In November 2022, ChatGPT sparked a frenzy of interest in generative AI with its potential to boost work productivity. There are a variety of AI chatbots available for general use, including ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard. However, integrating generative AI tools can provide even more assistance for daily tasks. With access to emails, CRM systems, documents, and other work-related information, these tools can act as your personal assistant. Large language models like GPT-4 can summarize and explain text, compose emails, transcribe meetings, generate agendas and notes, and even analyze spreadsheet data.
All the AI announcements from Google I/O 2023
Although many tech companies make major announcements about transformative new AI tools, availability can be limited. Now that generative AI tools are beginning to be rolled out, we’ve compiled a list of the major available or soon-to-be-released tools and how to access them.
Before trying to automate your entire work life, it’s important to know your company’s policies on third-party app usage, its general stance on AI, and relevant laws and regulations. Additionally, you should be aware of the fine print regarding how the information you share with generative AI tools is stored and used.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
After Microsoft introduced the new Bing powered by GPT-4, it soon followed with Copilot. Copilot uses large language models to automate tasks within its portfolio of work apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Users can use generative AI to draft text in Word, create slideshows by typing a simple prompt, and analyze data in Excel to generate charts and graphs. Copilot can also summarize email threads and compose emails in Outlook, and it can create meeting summaries in real-time so you can catch up if you’re running late. Currently, Copilot is only available to enterprise users through an invitation-only paid preview program. Microsoft plans to expand access over time, but hasn’t yet provided any specific information on when that will happen.
Google Duet AI
Google introduced a collection of tools for its Workspace apps called Duet AI at I/O, its annual developer conference. Users can access the “Help me write” icon in Gmail and Docs and ask Duet AI to help compose an email or draft a document, such as a job description. In Gmail, Duet AI can understand the context of an email and calibrate your response to be shorter, more elaborate, or formal. Google Slides now offers an image generator tool that creates visuals from a text prompt such as “woman laughing alone with salad” for a presentation on the history of women in memes in Google Sheets. Duet AI can also automatically organize data within a spreadsheet, and it can design a custom plan for managing projects with a prompt like “roster of attendees for pickleball tournament.” Duet AI tools are only available to trusted testers on the Labs platform, but users can sign up for the waitlist for when Google rolls out broader access.
Zoom IQ
Zoom launched some AI-powered features for video conferencing under the name Zoom IQ. Zoom IQ can summarize meetings in real-time using OpenAI’s API, kick off brainstorming sessions based on text prompts in its whiteboard tool, summarize conversations from Zoom chats, draft emails based on those conversations, and write up an agenda for future meetings about the topic. Zoom IQ chat and Zoom’s AI email composition and meeting summarization features will soon be available to paid subscribers and as a free trial.
Zoom can compose contextualized responses to conversations.
Credit: Zoom
Slack GPT
ChatGPT’s summarizing and analyzing skills have entered the Slack channel
