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17 min readThe best AI productivity tools in 2024
These 38 AI apps will help you work faster—and better.
As the dust settles on last year's AI storm, ChatGPT is just one of hundreds of powerful tools in the game. From new intelligent features on apps you already love, to entirely new platforms with jaw-dropping functionality, there's an AI-powered solution to nearly every productivity problem.
I've been playing around with AI tools for a while now, and I've continued to update this list with lots of research and testing from me and the team at Zapier. With that, here are 37 AI productivity tools that will change the way you work.
The best AI productivity tools by category
Chatbots ( ChatGPT, Claude, Bing AI, Zapier Central)
Content creation ( Jasper, Copy.ai, Anyword)
Grammar checkers and rewording tools ( Grammarly, Wordtune, ProWritingAid)
Video creation and editing ( Descript, Wondershare Filmora, Runway)
Image generation ( DALL·E 3, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion)
Voice and music generation ( Murf, Splash Pro, AIVA)
Knowledge management and AI grounding ( Mem, Notion AI Q&A, Personal AI)
Task and project management ( Asana, Any.do, BeeDone)
Transcription and meeting assistants ( Fireflies, Airgram, Krisp)
Scheduling ( Reclaim, Clockwise, Motion)
Email inbox management ( SaneBox, Mailbutler, EmailTree)
Slide decks and presentations ( Decktopus, Beautiful.ai, Slidesgo)
Automation ( Zapier)
Other AI productivity tools
Zapier Chatbots lets you create custom AI chatbots and take action with built-in automation—no coding required. Try the to-do list bot template, so you can start breaking down goals into actionable tasks.
How I selected the best AI productivity app in each category
My AI app database is at 270 entries right now. I'm absolutely sure there are way more out there, with many new apps being launched every week.
Full transparency: I've had a chance to take a look at most of them, but I haven't tested them all (yet). The list you're about to see contains a collection of great AI productivity tools tested by Zapier's app review team, myself included. If there's a particular category you like, check out the best apps lists we've put together for them—or if we're still in the process of writing that list, run a quick Google search to find more options.
While all these apps are getting better every day, they're far from perfect: be sure to always check AI's work with your human brain. With that being said, please keep all hands and legs inside the vehicle—it's time to explore.
1. AI chatbots
The best place to start is the category that brought AI to the mainstream. AI chatbots allow you to chat with an AI large language model, letting you ask questions and get answers in a conversational style. The best chatbots use advanced reasoning and logic, write code, and make mathematical calculations.
Take a look at the full list of chatbots in our article on the best AI chatbots.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the current industry leader, and the first chatbot that set the scene on fire. It's powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 and GPT-4 models, and it's surprisingly flexible and very easy to use. Learn how to use ChatGPT, understand how it works, and discover how to use it to write marketing copy, do market research, or write sales emails.
When you connect ChatGPT to Zapier, you can automate ChatGPT, so you can access the power of the AI chatbot from within any of your favorite apps.
Create Notion tasks using ChatGPT conversations generated from new Slack reactions
Start a conversation with ChatGPT when a prompt is posted in a particular Slack channel
Claude
Anthropic's safe and creative chatbot, Claude has impressive memory: it can remember up to 150,000 words in each conversation. This makes it useful to have long, step-by-step discussions of a problem or to upload a PDF and ask questions.
You can connect Claude to thousands of other apps using Zapier too. Learn more about how to automate Claude, or get started with one of these pre-make workflows.
Create blog posts based on keywords with Claude and save in Google Sheets
Send AI-generated responses in Slack
Generate summaries of online articles with Claude and send to Slack
Bing AI (Microsoft Copilot)
Microsoft's close relationship with OpenAI was a positive step to Bing Search: it can search the web and generate answers based on the results. It's also connected to DALL·E 3, so if you ask for images, you'll get four visual variations of your prompt. Microsoft is bringing all its AI features into a single name— Microsoft Copilot—so look out for that rebranding across its product line.
Zapier Central
Zapier Central is an experimental AI workspace where you can teach bots to work across thousands of apps. But the interface is a chatbot, which means that creating your own AI agent is as simple as using ChatGPT.
Tell your bot what to do when it's triggered, how to process or summarize data, and which actions it should take. You can trigger behaviors on demand, when new data comes through any app in your tech stack, or when you use a specific keyword in a message to the bot.
It's AI chat, automation, and data analysis all in one place. Learn more about Zapier Central, and then get started for free.
2. AI apps for content creation
Entire movies have been made about writer's block. These apps are here to break it. By entering your prompts, starting from templates, or using recipes, you can use AI models as a co-writer, helping you put together first drafts faster.
Browse all the possibilities in our list of the best AI writing generators.
Jasper
Jasper is a powerful AI content creation platform, favoring users who need a high volume of content. It packs dozens of templates to help you get started, connects to the internet to find research and sources, and also lets you generate images with AI. All your content creation needs are covered here.
You can also connect Jasper to thousands of other apps using Zapier. Learn more about how to automate Jasper or try one of the pre-built workflows below.
Create product descriptions in Jasper from new or updated Airtable records
Create Jasper blog posts from new changes to specific column values in monday.com and save the text in Google Docs documents
Run Jasper commands and send Slack channel messages with new pushed messages in Slack
Copy.ai
Copy.ai is a slower-paced option, acting as a writing co-pilot. Each of your prompts generates a list of options, and it's up to you to pull the best ones into your document. This is better for writing tasks that require more ideation and iteration, such as copywriting.
Find out how more in our Jasper vs Copy.ai comparison. Copy.ai also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically sending content to your CMS or enriching leads straight from your CRM. Learn more about how to automate Copy.ai, or try one of the pre-built workflows below.
Add new blog posts created with Copy.ai to Webflow
Anyword
Anyword helps marketers create content by breaking the generation process down step by step. First, you add your prompt to generate a few titles. Then, you can pick your favorite and see a generated outline. Once you tweak that outline to what you want to cover, you can move forward to generating the final piece.
3. AI apps for text enhancement
Spell-checking has been around for a long time, but AI is changing the game. Before, it only detected spelling and basic structure errors. Now, it can spot tone and complex language and offer suggestions to make your writing clearer.
Discover all the available apps in our list of the best grammar checkers and rewording tools.
Grammarly
Grammarly is the mainstream spell- and structure-checking app. It's a complete solution that keeps your English on point, lets you adjust your tone, and suggests shortcuts to simplify wordy or complex phrases. It has plenty of extensions and integrations, so you can use it almost anywhere there's a text box.
It has generative text features, too. Learn how to use them in GrammarlyGO.
Wordtune
Wordtune helps you find plenty of wording alternatives to improve your text. When you input the text you want to check, you can easily browse synonyms, ask to rewrite entire sentences, and adapt the suggestions into a final draft.
ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid is a direct competitor of Grammarly, offering plenty of statistics to help you track grammar, style, and spelling scores. One of the main advantages here is its lifetime plan, helping you leverage all these features without adding a new recurring bill. Find out which is the best for you in our ProWritingAid vs. Grammarly comparison.
4. AI apps for video generation and editing
While full-blown video generation is still coming together, there's already a set of video tools that leverage AI to enhance video, remove backgrounds accurately, and even paint a few new images into each frame.
For the full list, see our picks for the best AI video generators.
Descript
Descript transcribes your videos into a script. Then, instead of using a timeline to trim the audio and video tracks, you edit the text script. As you do so, the video gets trimmed automatically. The rest of the editing works in a similar way, cutting the time to edit your talking head videos. Find out how it simplifies your audiovisual workflows in our walkthrough.
When you connect Descript to Zapier, you can automate the work better suited for computers, so you can focus on the creative side of things. Here are a couple of pre-built workflows to get you started.
Create Descript transcripts from Google Drive files
Save new Descript transcripts as text files in Dropbox
Discover more popular ways to automate Descript.
Wondershare Filmora
Wondershare Filmora has been around for a long time. Now, it also brings to the table a set of AI features that let you remove backgrounds, denoise low-quality clips, and improve sound quality. All this with the classic video editing user experience, so you'll never feel lost.
Runway
Runway is a video magic wand. It has a set of interesting features that helps you generate video with AI, train your own AI models, and paint parts of frames using text prompts. The learning curve is very rewarding, and the app is growing at a great pace. Be sure to check it out.
5. AI apps for image generation
An image is worth a thousand words, but you don't need so many to generate a beautiful one with AI. These image generators take a text prompt and deliver the results—and this can be anywhere between mind-blowing to nightmare-inducing. They're both hugely entertaining and highly useful.
Read more about our picks for the best AI image generators.
DALL·E 3
DALL·E 3 is an image generator by OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. It's very simple to use— it runs in ChatGPT—and it produces interesting results, no matter if you've just started writing image prompts or are already a master. A great choice to begin exploring the realm of AI image generation.
You can connect DALL·E to Zapier to do things like automatically create images from transcripts, chat messages, or any other apps you use. Here are some examples.
Create images with DALL.E based on Slack messages and send as a channel message
Create transcripts of audio files with OpenAI's Whisper
Midjourney
Midjourney is impressive. Anything you throw at it generates incredible results—even if sometimes they're slightly off the mark. The fact that you have to use Discord to access it feels unintuitive at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be spending hours turning your imagination into colorful pixels.
Hit the ground running with our guide for how to use Midjourney, or take a look at how it compares to DALL·E 3.
Stable Diffusion
DreamStudio, powered by the Stable Diffusion AI model, is versatile and offers plenty of controls to help you prompt your way to the results you want. You'll have to invest a bit more time and learn how to control the model, but the reward is well worth it.
Here's how to use Stable Diffusion with DreamStudio, or take a look at how it compares to Midjourney or DALL·E 3.
6. Voice and music generators
YouTubers and other social media creators sometimes struggle to get original assets for their content. Good thing AI is here to (re)mix everything with AI voice generators and AI music generators.
Murf
Short on voiceover talent? Murf offers over 120 voices in 20 languages to turn your text into voice. With simple controls to change pitch, emphasis, and pauses, you'll have a quick way to add narration to your latest social media post or training video.
Splash Pro
Moving on to music generation, Splash Pro is one of the few apps that accepts a text prompt. I recommend you try out the Improve button before sending it—you'll get more interesting results. The engine generates up to five music samples per prompt. If you like one of them, you can either ask for variations or move on to creating the fulll song.
AIVA
AIVA also deals with music, but takes a different approach. Instead of a text prompt, there are three ways you can start generating:
By picking a style, from epic orchestral to cinematic cyberpunk
By chord progression
By uploading an audio reference as inspiration
Once ready, you can edit the result in a timeline editor, adding or removing instrument tracks as you feel your way into the final version.
6. AI apps for knowledge management and grounding
AI is also a powerful search tool. When you connect it to your personal data, workspace, or second brain, it can find anything you need and put it into a natural language answer. Much better than sifting through your notes for hours, right? This is the gist of grounding: keeping an AI model close to your facts—not up there flying with the hallucinations.
Mem
Mem uses AI to tag and connect the notes you take, so you don't have to spend time organizing them. You can just gather bits and pieces of information, store them, and trust that Mem's AI features will keep everything connected and organized. When the time comes to search for those notes, you can browse the automatic tags and use the search bar to find all you wrote about each topic that matters to you.
Keep feeding your intelligent second brain by connecting Mem to Zapier, improving data transmission and opening up more automation opportunities. Here are a few examples to get you started.
Send new starred emails to Mem
Create Mems for new HubSpot deals
Create mems in Mem from new Zendesk tickets
Create mems in Mem from new pushed messages in Slack
Notion AI Q&A
Notion is a strong workspace for organizing your knowledge, but even if you're disciplined, important pages will still fall through the cracks. Not anymore with Notion AI Q&A: grounded on your data, it generates answers and points you to the sources, revealing that lost insight you recorded in a meeting years ago.
You can connect Notion to Zapier to streamline things even more. Learn more about how to automate Notion, or try one of these workflows.
Generate detailed events in Google Calendar from new Notion database items
Send Slack messages for new Notion database items
Generate Google Sheets rows for new items in Notion databases
Personal AI
While Mem and Notion focus on notes and documents, Personal AI focuses on messaging. The data you upload into the app is turned into memory blocks. Then, whenever someone messages you, your personal AI generates a reply based on your data: you can edit the details or tap to send it right away. When you feel your AI model knows enough about you, you can turn on AI Autopilot, which will make others feel like they're talking to a ChatGPT-like version of you.
You can help Personal AI learn about you by connecting it to Zapier and sending it memories from the apps where you spend the most time. Learn more about how to automate Personal AI, or get started with one of these workflows.
Create Personal.ai memories from new Notion database items
Create memories in Personal.ai from new Google Docs documents
Create memories in Personal.ai from new notes in Evernote
8. AI task and project management
When you have a good plan, collaboration and execution is easier. AI can help getting more clarity on what to do, optimize processes, and help you cross every single task off your list.
Asana
A project management heavyweight, Asana adds a wide range of useful AI-powered features. Smart goals use historical data to come up with better goals for the quarter. It identifies project risks and workflow blockers, so you can tackle trouble before it happens. And it provides answers to anything related to your projects, helping you gain more visibility into what is (or isn't) happening.
You can automate Asana even more by connecting it to Zapier, so it can talk to thousands of other apps. Learn more about how to automate Asana, or take a look at these pre-made workflows.
Create Asana tasks from new Google Forms responses
Create Asana tasks from new Calendly events
Create Asana tasks from new Airtable records
Any.do
It's natural not to know the entire task lineup of a project. If you have trouble figuring out all the steps to get from zero to complete, Any.do generates tasks for you. Whenever you're writing them down, you can take a look at AI suggestions and click to enlarge your list.
Connect Any.do to Zapier to automate all your task management processes. Read more about how to automate Any.do, or check out these pre-made workflows.
Add new Google Calendar events to Any.do as tasks
Create tasks in Any.do when new meetings start in Outlook Calendar
Add new Google tasks to Any.do
BeeDone
BeeDone is a quirky option directed at those of us who need a little excitement to get things done (I'm 100% guilty here). Based on principles put forward by Cal Newport and James Clear (among other productivity greats), the app turns boring tasks into little games, offering rewards whenever you move forward. It keeps track of your habits, offers an AI assistant to guide you, and you can spin the Task Roulette if you feel like tackling a random one from your list.
9. AI transcription apps and meeting assistants
Taking notes in meetings may reduce your focus, so why not scrap that activity entirely? AI transcription/meeting assistant apps are great to turn voice into text, letting you browse it later. This will help you be more present in your meetings and, at the same time, be able to thoroughly analyze the transcription later.
Pick your favorite in our lists of the best transcription apps and the best AI meeting assistants.
Fireflies
Fireflies is great to transcribe all your meetings, tracking the conversation topics along the way. It has its own bot called Fred that can handle summarizing the meeting's contents, generating text, and searching through your history to meet your query.
Integrate Fireflies with Zapier to connect Fireflies to thousands of other apps. Here are a couple of examples.
Transcribe audio files in Google Drive with Fireflies.ai
Create Notion pages for new Fireflies.ai meetings
Airgram
Airgram has all the core transcription features too. But it also adds AI data extraction on top of it, helping you extract bits of information, such as currencies, people, or places from unstructured data.
You can integrate Airgram with Zapier to automatically upload meeting notes to the cloud and automate your other meeting workflows. Here are a couple examples of how to get started.
Add new Airgram meetings to Google Drive
Upload new Airgram meetings as files to OneDrive
Krisp
Krisp is actually an audio optimization tool that reduces background noise to help you sound better in meetings. While you can use it to improve your podcast or other important recordings, you can also use it to assist you in your meetings by transcribing everything.
10. AI apps for scheduling
No one loves the back and forth of setting up meetings, or any of the extra work tied to scheduling your work for the day. In an ideal world, you'd just look at your calendar, hop on meetings, and start your tasks at the marked date and time. We're getting closer to that, as AI can already take some trouble out of scheduling your work and your life.
See the full list of the best AI scheduling assistants.
Reclaim
Reclaim does a great job protecting your habits, so you never miss your weekly fitness objectives or your reading targets. More than that, it'll defend the time you need to complete important tasks by rearranging your schedule.
Clockwise
Clockwise is better for teams, promising to save you one hour per week—and to show you that it works, it'll schedule a one-hour break shortly after you start using it. You can adjust the settings to create your ideal day where work, breaks, and meetings live in harmony.
Motion
Motion focuses on project management, helping you keep track of all the tasks you still have to complete. By tweaking each task priority, you'll be telling the AI engine when it should land on the calendar and how to place the other tasks around it.
By connecting Motion to Zapier, you can automatically create new Motion tasks from Slack messages, emails, and any other tool you use at work. Here are a few examples to get you started.
Create Motion tasks from new saved Slack messages
Create Motion tasks from new emails
Create Motion tasks from new Salesforce records
Read more: SkedPal vs. Motion
11. AI apps for email and inbox management
People spend about one month per year managing their work email inbox—no, I didn't make this up. With so many messages to follow up on, it can feel like email is driving you away from what really moves your work forward. You can start cutting the admin time here by using an AI email assistant to categorize, generate reply drafts, and keep everything up to date.
SaneBox
SaneBox starts by scanning your inbox, understanding who you usually communicate with, which newsletters you receive, and what useless emails arrive every day. Based on that, it can help you delete unwanted emails, prioritize important messages, and add tags to keep things organized.
Mailbutler
Mailbutler has the full suite of generative AI tools in the email compose window: Smart Compose, Respond, Summarize, and Improve. An extension for Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook, it extracts the contact information of people in your inbox, so you don't have to organize them manually. And, if you usually forget to note down your tasks, it analyzes all the emails you get and extracts any detected tasks into the sidebar.
EmailTree
EmailTree is a solution for customer support teams, helping you organize your inbox, follow up on messages, and automate a few replies. It does this by processing the emails you receive and suggesting the follow-up action that makes the most sense. It's then up to you to trigger it.
12. AI apps for presentations and slide decks
Your magnetic stage presence is what people came for, but they stayed because of your beautiful slide deck. Clean and beautiful slides support your performance, keep your audience engaged, and help you drive in the points that you're making. The problem? Creating a solid slide deck can take a decent chunk of time, especially if you're starting from scratch. Can AI help?
Read more about presentation software with our picks for the best PowerPoint alternatives.
Decktopus
Decktopus is simple and fun to use. You enter what your presentation should be about, the target audience, and the objective. It'll put together a full presentation with text and slides, with plenty of magic buttons scattered around the user interface, helping you change images or generate text. Great for starting with a solid first draft and honing it into a powerful final version.
Beautiful.ai
Beautiful.ai delivers on its name's promise. It simplifies the process of putting together a beautiful slide deck, with all the layouts and styles figured out. Pick the colors, find royalty-free images in the library, and start putting together your presentation. If you have data that changes frequently, you can update it by using sliders and tables. The values will then change dynamically on the presentation.
Slidesgo
Slidesgo will let you pick the topic, writing tone, and a general template. AI generates the whole presentation for you, and from there, you can add your own content, customize each slide, and use AI to write, generate images, or generate a new slide.
13. AI apps for automation
Each of these AI productivity tools is impressive on its own, but when you want to integrate AI into your daily workflows, that means connecting AI to the other tools you already use.
Zapier
Zapier lets you automate faster by using natural language to create workflows that connect thousands of apps. Describe what you want to automate, and Zapier will draft a workflow that you can easily customize. You can even use Zapier to build your own custom chatbot.
Zapier connects to OpenAI, ChatGPT, Jasper, Hugging Face, and thousands of other apps, so you can combine the magic of AI with the power of automation to accelerate the work that matters most.
Learn more about Zapier's AI tools, or read about how to create your own AI digital assistant using Zapier and AI.
Other AI productivity apps
If you like trying out more niche apps, here are some extra ones to keep an eye out for.
3D modeling: Generate the third dimension with Spline AI, 3DFY.ai, and Meshcapade.
AI agents: Automate tasks with AI using AI Agent, AgentGPT, and HyperWrite Assistant.
Research: Take a deep dive with aomni, genei, and Consensus.
AI app builders: Quickstart your interface and databases with Softr, PowerApps, and AppSheet (or try an AI website builder).
AI for productivity: the AI-powered you
I'm a full-blown AI enthusiast. Even still, I like to think that these are merely tools. They save you time, spark ideas, and offer new angles. Remember to always use your judgment and keep your attention on the objective of what you're working on.
Another big risk: losing too much time feeding prompts to the AI, or generating so much output that it becomes difficult to edit, manipulate, and put together. Sharpen your cutting and editing skills to curb the excess, and you'll do great.
With all that in mind, it's time to enjoy. Try out these tools, and see why AI is the next big productivity leap.
Related reading:
How to write an effective GPT prompt
The best AI chatbots
The best AI video generators
The best AI sales assistants
AI will change how you search—here's how
Claude vs. ChatGPT: What's the difference?
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Miguel Rebelo
Miguel Rebelo is a freelance writer based in London, UK. He loves technology, video games, and huge forests. Track him down at mirebelo.com.
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- Personal productivity
- Mem
- OpenAI
- ChatGPT
- Descript
- Jasper
- Fireflies.ai
- Airgram
- Motion
- Asana
- Any.do
- Anthropic (Claude)
- Notion
- Personal AI
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