How to Use AI at Work: Top AI Tools for Small and Large Businesses
Mind-numbing. Tedious. Soul-crushing. If you’ve used any of these words to describe your day-to-day work, then it might be time to start looking for a new job… But before you burn any bridges, we think we can help. There’s a good chance artificial intelligence tools might be able to solve your workplace issues at a fraction of the cost and hassle.
Whether it’s an estimated performance increase of 66% or claims that 40% of working hours will soon be automated or augmented by AI, studies generally agree that AI is changing the workplace. How much change will depend on the job or industry, but regardless of your role, there’s a good chance that AI can help you.
Both small and large businesses can suffer from the same thing – work that makes you feel more like a robot managing tasks than a human. So, instead of doing that, why not let the robot do those tasks and free up some time for yourself to work more like a human. We’ll give you some examples, along with specific tools that can help you out.
Useful and Ethical Ways to Use ChatGPT at Work
But before we do that, it’s important to ensure that the way in which you use AI at work is ethical and within the AI policy created by your organization (and if such a policy doesn’t exist, we suggest creating one). There is no one-size-fits-all approach to an AI policy, as each one should be tailored to your company’s unique needs and the regulations of the industry it’s in. Generally, however, AI policies will include the following ethical guidelines.
Human oversight: Work completed by AI should be reviewed by a human whenever and wherever possible.
Transparency: Properly attribute the work to AI when appropriate and do not pass off AI-generated content or analysis as purely human.
Privacy: Respect the privacy of the company’s employees and customers. For instance, if you work in health care, consider the HIPAA law when determining how you use AI and what information you allow an AI tool to access.
How AI Can Help Small Businesses
Now that we have the boring (but important) stuff out of the way, let’s look at how you can use AI at your small business. A small business will have unique needs compared to medium or large sized business, and therefore, different AI tools to consider.
Social Media Tools
One of the most beneficial tools for a small business is a social media manager. Small businesses may not have the funds to hire someone to focus on this, meaning it can sometimes fall on the owner or someone in another role to handle social media posting, comment monitoring and online customer queries. But a social media management tool can make life way easier.
Even without AI, these tools can be pretty handy, but options like Buffer and Sprout Social offer extra AI functions. With these tools, AI can help you analyze your social data, repurpose existing content for social posts and more. Of course, tools like these can come at a hefty price depending on what you’re looking for, so we recommend trying out our ChatGPT for Word add-in for free if you’re just looking for something to help you come up with social media posting ideas.
Image Creation
When it comes to graphic design, it can be difficult for a small business to compete with larger businesses that have multiple designers (or even just one designer). But now, AI can level the playing field a bit. And it doesn’t matter if you can’t tell the difference between a genuine Warhol or a bore-all, a Dali or a dull-i, a Van Gogh or camo, a Picasso or… OK, you get the picture.
As long as you can imagine the image you want and convey it in writing, AI can do the rest. One of the best tools for this is Midjourney, which is simple enough for beginner’s while still offering advanced features. It does, however, require Discord, so if you want a tool that is more streamlined and simplified, consider Dall-e through ChatGPT.
AI Assistants
If you’re a small business owner, you have a lot on your plate and have probably thought about how cool it would be if you had a robot to assist you with some of the more mundane tasks throughout the day. Well, AI on your computer is even better and probably a lot cheaper.
Microsoft Copilot is the perfect place to start if you’re already using Microsoft products. Like ChatGPT, it can be interacted with conversationally, so you’ll be able to talk to it naturally to perform tasks such as catching up on meetings you missed, brainstorming ideas or getting a summary of your most recent emails.
We would also recommend trying out our ChatGPT for PowerPoint add-in, which can act as your assistant by creating slides for your next meeting or sales pitch based on the information you provide. Something that may have taken you a couple hours can now be done in a couple minutes.
Using AI to Be More Productive
For medium and large businesses, productivity is often the biggest challenge. AI assistants like those above can definitely help with that, but so can task management and data tools.
One project management tool that has grown in popularity is Asana. In addition to having a simple-to-use user interface, the tool now has AI functionality that can analyze your projects and give advice to remove bottlenecks or better allocate resources. For something more automated, try Wrike, which can automatically plan out workflows.
But task management isn’t the only area where teams struggle with productivity. A major productivity killer for teams is the processing and analyzing of raw data. Whether you spend too much time trying to create Excel sheets or reviewing existing ones, our ChatGPT for Excel add-in can offer you instant insights or help you quickly organize your data.
As creators of some of these tools, we know how much easier they can make your life at work. Try them out to see which of them work best for you and your team.