Our selection of top AI tools for business highlights the remarkable progress generative AI has made — from a novel concept to an essential technology now embedded in countless accessible tools and services.
From creative applications like image generation in Midjourney to programming assistance with GitHub Copilot, professionals across diverse industries can now leverage AI tools to enhance their productivity and streamline tasks.
The use cases for generative AI are growing. With each advancement, generative AI is opening up new possibilities, offering a range of tools that can easily integrate into everyday workflows. Here, we’ve rounded up 12 impressive AI tools ready to elevate your business operations today.
The best AI tools for business
1. Adobe Firefly
If any company should be concerned about the rise of computer generated images and videos, it’s Adobe. The company has maintained an effective monopoly on the creative software industry for a number of decades and is now adjusting its approach to get ahead of generative AI.
Firefly is the result of that pivot, a beta web service that lets users create brand new AI images, or edit existing files, based on text prompts. The tool’s big break came when Adobe bundled it into Photoshop as a beta capability.
To test out the tool, we took a sample image of a runner with her dog and tried to add generative content to it. We first had to extend the base canvas out so it could accommodate a large selection box at the bottom of the image. From here, we asked Photoshop to fill the area with “a pond with waterlilies” - in a matter of seconds the tool had created the image displayed above. The image looks entirely natural, with the sort of lighting and reflections that you might expect, although on closer inspection you can see the reflection of the dog isn’t quite right. However, with some quick Photoshop tweaks using its other cloning tools, you could easily tweak this.
The tool is surprisingly easy to use and, provided the result is near-perfect each time, would significantly reduce both editing time and the skill required to generate unique images. The only downside is Adobe remains one of the most expensive creative software suites around.
2. ChatGPT Plus
When you first start using ChatGPT Plus (at a cost of $20 per month), you wonder how on Earth OpenAI justifies such a fee. At the time of writing, even paying customers are rate-limited to 25 messages every three hours using GPT-4. Even though it can now access the web to extend its knowledge beyond the September 2021 cut-off date of the training data, so can the GPT-4-powered AI in Bing – and that’s entirely free.
Then you find the plugins and you suddenly begin to see why we’ve not even started to scratch the surface of what AI can do yet. Enable the OpenTable plugin and tell ChatGPT you want to book a table for four at an Italian restaurant in Brighton on Saturday night and it will go off and present you with a selection of relevant options. When you click through to the chosen restaurants, all the details are pre-filled – you just click to book.
Need something a bit more businesslike? The Code Interpreter plugin can take data trapped in Excel spreadsheets and convert it into, among many other things, 3D scatter plots, with your chosen color scheme and particular data strands highlighted. You just tell the AI the output you want from the data, and it hands you the graph in HTML5, ready to upload to your website. It can even provide you with a written analysis of the data. The plugins are still in their infancy, but even from the hundred or so that are already in the store at the time of writing, you can see the enormous potential here.
3. Perplexity
Perplexity AI is an innovative search tool that combines natural language processing with traditional search functionality to provide users with more intuitive, conversational answers. Unlike conventional search engines that primarily deliver links to websites, Perplexity AI responds directly to user queries with succinct, relevant answers, often citing multiple sources for added credibility. This tool is particularly valuable for businesses and professionals who require quick insights without the need to sift through multiple web pages.
The AI behind Perplexity operates similarly to chat-based AI models, allowing users to ask complex questions in everyday language. For example, a user might ask, “What are the latest trends in digital marketing?” or “How does machine learning improve cybersecurity?” Perplexity AI then parses these inquiries and generates clear, concise answers. The responses are typically followed by links to the original sources, enabling users to delve deeper if they wish. This format saves time by offering direct answers first, with source material readily available for further reading.
Perplexity AI’s primary strength lies in its capacity to provide context and nuance, making it a great asset for research and knowledge acquisition in fast-paced fields. With its ability to interpret and respond to a broad array of topics, Perplexity AI is useful for professionals in marketing, finance, technology, and other information-driven industries. Its simplicity makes it accessible to users of all experience levels, eliminating the need for advanced search skills.
Additionally, Perplexity AI’s commitment to transparency is noteworthy. Each response includes a list of cited sources, helping to maintain accuracy and allowing users to verify information easily. As AI-driven tools like Perplexity evolve, they’re poised to revolutionize how we access and interact with information, transforming search from a list of results into a more insightful and user-friendly experience.
4. Altered Studio
Ever wondered what your voice would sound like if you were a warm, kind, mid-sixties woman from Scotland called Jennifer?
Altered Studio uses AI to transform your speech into a completely different voice. Say, for example, you wanted a 20-something woman to voice your new YouTube ad – but didn’t want the expense and hassle of booking a voice actor. You can record the audio yourself, upload it to Altered Studio, and pick from a huge bank of AI-generated voice characters.
The voices are unbelievably convincing. You’d struggle to tell them apart from real voice actors. Visit the site to listen to various samples, or take up the free trial and experiment with a limited selection available to subscribers.
There’s a huge range of potential uses for Altered Studio. It may provide a second or third podcast host for a podcast or can introduce speakers at a conference. In our tests, it worked best when you provided a voice recording – it also offers text-to-speech, but that emerged with a robotic speech pattern that clearly marked it out as AI.
5. Midjourney
With dozens of text-to-image services out there, it’s impossible to say which is best. But the one service I consistently turn to for AI-generated art is Midjourney, which continues to deliver consistently high-quality results across a wide variety of styles and genres.
Midjourney has significantly enhanced its accessibility by introducing a web-based interface, moving beyond its initial Discord-only platform. This development allows users to input prompts directly through a user-friendly web interface, streamlining the image generation process. The web platform maintains the community-driven aspect by enabling users to explore and draw inspiration from others' creations, with prompts and corresponding images readily viewable.
The service continues to offer extensive customization options, allowing users to adjust parameters such as aspect ratio (e.g., "--ar 16:9") and the level of "chaos" to influence image variability. Midjourney excels in stylistic emulation, adeptly generating images in the distinctive styles of artists like Van Gogh, Matt Groening, or Robert Capa.
Access to Midjourney requires a subscription, starting at $10 per month for the Basic Plan, which includes 3.3 hours of fast GPU time per month. Higher-tier plans offer additional features and increased GPU time. The platform's consistent delivery of high-quality, diverse images justifies the investment for users seeking advanced AI-generated art capabilities.
6. GitHub Copilot
I’m a long way from a professional coder. I know my way around HTML/CSS files, have dabbled with JavaScript and Python, but that’s as far as it goes. In some ways, that makes me the perfect candidate to test drive GitHub Copilot.
Copilot is autocomplete for code. It’s a code-editor extension that sits quietly in the background, until you start entering or tweaking code on a page, after which you’ll likely see suggested edits appear in grey.
For coding novices, it’s particularly useful when used in conjunction with AI-written code. For example, I asked Bing AI to help me write a basic VAT calculator – you enter a price, hit a button, and it shows you what the price is exc VAT. I asked it to deliver HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files and it did so perfectly.
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So now I’ve got my lovely VAT calculator I obviously want to create an About page for my website, so people know where to hire this coding genius. I create an about.html and start to enter <!DOCTYPE html> at the top of the page, and Copilot takes over. It suggests a <head> with About in the title tags and automatically creates a link to the correct stylesheet. It even starts suggesting copy for the page, as you can see in the screenshots, writing: “This is a simple VAT calculator. It calculates the price without VAT from the price with VAT.” It's not going to win any prizes for elegance, but the AI has written an explanation of what the site does without any prompting.
This is a basic example, but it’s capable of far more. For example, you can write in the comments exactly what to do, and CoPilot will suggest the necessary code. Instantly. Right there in Visual Studio Code or other popular editors. Often with multiple suggestions, in case you don’t like the first solution it offers.
It’s no replacement for coding knowledge. You’ll still need to know how the plumbing works and it will get things wrong from time to time. But GitHub Copilot is almost guaranteed to make your coding jobs monumentally easier for only $10 per month.
7. Interviewsby.ai
When there are 50 applicants for every job, any marginal gain is worth having. Interviewsby.ai is a cracking little tool for perfecting your interview technique.
It asks you to paste in the job description of the role you’re applying for and then spits out a selection of questions you might face when being interviewed. The questions are well-targeted, although the more detailed the job description, the better the quality of the questions.
The key element is that it asks you to speak your responses as if you were in a live interview, which means you feel the same pressure of providing an instant response, as you would in the real thing. Your answers can last up to a minute, and when you’re done, the AI transcribes what you’ve said and provides feedback on those answers.
In my mock interview for a head of editorial role, I neglected to provide the specific examples from my previous experience that the question was asking for, which was a strong reminder to answer the question, not just spout what you think they want to hear. The feedback is generally encouraging and specific, although the suggested answers are less worthwhile, as the AI obviously doesn’t know your career history. Nevertheless, it’s a great, free training tool for anyone preparing to face an interview panel.
8. Fliki
Video is critical on social media, but not everyone can afford a team to shoot content. Fliki could potentially save you a bundle on the camera crew.
Write a video script, choose a virtual host to narrate it, select stock video/images for each scene (or upload your own), and add some background music if you want. The AI voice narration sounds a little too synthetic, although you can manually alter the pitch of words or correct mispronunciations of brands or other words. But this will surely improve over time.
Fliki offers a free plan, so you can see how you get on with the tools, before subscribing to get rid of the watermarks and increase video quality. You’ll need a $21 per month standard account to hit Full HD quality, mind.
9. Notion AI
Notion has become one of those trendy apps; it’s a OneNote for people who like to be seen.
It’s one of those all-encompassing note-takers that can be used for creating to-do lists, bashing out ideas, taking notes from meetings, and even as a public wiki for your company’s products.
It’s recently added a set of very well-implemented AI tools to the mix. As you’re writing on any page, you can simply press the space bar at the start of a new line and activate the AI tools. Here, for example, you can ask the AI to autocomplete a passage you’re writing, list ten ideas on different ways you could market a new product, or create a to-do list of items you’ll need to pack for a trip.
If you’ve used it to take meeting notes, it can pick out the action points; if you’ve written a description of a new product line, the AI can take a stab at writing the press release.
The AI responses flow into the page within a couple of seconds and it’s easy to edit out any daft suggestions. “Adapter for electrical outlets” for my holiday to Crete? Don’t be daft, everyone knows you buy them afresh at the airport every time you fly abroad at vastly inflated prices.
Notion provides an AI add-on at $10 per member per month, with a 20% discount available for annual billing. This add-on grants access to advanced AI functionalities, enhancing productivity and creativity within the platform.
10. SlidesAI
Creating presentations can be time-consuming, but SlidesAI streamlines this process by transforming text into structured slides. As an add-on for Google Slides, it allows users to input text, which the AI then organizes into a coherent presentation. The free plan permits up to 36 presentations annually, each with a 2,500-character limit.
For more extensive needs, the Pro plan at $8.33 per month (billed annually) offers 120 presentations per year with a 6,000-character limit per presentation, while the Premium plan at $16.67 per month (billed annually) provides unlimited presentations with a 12,000-character limit per presentation.
I gave it an article I wrote about whether it’s acceptable to send an AI assistant to your virtual meetings on your behalf, and it did a solid job of picking out the key points, summarizing them, and slotting them into an eight-slide presentation.
The AI also picks out the images, and here it wandered slightly off-piste. A slide on “AI’s meaningful contribution” to meetings was illustrated with a tulip, for instance, for reasons I simply can’t fathom. But a slide about Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack did come with a nice pic of Salesforce HQ. All the content can be tweaked, so if you’re in need of a quick-and-dirty presentation, SlidesAI could well be the AI you want to take to a meeting with you.
11. Windows Copilot
12. Jasper AI
Jasper AI has become a go-to tool for businesses looking to streamline content creation, from marketing copy to social media posts. Designed with usability in mind, Jasper allows users to generate high-quality text with minimal input. By simply providing a few prompts and selecting a preferred tone, businesses can quickly produce tailored content that suits various formats, including blog posts, email newsletters, and ad copy.
One of Jasper’s biggest advantages is its versatility. It offers a range of templates for specific content types, such as product descriptions, landing pages, and even video scripts. This variety makes it ideal for marketing teams who need consistent, well-crafted output across different platforms. For instance, with Jasper’s “Blog Post Outline” template, users can generate a structured outline for an article, saving hours of planning and brainstorming. The AI’s language generation capabilities ensure the text is coherent, engaging, and aligned with brand voice, which is essential for building a consistent brand identity.
Jasper also integrates well with popular marketing platforms, enabling seamless workflows from ideation to publishing. The tool’s ability to fine-tune outputs based on previous content is another asset, as it “learns” from users’ preferences over time. This adaptability can help businesses maintain a high standard of content across campaigns without starting from scratch each time.
While Jasper AI operates on a subscription model, many businesses find it a worthwhile investment for the productivity boost it provides. In addition to saving time, Jasper can enhance creativity by offering fresh ideas and perspectives, making it an invaluable resource for content-driven organizations. With continued advancements, Jasper AI is setting a new standard for AI-powered content creation, helping companies communicate more effectively and efficiently in an increasingly digital marketplace.
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Microsoft hasn’t bet the house on AI, but it’s come close. The company has given Bing search and the Edge browser a new lease of life with AI, and now Microsoft has unveiled Windows Copilot. With Windows Copilot, AI is clearly being integrated heavily into Windows 11. So much so, that we’re a little surprised this isn’t the basis for Windows 12.
At its most basic level, Windows Copilot may stop you from ever having to dive into Settings or what’s left of the Control Panel again, with the ability to ask the AI assistant to turn on things such as focus modes or dark themes.
Windows Copilot also looks set to get some of the AI abilities we’ve listed in apps here, such as the option to drag across a PDF file and ask for a quick summary.
However, Windows Copilot gets really interesting with deep integration into apps, both from third parties and Microsoft’s own. A Microsoft demo video shows someone asking for help designing a business logo, for which they are directed to Adobe Express. Once the logo is designed, it’s exported back to the AI assistant, where the user asks it to be sent to members of a group in Microsoft Teams, which is performed automatically.
If Windows Copilot works as smoothly as it does in Microsoft’s demo, this could be a very big deal indeed. If it gets drowned in a sea of permissions prompts or favors Microsoft’s apps over all else, it could be the missed opportunity of 2023.
