AI is inarguably the leading tech sector trend and, it seems, a feature of every new startup and product. But while the AI label can sometimes seem little more than a buzzword or marketing gimmick, there are plenty of incredibly powerful AI tools out there.
While some of the tools are not yet as good as their human alternatives — yet, they can help save time, cut costs, or just improve human decisions. Here are ten tools that can help at critical points.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT: an on-demand assistant
It would be impossible not to mention ChatGPT, or similar LLM models like Google’s Gemini or Microsoft’s Copilot in any list. Although many criticise LLMs for being ‘spicy autocomplete’, that can often be their strength, and they can help you avoid reinventing the wheel.
However unique a startup, they will have many similarities with others. ChatGPT can help in those overlapping areas, from creating text content, writing customer support messages and scripts, and even suggesting ideas and solutions to common business issues.
Notion AI — add intelligence to your internal documents
Notion was already a great tool for teams, creating a collaborative space for a team to collect and build on their knowledge and manage projects. AI can extend its functionality.
The integrated AI tools help Notion become a powerful external brain for your organisation. As well as helping you capture more valuable information, by transcribing meetings or bringing together research, it can even become your own LLM, using your key data to answer your questions.
Grammarly — polish your writing
Spelling and grammar checkers share similarities with LLM AIs, basing their responses on algorithms, context, and training to flag when ‘their’ should have been ‘there’. It was only natural that Grammarly would leverage AI to take their product further.
If you’ve ever struggled to get words on to the page, Grammarly can help. Polishing even the roughest draft into something that won’t contain rogue apostrophes and off-putting phrasing, and helping you adjust your tone so it’s appropriate for your audience while remaining authentic to your voice.
Perplexity – smarter searching
The internet may live up to its promise of being a place where human knowledge is free, but it certainly makes it hard for a human to find. Clearing a way through the internet, though, is where an LLM trained on the internet can excel.
Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine. Just ask a question, and it will try to answer, providing a summary of what it knows and the sources for its answers so you can check yourself. You can even ask follow-up questions.
Jasper AI — helping you to sell
Many people — even those in the startup world — find that selling doesn’t come naturally. While the human tendency towards humility and modesty may help on a personal level, it’s not ideal when you need to win funding or customers. Fortunately, AIs don’t have the same problem.
Jasper AI is built for marketing. The platform combines marketing knowledge and creativity to work alongside marketers and teams to generate mock-ups and copy that is ready to use.
Midjourney — images on demand
Every startup will need to generate images at some stage, from sketching ideas to branding and marketing materials, words can only get so far. Midjourney can step in when your artistic talents or your budget fall short.
Midjourney was one of the pioneers of AI image generation and just a look at its galleries reveals a stunning selection of sketches, diagrams, and photorealistic scenes generated by prompts.
Runway — filming without the studio
Video creation is difficult. While Apple uses the ‘Shot on iPhone’ slogan, they omit to mention the huge lighting rigs, dolly equipment, and sound engineering that went with it. Runway can create cinema-quality video without the need for a studio.
The latest version of Runway can create films from a prompt and sample materials, allowing you to use consistent ‘actors’ and obey the laws of physics (or not) to create a big-budget look without a big budget.
ElevenLabs — creating your startup’s voice
If you are creating audio content, a voiceover for a product video, or intros and outros for a podcast, you might be tempted to just record a voice memo. But that may not be ideal. Outside a studio, it’s almost impossible to get rid of a background hiss, and what happens if your ‘voice’ moves on.
ElevenLabs can create expressive, human-sounding voices that read your scripts. You can even clone a voice to make it sound like someone on your team. It can create a consistent, professional sound for your startup. You can even use their API to automate generation so it’s available whenever and wherever you need it.
Otter.ai — meeting notes and insights
Otter’s transcriptions are familiar to many, especially with the integrations it offers with other platforms like Microsoft’s Teams and Google’s Meet. But its AI integration turns it from just a note-taker into more of a personal assistant.
Otter can be set up to automatically record and transcribe all your virtual meetings, as well as handling recordings you upload. Once done, it can capture key points and insights from your discussions, and create action points that need following up. It is great for keeping teams aligned and making sure things aren’t missed.
Beautiful.ai — pitch perfectly
Who hasn’t suffered death by PowerPoint. In many places, the firing up of a presentation results in a barely stifled groan. But the pitch deck is an essential for the startup, and Beautiful.ai helps make sure your presentations have presence.
The process may start with templates, but that’s where the similarity with PowerPoint ends. It will take you through the whole process, using AI to generate perfectly designed slides, adding animation and visual interest to get your point across and maintain interest.
