The best AI productivity tools in 2024

As the dust settles on last year's AI storm, ChatGPT is just one of hundreds of powerful tools in the game. From new intelligent features on apps you already love, to entirely new platforms with jaw-dropping functionality, there's an AI-powered solution to nearly every productivity problem.

I've been playing around with AI tools for a while now, and I've continued to update this list with lots of research and testing from me and the team at Zapier. With that, here are 37 AI productivity tools that will change the way you work.

The best AI productivity tools by category

• Chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude, Bing AI, Zapier Central)

• Content creation (Jasper, Copy.ai, Anyword)

• Grammar checkers and rewording tools (Grammarly, Wordtune, ProWritingAid)

• Video creation and editing (Descript, Wondershare Filmora, Runway)

• Image generation (DALL·E 3, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion)

• Voice and music generation (Murf, Splash Pro, AIVA)

• Knowledge management and AI grounding (Mem, Notion AI Q&A, Personal AI)

• Task and project management (Asana, Any.do, BeeDone)

• Transcription and meeting assistants (Fireflies, Airgram, Krisp)

• Scheduling (Reclaim, Clockwise, Motion)

• Email inbox management (SaneBox, Mailbutler, EmailTree)

• Slide decks and presentations (Decktopus, Beautiful.ai, Slidesgo)

• Automation (Zapier)

• Other AI productivity tools

How I selected the best AI productivity app in each category

My AI app database is at 270 entries right now. I'm absolutely sure there are way more out there, with many new apps being launched every week.

Full transparency: I've had a chance to take a look at most of them, but I haven't tested them all (yet). The list you're about to see contains a collection of great AI productivity tools tested by Zapier's app review team, myself included. If there's a particular category you like, check out the best apps lists we've put together for them—or if we're still in the process of writing that list, run a quick Google search to find more options.

While all these apps are getting better every day, they're far from perfect: be sure to always check AI's work with your human brain. With that being said, please keep all hands and legs inside the vehicle—it's time to explore.

1. AI chatbots

The best place to start is the category that brought AI to the mainstream. AI chatbots allow you to chat with an AI large language model, letting you ask questions and get answers in a conversational style. The best chatbots use advanced reasoning and logic, write code, and make mathematical calculations.

Take a look at the full list of chatbots in our article on the best AI chatbots.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is the current industry leader, and the first chatbot that set the scene on fire. It's powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 and GPT-4 models, and it's surprisingly flexible and very easy to use. Learn how to use ChatGPT, understand how it works, and discover how to use it to write marketing copy, do market research, or write sales emails.

When you connect ChatGPT to Zapier, you can automate ChatGPT, so you can access the power of the AI chatbot from within any of your favorite apps.

Claude

Anthropic's safe and creative chatbot, Claude has impressive memory: it can remember up to 150,000 words in each conversation. This makes it useful to have long, step-by-step discussions of a problem or to upload a PDF and ask questions.

You can connect Claude to thousands of other apps using Zapier too. Learn more about how to automate Claude, or get started with one of these pre-make workflows.

Bing AI (Microsoft Copilot)

Microsoft's close relationship with OpenAI was a positive step to Bing Search: it can search the web and generate answers based on the results. It's also connected to DALL·E 3, so if you ask for images, you'll get four visual variations of your prompt. Microsoft is bringing all its AI features into a single name—Microsoft Copilot—so look out for that rebranding across its product line.

Zapier Central

Zapier Central is an experimental AI workspace where you can teach AI assistants to work across thousands of apps. But the interface is a chatbot, which means that creating your own AI assistant is as simple as using ChatGPT.

Start by giving your assistant access to your company's source of truth in apps like HubSpot, Notion, and Airtable. You can ask it about your data as well as all the data in your apps—and data sources will sync automatically.

And you can train your assistants to work while you're not there: tell your assistant what to do when it's triggered, how to process or summarize data, and which actions it should take, all without writing a line of code. These assistants are like mini-teammates who help you with specific tasks, like analyzing your spreadsheets, searching the web, or drafting responses to customers.

It's AI chat, automation, and data analysis all in one place. Learn more about Zapier Central, and then get started for free.

2. AI apps for content creation

Entire movies have been made about writer's block. These apps are here to break it. By entering your prompts, starting from templates, or using recipes, you can use AI models as a co-writer, helping you put together first drafts faster.

Browse all the possibilities in our list of the best AI writing generators.

Jasper

Jasper is a powerful AI content creation platform, favoring users who need a high volume of content. It packs dozens of templates to help you get started, connects to the internet to find research and sources, and also lets you generate images with AI. All your content creation needs are covered here.

You can also connect Jasper to thousands of other apps using Zapier. Learn more about how to automate Jasper or try one of the pre-built workflows below. You can also read more about how Jasper compares to ChatGPT.

Copy.ai

Copy.ai is a slower-paced option, acting as a writing co-pilot. Each of your prompts generates a list of options, and it's up to you to pull the best ones into your document. This is better for writing tasks that require more ideation and iteration, such as copywriting.

Find out how more in our Jasper vs Copy.ai comparison. Copy.ai also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically sending content to your CMS or enriching leads straight from your CRM. Learn more about how to automate Copy.ai, or try one of the pre-built workflows below.

Anyword

Anyword helps marketers create content by breaking the generation process down step by step. First, you add your prompt to generate a few titles. Then, you can pick your favorite and see a generated outline. Once you tweak that outline to what you want to cover, you can move forward to generating the final piece.

3. AI apps for text enhancement

Spell-checking has been around for a long time, but AI is changing the game. Before, it only detected spelling and basic structure errors. Now, it can spot tone and complex language and offer suggestions to make your writing clearer.

Discover all the available apps in our list of the best grammar checkers and rewording tools.

Grammarly

Grammarly is the mainstream spell- and structure-checking app. It's a complete solution that keeps your English on point, lets you adjust your tone, and suggests shortcuts to simplify wordy or complex phrases. It has plenty of extensions and integrations, so you can use it almost anywhere there's a text box.

It has generative text features, too. Learn how to use them in GrammarlyGO.

Wordtune

Wordtune helps you find plenty of wording alternatives to improve your text. When you input the text you want to check, you can easily browse synonyms, ask to rewrite entire sentences, and adapt the suggestions into a final draft.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid is a direct competitor of Grammarly, offering plenty of statistics to help you track grammar, style, and spelling scores. One of the main advantages here is its lifetime plan, helping you leverage all these features without adding a new recurring bill. Find out which is the best for you in our ProWritingAid vs. Grammarly comparison.

4. AI apps for video generation and editing

While full-blown video generation is still coming together, there's already a set of video tools that leverage AI to enhance video, remove backgrounds accurately, and even paint a few new images into each frame.

For the full list, see our picks for the best AI video generators.

Descript

Descript transcribes your videos into a script. Then, instead of using a timeline to trim the audio and video tracks, you edit the text script. As you do so, the video gets trimmed automatically. The rest of the editing works in a similar way, cutting the time to edit your talking head videos. Find out how it simplifies your audiovisual workflows in our walkthrough.

When you connect Descript to Zapier, you can automate the work better suited for computers, so you can focus on the creative side of things. Here are a couple of pre-built workflows to get you started.

Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora has been around for a long time. Now, it also brings to the table a set of AI features that let you remove backgrounds, denoise low-quality clips, and improve sound quality. All this with the classic video editing user experience, so you'll never feel lost.

Runway

Runway is a video magic wand. It has a set of interesting features that helps you generate video with AI, train your own AI models, and paint parts of frames using text prompts. The learning curve is very rewarding, and the app is growing at a great pace. Be sure to check it out.

5. AI apps for image generation

An image is worth a thousand words, but you don't need so many to generate a beautiful one with AI. These image generators take a text prompt and deliver the results—and this can be anywhere between mind-blowing to nightmare-inducing. They're both hugely entertaining and highly useful.

Read more about our picks for the best AI image generators.

DALL·E 3

DALL·E 3 is an image generator by OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. It's very simple to use—it runs in ChatGPT—and it produces interesting results, no matter if you've just started writing image prompts or are already a master. A great choice to begin exploring the realm of AI image generation.

You can connect DALL·E to Zapier to do things like automatically create images from transcripts, chat messages, or any other apps you use. Here are some examples.

Midjourney

Midjourney is impressive. Anything you throw at it generates incredible results—even if sometimes they're slightly off the mark. The fact that you have to use Discord to access it feels unintuitive at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be spending hours turning your imagination into colorful pixels.

Hit the ground running with our guide for how to use Midjourney, or take a look at how it compares to DALL·E 3.

Stable Diffusion

DreamStudio, powered by the Stable Diffusion AI model, is versatile and offers plenty of controls to help you prompt your way to the results you want. You'll have to invest a bit more time and learn how to control the model, but the reward is well worth it.

Here's how to use Stable Diffusion with DreamStudio, or take a look at how it compares to Midjourney or DALL·E 3.

6. Voice and music generators

YouTubers and other social media creators sometimes struggle to get original assets for their content. Good thing AI is here to (re)mix everything with AI voice generators and AI music generators.

Murf

Short on voiceover talent? Murf offers over 120 voices in 20 languages to turn your text into voice. With simple controls to change pitch, emphasis, and pauses, you'll have a quick way to add narration to your latest social media post or training video.

Splash Pro

Moving on to music generation, Splash Pro is one of the few apps that accepts a text prompt. I recommend you try out the Improve button before sending it—you'll get more interesting results. The engine generates up to five music samples per prompt. If you like one of them, you can either ask for variations or move on to creating the fulll song.

AIVA

AIVA also deals with music, but takes a different approach. Instead of a text prompt, there are three ways you can start generating:

• By picking a style, from epic orchestral to cinematic cyberpunk

• By chord progression

• By uploading an audio reference as inspiration

Once ready, you can edit the result in a timeline editor, adding or removing instrument tracks as you feel your way into the final version.

6. AI apps for knowledge management and grounding

AI is also a powerful search tool. When you connect it to your personal data, workspace, or second brain, it can find anything you need and put it into a natural language answer. Much better than sifting through your notes for hours, right? This is the gist of grounding: keeping an AI model close to your facts—not up there flying with the hallucinations.

Mem

Mem uses AI to tag and connect the notes you take, so you don't have to spend time organizing them. You can just gather bits and pieces of information, store them, and trust that Mem's AI features will keep everything connected and organized. When the time comes to search for those notes, you can browse the automatic tags and use the search bar to find all you wrote about each topic that matters to you.

Keep feeding your intelligent second brain by connecting Mem to Zapier, improving data transmission and opening up more automation opportunities. Here are a few examples to get you started.

Notion AI Q&A

Notion is a strong workspace for organizing your knowledge, but even if you're disciplined, important pages will still fall through the cracks. Not anymore with Notion AI Q&A: grounded on your data, it generates answers and points you to the sources, revealing that lost insight you recorded in a meeting years ago.

You can connect Notion to Zapier to streamline things even more. Learn more about how to automate Notion, or try one of these workflows.

Personal AI

While Mem and Notion focus on notes and documents, Personal AI focuses on messaging. The data you upload into the app is turned into memory blocks. Then, whenever someone messages you, your personal AI generates a reply based on your data: you can edit the details or tap to send it right away. When you feel your AI model knows enough about you, you can turn on AI Autopilot, which will make others feel like they're talking to a ChatGPT-like version of you. 

You can help Personal AI learn about you by connecting it to Zapier and sending it memories from the apps where you spend the most time. Learn more about how to automate Personal AI, or get started with one of these workflows.

8. AI task and project management

When you have a good plan, collaboration and execution is easier. AI can help getting more clarity on what to do, optimize processes, and help you cross every single task off your list.

Asana

A project management heavyweight, Asana adds a wide range of useful AI-powered features. Smart goals use historical data to come up with better goals for the quarter. It identifies project risks and workflow blockers, so you can tackle trouble before it happens. And it provides answers to anything related to your projects, helping you gain more visibility into what is (or isn't) happening.

You can automate Asana even more by connecting it to Zapier, so it can talk to thousands of other apps. Learn more about how to automate Asana, or take a look at these pre-made workflows.

Any.do

It's natural not to know the entire task lineup of a project. If you have trouble figuring out all the steps to get from zero to complete, Any.do generates tasks for you. Whenever you're writing them down, you can take a look at AI suggestions and click to enlarge your list.

Connect Any.do to Zapier to automate all your task management processes. Read more about how to automate Any.do, or check out these pre-made workflows.

BeeDone

BeeDone is a quirky option directed at those of us who need a little excitement to get things done (I'm 100% guilty here). Based on principles put forward by Cal Newport and James Clear (among other productivity greats), the app turns boring tasks into little games, offering rewards whenever you move forward. It keeps track of your habits, offers an AI assistant to guide you, and you can spin the Task Roulette if you feel like tackling a random one from your list.

9. AI transcription apps and meeting assistants

Taking notes in meetings may reduce your focus, so why not scrap that activity entirely? AI transcription/meeting assistant apps are great to turn voice into text, letting you browse it later. This will help you be more present in your meetings and, at the same time, be able to thoroughly analyze the transcription later.

Pick your favorite in our lists of the best transcription apps and the best AI meeting assistants.

Fireflies

Fireflies is great to transcribe all your meetings, tracking the conversation topics along the way. It has its own bot called Fred that can handle summarizing the meeting's contents, generating text, and searching through your history to meet your query.

Integrate Fireflies with Zapier to connect Fireflies to thousands of other apps. Learn more about how to automate Fireflies, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.