The 10 best AI tools for business

Entrepreneurs and small business owners can now efficiently tackle tasks and dedicate time to innovative ideas, staying ahead of the competition. 🌟

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, many small business owners are hard workers, with over 30% clocking in more than fifty hours a week, and 25% going the extra mile with over sixty hours. 😱

Here’s the good news: by using AI-powered tools in your small business, you can streamline tasks and bring your workload down to a more manageable forty hours—or even less.

Although artificial intelligence may seem overwhelming at first, when used effectively, it can transform your business and give you a competitive edge. Whether you want to automate tasks or boost your productivity, AI tools for business can help. 

What you should look for when it comes to AI tools for business

There are all sorts of different AI tools out there. There are pure AI buzz bots that can answer prompts and work with little to no intervention. On the other side, are AI-powered features that have been built into existing business tools to make them easier to use.

Either way, any AI tools for business help you get a great result faster than just sitting in a coffee shop downing your third iced oat milk latte of the hour (looking at you, digital nomads). ☕

And because it’s all too easy to fall into decision paralysis, here are some features you should keep an eye out for to see if it works in your world:

• Useful: Some of the best AI tools are the ones that can take repetitive tasks that require little brain power off your plate. 🧠

• Adaptable: You need a tool that fits your business processes, For example, some tools might work with your CRM; some might not. ⛔

• Price: If you’re going to invest in an AI-driven tool, you want to get the most bang for your buck for a trustworthy tool. 🤑

Top ten AI tools for business at a glance

We went ahead and compiled the top ten AI tools that we think could help a variety of entrepreneurs in their day to day:

Best AI tool for business #1: ChatGPT

ChatGPT is one of the most infamous AI tools out there. Appearing on the scene in 2022, this chatbot is one of OpenAI’s most successful machine learning algorithms. 💫

ChatGPT is beloved by many business owners because it’s incredibly versatile. This tool can take care of all your busy work—from drafting that follow-up email to generating social media captions. It can even help find mistakes in your code. 

Not to mention, ChatGPT’s API allows you to plug its knowledge into your own platform. For example, you could ask ChatGPT questions in your company’s Slack channel instead of having to go to the website. 🤳

(Keep in mind that ChatGPT may seem all-knowing, but it has only been fed information until 2021. That means when it comes to research it isn’t always a reliable source and you should always fact-check.)

Core features: 

• Chatbot that provides answers in real-time to a wide range of questions  

• Can create content based on the prompts you feed into it

• Price: Free or upgrade your membership for $20-$25/month

Best AI tool for business #2: Jasper

Jasper is the AI writing generator that doesn’t sound like an AI writing generator. 💁‍♀️

By tapping into your pre-existing brand language, Jasper sets itself apart from other writing language models because it gets it right away. (That being said, a human touch when writing never hurts). 🪄

Not to mention, Jasper can take away the pain of keyword optimization and writer’s block that marketing mavens know all too well.

Core features: 

• AI writing generator for high-quality consistent writing

• Takes in and analyzes your brand’s voice so all content generated seems like a perfect fit

• Can create a whole social media campaign from one prompt 

• Boost SEO by analyzing competitors and editing accordingly  

• Generates tone-appropriate images to go along with the content it created

• Price: $39-$59 a month

Best AI tool for business #3: Fireflies

Any busy bee could find 101 reasons to be grateful for Fireflies. 🐝

Fireflies is an AI assistant that takes notes on every meeting, whether they’re on Webex or Zoom. So whether or not you finished your coffee that morning, you’ll always be able to recall what happened. Plus, it’s got special AI features that make it especially easy to find what you need in your notes. 

On top of its note-taking abilities, Fireflies can do other virtual assistant tasks like creating action items based on what it hears in the meeting. 👂

Core features: 

• Machine-driven note-taking

• AI search capabilities 

• Can fill in relevant forms with names pulled from the meeting 

• Can create action items that were mentioned in meetings

• Price: Free or upgrade your membership for $10-19 a month

Best AI tool for business #4: Grammarly

Because not all of us were the third-grade spelling bee champion, Grammarly is here to save the day. 🦸

Grammarly is an AI writing assistant that analyzes your text for errors and clarity. Plus, it can even help you edit for SEO making it a great AI marketing tool as well.

Not only does it help edit, but it also provides different copywriting directions based on context—cool, right? Now you don’t have to reread that email blast fifty times before you send it off. 📨

And for those who might need a little more extra help with their words, Grammarly’s AI can also whip up some drafts for you. However, there’s a limit on AI text generation in the free version so you might want to upgrade if you’re looking to rely on it. 

Core features:

• AI content generation and editing

• Works across platforms – whether it’s Gmail or Microsoft Word

• Covers grammar and clarity 

• Context-specific editing capabilities and templates

• Handy plagiarism checker

• SEO optimization features 

• Price: Free or upgrade membership for $12-$15 a month

Best AI tool for business #5: Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is the coworker that actually gets it all done. All you have to do is ask. 🗣️

You may have known this AI tool under the name BingAI, but Microsoft’s venture with OpenAI resulted in a rebrand to Microsoft Copilot. 

Microsoft Copilot is a chatbot similar to ChatGPT but has especially unique capabilities for the Microsoft 365 suite. It can take care of the data analysis in Microsoft Excel, clean up any mess that might be in your Outlook account, help edit your writing in Microsoft Word, and even turn your Word documents into PowerPoint presentations. 🧑‍💻

And on top of that, they also have their own image generator. 

Core features:

• AI-powered chatbot

• Handy all-in-one tool for Microsoft 365 suite

• Price: The chatbot is free, but to get the AI-driven tools for Microsoft 365 is $20-30 a month

Best AI tool for business #6: DALL-E

DALL-E, OpenAI’s brainchild named after WALL-E and respected artist Salvadore Dali, is the little robot artist you never realized you needed. 🧑‍🎨

If you’re making a lot of cover art or need some design inspiration, DALL-E is the perfect AI art generator. This tool is on its third iteration (DALL-E 3) right now and is only expected to get better and better.

Plus, you own any of the images you generate, so you can use them for all your business needs. 💸

Core features:

• Prompt-based AI art generation

• Unique image ownership

• Built into ChatGPT

• Price: Depending on which model you use of DALL-E, you can generate images for free or pay-as-you-go ranging from $0.016/image to $0.04 per image

PS: If AI art generators aren’t your thing, you can leverage Canva for a more hands-on approach. But you don’t have to create everything from scratch: Canva recently launched some new AI-powered features to help you create beautiful graphics, faster. 

Best AI tool for business #7: Descript

Grow your podcast faster with Descript’s AI-driven video and podcast tools.🎙️

Descript is a one-stop sound shop for everything from video and audio editing to post-editing transcription. They even have an AI assistant to help you learn to use the tool faster.

Descript’s AI features can also make your content more engaging. You can do things like bring another person’s voice to life, edit in more eye contact, remove unnecessary words and any background noise…The list goes on and on. This is a seriously powerful AI tool for your business. 

If you’re tired of spending all your time trying to tighten your videos or podcasts up, get them to professional grade faster and easier with Descript.

Core features:

• Video content and audio editing capabilities 

• Background noise remover 

• Clip repurposing abilities 

• AI voice proficiencies

• Descript AI assistant

• Price: Free and more features are available if you upgrade for $12-$24 a month

Best AI tool for business #8: OpusClip

Get the magnum opus for viral clip generation with OpusClip. 📳

If you have a dream of going viral, OpusClip is a video repurposing tool that can help you get there. All you have to do is upload your video and boom! It gets repurposed into a variety of different clips. On top of just being cool, it’s a major time saver for anyone in the content creation space.

OpusClip is smart, too. These clips are optimized to perform well through the machine analysis of other viral videos. 😎

Plus, the AI has other features to ensure your clips stay looking professional. For example, making sure all speakers stay in the frame even when it's segmented into different clips and adding suggested layouts to make your video more visually engaging.

Once you’ve edited your next viral video, OpusClip even has a social media scheduler to make sure it gets uploaded seamlessly.

Core features:

• AI virality score

• AI clip generation

• AI video editing

• High resolution (1080P)

• Compatible with fifteen languages and offers caption translation

• Price: Free with upgrades available from $9-$29 a month

Best AI tool for business #9: Zendesk

Help your customers find their zen by incorporating Zendesk into your work life. 🧘‍♀️

With Zendesk, you can use AI as your first line of defense for customer support. This is especially handy for small businesses in the e-commerce space with few existing support capabilities.

Zendesk offers a customer service chatbot that’s plugged into all your past interactions to take care of most problems your customers might face. And if a customer is facing a tougher issue that needs human eyes, that same AI can help direct your customer support teams in the right direction based on what was successful in the past.

Zendesk also just rolled out a new feature that allows the chatbot to adjust its tone to match your brand’s voice. So you get all the robot features, without it sounding like a robot. 🤖

Plus, the AI can create support articles for you based on what they hear from the customers so your support arsenal is always loaded.

Core features:

1. AI customer support chatbot

2. AI-generated customer support content

3. AI-driven customer support navigation

4. Price: A lot of AI is built into their basic plans which start at $19 a month. The Advanced AI add-ons run for an additional $50 a month and have to be used in tandem with the Support Professional Membership which is $55 a month.

Best AI tool for business #10: Zapier

As its name might suggest, Zapier is all about automation. And all about making it accessible for everyone, even fo those with less experience implementing high-tech solutions. 🎉

Zapier is beloved for automating business workflows (like when a customer signs up on your website, Zapier can automatically add it to a spreadsheet). In the past, users had to set up “Zaps” like this manually. But now, Zapier has rolled out an AI solution to help business owners automate this process. 

Canvas is Zapier’s new Beta project management tool for workflow development and automation. You use Canvas to map out your workflow in progress. From there, Canvas uses AI to help suggest where you can fit automation into the workflow—and then it actually sets up those automations! 🙌

Zapier’s chatbots are their second new Beta tool. All you have to do is connect it to your site, and it’ll analyze that information to provide customer support in your brand voice. It can even qualify leads for you based on customer engagement.

Core features:

• AI workflow automation with AI-driven optimization

• Integrates with a large variety of apps (over 6,000!)

• Easy AI chatbot generation

• AI-driven lead qualification and conversion

• Price: The new AI beta tools are free

Check it out here.

The bottom line on AI tools for business

AI tools can help small business owners save time, boost productivity, and avoid burnout. Not to mention, they can give you an edge over the competition and help you reach your business financial goals faster.

From Descript's AI-driven video and podcast editing capabilities to Zapier's user-friendly automation tools, there are a plethora of AI tools designed to help you grow your business. Now, it's time to choose your favorite option and get started—you've got this! 🥳

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