Not using AI (artificial intelligence) tools isn’t an option anymore because it could mean the difference between unlocking your full potential and getting left behind.
With that being said, we’re also seeing a boom in AI tools in the market these days — so the questions that remain are:
- Which AI tools are actually a necessity vs. which ones are a fad?
- What AI technology do you need for your organization, and for which use cases?
- How can you benefit from these tools (especially as a small business)?
Well, fret not — we’re using this article to discuss the top AI tools everyone should have in their tech stack (that can be leveraged for different use cases and provide unique benefits). So, let’s dig in, shall we?
1. PandaDoc
PandaDoc is an AI-enabled automation software that streamlines your entire document workflow end-to-end — it’s mainly known for its ability to collect legally valid e-signatures, customize and manage documents, and get analytics based on the interactions customers had with your documents.
However, besides this core functionality, not many of us are aware of the other capabilities we can leverage in PandaDoc to make our lives easier, so let’s discuss those today:
- You can connect PandaDoc with large language models like ChatGPT and use them to write text blocks (such as introductions or conclusions), generate ideas, and draft entire templates for proposals, contracts, agreements, and more.
- If you wish to add fields (such as text fields, signature fields, and card detail fields), our AI models can assist you with optimal auto-placements for these fields. Once these have been added, you can customize the fonts and colors to match your style guide.
- You can even connect PandaDoc with Zapier’s AI and other AI-enabled tools to manage your workflows efficiently.
- Most importantly, PandaDoc uses machine learning and AI to find advanced analytics about how your users interacted with your documents (you can get data on the number of times your document was viewed, which pages got the most traction, and receive automated notifications when it gets signed).
If you are interested in exploring how AI is already reshaping sales. Check out this video.
We’ll discuss how AI streamlines sales and contracting processes and helps with identifying new strategies.
2. Qloo
Qloo, also dubbed “Cultural AI,” is an extremely user-friendly solution that will answer all your pressing questions in the niches of film, food, music, people, books, and more in real-time.
Basically, if you want to understand the thoughts and ideas of your customers across the globe, this tool will provide you with the knowledge you need.
For example, you can ask it questions like, “What kind of hotels do people between the ages of 25-35 who like Versace also like?” or “What movies do people who like The Weekend also like?”
Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Well, here are a few things that can impress you even further:
- Its directory consists of datasets of about 575 million+ people, places, and things, meaning it has a well-rounded understanding of your customers regardless of the niche, location, and other parameters.
- It uses a mix of technologies like deep learning, search engine visibility, machine learning algorithms, neural networks, and natural language processing (NLP) to provide contextual answers that can help with the decision-making process.
You can also leverage Qloo’s API to get personalized results based on your audience’s preferences and locations and then target media communications accordingly.
Plus, it’s all plug-and-play, so you only need to include just one request, and it finds the answers you need in milliseconds.
And at the same time, with Qloo, you can be assured of your data safety!
Pricing: Pricing is not listed on its website, but sources list the price at $12/month. A free trial is available too.
3. Asana
Here’s what most people know of Asana: It’s a project management tool that helps in task organization, project tracking, and team collaboration.
Undeniably, it’s one of the more popular productivity tools in the market.
However, Asana also happens to have a powerful offering known as “Asana Intelligence” that can help you manage projects and work with the help of AI.
Here’s a small overview of what you can do with it:
- Create smart goals (the AI model will analyze your historical data to develop achievable goals for you).
- Summarize long task descriptions into digestible content. On that note, if you’re tasked with the duty of writing project descriptions, you can also ask it to edit the content on your behalf (with the preferred tone and content length you have in mind).
- Get answers about your project-related questions (e.g., you can ask things like “Who are the members with editorial access on this project?”)
- The AI tool will also identify which tasks may create bottlenecks and will provide a structure to optimize workflows.
- You can also use it to create smart fields and draft status summaries to inform your team members how the task is going.
Pricing: Asana has a freemium model with paid plans starting from 10 USD per month.
4. Grammarly
Grammarly, our beloved AI-powered tool for content creation and error-finding, also has a handy-dandy AI copywriting assistant tool we can leverage to make content generation an easy process.
You can leverage this AI assistant to rephrase content for you based on your preferred tone and content length, brainstorm content ideas with it, and even train it to write content the way you speak (e.g., a prompt can be: keep it professional, use an empathic tone, and only write in active voice, etc., or another prompt can be “add the following keywords for SEO”).
You even rely on it to draft all your emails, proposals, templates, product descriptions, landing pages, and content copies, all while keeping context and chat history in mind.
Last but not least, this generative AI assistant also integrates with all the necessary platforms, such as Microsoft Word (and other doc tools), LinkedIn, Medium, Chrome, etc.
Moreover, if you’re an Android user, you can even leverage Grammarly’s text-to-speech functionality that allows you to transcribe speech.
There’s only one drawback to this AI tool: Your prompts are limited based on the subscription plan you have.
For example, the free plan only has 100 prompts/month, whereas the Premium plan and the Teams plan have 1000 and 2000 monthly prompts, respectively.
Pricing: Grammarly has a free version, and paid plans start from $25/month.
5. Midjourney
Midjourney is an AI image generator that has the capability to generate high-quality images based on your text prompts.
Here’s the long and short of what this tool can do for you:
- It can create images in seconds from scratch based on the prompts you submit it.
- It can follow the guidelines of brand style and image parameters you give it.
- It can understand complex prompts and even create images based on hypothetical situations like “show someone from the 1700s taking a selfie.”
- It can even generate images based on photography styles you have a preference for (e.g., pop art, realism, minimalism, street photography, landscape, etc.).
- It can also follow negative prompts to exclude certain things you don’t want in your images.
Safe to say, if you’re a company or a content creator that delves a lot into visual content production on social media but doesn’t want to spend money on Getty subscriptions and still want your images to be unique and a cut above the rest, this tool is what you need.
Perhaps the only limitation of Midjourney is the use of Discord as the core platform. If you’re new to Discord, it can be challenging to understand the platform.
Also, a quick FYI: You can also use Midjourney as an AI video tool, as it can generate short animations and video content based on your prompts.
Pricing: The basic plan of Midjourney starts at $10/month.
6. ChatGPT
The list can’t be complete without the mention of open-source artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT that have created a wave in recent times.
It works on the models developed by OpenAI — GPT-3 and GPT-4.
ChatGPT can hold an engaging conversation with you, answer your questions with logic and reasoning, and even write codes and articles for you.
You can use it to work as an AI chatbot to talk to customers, create an interactive website and mobile apps from scratch, or research your target market.
It can work as your assistant or even as a cheerleader!
Give relevant information to the chatbot, and it can remember earlier conversations to carry out a task. It’s the ability to understand natural language and the contextual significance of a conversation that sets it apart.
The best part is that it’s still evolving and gets better with every update.
The scope of its abilities keeps expanding to assist you in the best way possible.
Pricing: The basic plan of ChatGPT starts at 20 USD per month. If you don’t want to start the paid plan, it’s free to use with limited features.
P.S.: If ChatGPT doesn’t fit the bill for you, you can also consider other conversational AI platforms like Jasper, Bing Chat, and Copy.ai.
7. Jasper
If you ever wanted an AI writing tool that’s geared towards writing high-quality content for your website, while also considering your brand voice, you can’t go wrong with Jasper AI.
But there are plenty of AI writing tools in the market, so what makes Jasper so special?
Well, here are some of the things Jasper can do for your business:
- It can create full-fledged content pieces with just a single prompt.
- It can connect with your favorite tools (i.e., Chrome and Google Docs) and become your writing sidekick when you need it to be (e.g., it can write emails on Chrome on your behalf).
- It can also develop complete marketing campaigns from scratch (this includes generating press releases, video scripts, ad copies, and more).
- It can adhere to your brand style guide and tone. Plus, the more information you feed it, the more details it’ll memorize about your brand and develop personalized and information-rich content.
- Jasper can also provide full project details as well as version history of each draft created. Moreover, you can also leverage its insights to optimize content for SEO.
Pricing: The Creator plan is priced at $39/month (for one seat), whereas the Pro plan is priced at $59/month (for five seats). They also provide custom pricing to enterprises.
By the way, we did a free trial of Jasper AI and reviewed it for writing and content marketing. Learn a brief story of Jasper AI, see its use cases and check yourself out if its worth investing.
8. Fliki
Need an AI tool that can create videos on-demand, keeping your language and voice preferences in mind? Well, we have just the solution you need — Fliki.
With this tool, you can convert your written text, tweet, PPTs, or even ideas into publish-ready videos for different use cases (e.g., reels, promo videos, product explainer videos, pitch videos, educational content, etc.).
You can also leverage its AI to create videos in more than 75 languages and can even set preferences for regional dialects (presently, the software has more than 1300 voices in its database).
Alternatively, if you wish to create content in your own voice, you’ll be happy to know Fliki supports voice cloning too.
Not just that — you can also set preferences for the following:
- Video duration
- Media (videos, images, and GIFs)
- Tone preferences (e.g., excited, terrified, sad, etc)
- Speaking style (e.g., you can customize tunes, pauses, pronunciations)
- Color grading
- Subtitles
- Sizing
- Display visualization
- Background music
Pricing: They have a freemium model, but the paid plans, Standard and Pro, are priced at $28 and $88 per month, respectively.
9. Writer
We know we’ve already mentioned a generative AI tool in this list, but Writer is just one of those applications that deserves its own mention.
Why do we say this? Well, here are a few things that’ll help a convincing case:
- You can use Writer to develop blogs, product descriptions, in your writing, emails, job posts, training materials, reports, and more (you can also ask it to answer questions/write answers based on individual requests).
- If you feed it transcripts or video recordings, it can capture key takeaways.
- It’s specifically designed for teams who mainly require text content for different use cases, such as sales, marketing, HR, finance, product, and design.
- You can also be assured it’ll govern responses — that’s to say, it’ll always maintain accuracy, align with your brand requirements, and flag content that may use incorrect statements.
- Writer also lets you create templates and shortcuts for commonly-used phrases.
- You even get reports based on the way you create content — e.g., it’ll show you common issues, words used, etc.
Pricing: Two pricing options are available — Team (priced at $18/user/month) and Enterprise (requires custom pricing).
10. AutoResponder
Suited for apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, Signal, and Viber, AutoResponder is one of those AI tools you’ll be surprised to know is free.
The tool is an AI chatbot that can share pre-set responses with your customers — that’s to say, if your customers question you about commonly asked topics like pricing and features, it can share the pre-set message.
You can connect AutoResponder with ChatGPT, Dialogflow AI, GPT-4, and even your own web server to create responses.
Moreover, you can also set preferences about response times, pattern matching, reply conditions, and notifications.
It can even ignore responses sent from certain contacts, import/export data from CSV files, and create custom responses with the ability to send multiple responses.
Pricing: They adhere to a freemium model, but the premium plan (if users request it) is priced at $6.99/month.
11. Textio
Used by names like Spotify, Hulu, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Textio is an AI tool specifically designed for the purpose of helping HR managers recruit a diverse team and retain them.
So, what can it do, you ask? Let’s explore its benefits:
- Textio can help HR managers optimize job descriptions to appeal to more audiences.
- It can also use keywords and brand tone/voice that will help portray your brand in a positive light and keep your values at the forefront.
- It can also automatically generate job descriptions for almost any kind of job and requirement.
- Textio can even analyze the feedback you share with your employees and help remove any biases from it.
- It can also analyze other content materials like job descriptions and social media content to help remove any bias, exclusion, or inequity from them.
- Lastly, if you’re a Textio user, you can also access their online resources to become a better people manager.
Pricing: Provides customized pricing based on your team size and requirements.
12. Otter.ai
If you don’t already know about Otter, then here’s the long and short of it: it’s one of the best transcribing tools in the market that can help you create meeting notes, generate summaries, and keep track of all verbal agreements.
Basically, you can integrate Otter with your favorite communication tools (like Zoom) or upload recordings on the platform and ask it to transcribe content for you — this is specifically helpful for:
- Media personnel who need to write accurate quotes
- Sales teams that need to be assured of their verbal agreements
- College lecturers who need to provide subtitles for their course content
- Any and every kind of business that needs to create meeting minutes
Moreover, you can also leverage Otter to easily collaborate with your team members from the same platform! What’s more one can need?
Pricing: Four pricing options are available — Free; Pro (priced at $10/user/month); Business (priced at $20/user/month); and Enterprise (requires customized pricing).
Skyrocket your revenue growth with AI tools
With the increase in AI tools in the market today, it can be overwhelming to not only select the best ones but also integrate them into your existing ecosystem.
Our suggestion is to start with the most important ones that can take bigger tasks off your plate.
For example, a task like e-signing documents can easily be automated with PandaDoc, immediately giving you some extra time to focus on more important tasks.
It can easily integrate with most AI tools and your existing workflow.
If that sounds like a good idea, sign up for a 14-day trial today — no credit card required.
Disclaimer
PandaDoc is not a law firm, or a substitute for an attorney or law firm. This page is not intended to and does not provide legal advice. Should you have legal questions on the validity of e-signatures or digital signatures and the enforceability thereof, please consult with an attorney or law firm. Use of PandaDoc services are governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.