Popular large-scale language models, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, use information available on the Internet to provide answers to questions or generate text. You can apply these and other models to your company’s information to create chatbot experts that talk about your company’s data the same way you talk to your colleagues.
For example, Bloomberg is a financial news and data media company. The company has created an AI agent called Bloomberg GPT that uses all the content Bloomberg has published over the years to provide useful information in a chatbot-style tool. Users can be confident that the AI model will return vetted and trusted information from Bloomberg, rather than pulling data from elsewhere on the internet.
AI tools for knowledge management include:
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Concept AI: Notion AI provides a workspace where you can create documents and store and organize information. AI agents are trained on files and data to help you conversationally find information, generate text, analyze data, and more.
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Microsoft CoPilot: By integrating Microsoft Copilot with other Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, AI becomes your company’s data expert, helping you with a wide range of organization, automation, and optimization tasks.
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Moveworks co-pilot: Moveworks is a platform that understands your data and files and uses a set of tools and integrations to provide expert advice, automation, and collaboration resources.
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Google Gemini: Google’s Gemini model can be integrated across apps within Google Workspace to add conversational insights and functionality. For example, you can ask Google to track key topics in your email inbox or summarize conversations across multiple email threads.
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Chat GPT: You can use your company’s data and information to fine-tune ChatGPT and provide answers and responses based on that information. For example, you can ask an AI model to write a blog post based on your marketing plan.
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Claude: Claude is another option for integration into a variety of other applications and allows you to train models based on corporate data. It stands out from the competition with its large context window, which allows the model to consider more data before answering the prompt.
2. AI tools for project management
Using AI tools for project management allows you to break down projects into manageable tasks, track where you spend your time, plan how you will spend your time in the future, and collaborate with other professionals. You can also find project management tools that focus on specific tasks, such as scheduling.
Project management and workflow automation
Examples of project management platforms with AI tools include Asana, Zoho Projects, Zapier, and AI Agent. Learn more about these platforms below.
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Asana: Asana is a project management platform that uses AI to help you understand and manage project risk, see your company’s past performance, and set smart goals for the next quarter.
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Zoho projects: This project management platform includes conversational AI agents that help you plan, track, and manage tasks and collaborate with others in your company.
AI tools for scheduling
AI scheduling tools help you manage your calendar and find time to get more done. Three tools that can help you manage your schedule include Reclaim, Clockwise, and Motion.
3. AI tools for communication and collaboration
AI tools provide a variety of resources that you can use to enhance your company’s communication and collaboration. First, consider tools to create beautiful and engaging presentations. Now let’s take a look at how chatbots and text generators can help increase your productivity. Finally, explore AI tools for work to get more out of your meetings with note-takers and transcribers.
AI tools for presentations
Some of the AI tools you can implement to create presentations include Decktopus, Beautiful AI, and Slides AI.
Note takers and transcribers
AI tools can also help make meetings more productive by automatically transcribing and summarizing the topics discussed. Fireflies.ai, Otter AI, and Descript are examples of AI tools that can be used in this way.
4. AI tools for content creation
You can also create content using text generators such as ChatGPT or Gemini, but these general models are suitable for a variety of tasks. AI tools that specialize in content writing, such as Jasper and Grammarly, can help you add the functionality you need and the workspace to integrate generative AI into your regular writing process.
5. AI image generator
You can also use AI tools to help you create images, whether you need marketing content like social media images, photos for blog posts, content for presentations, or other visuals for your team or executive team. DALL⬝E, Midjourney, and Canva AI are all examples of AI image generators.
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