8 of the best AI assistants to increase workplace productivity

What to look for in an AI assistant

Let’s start with the basics—what are you looking for assistance with?

Ultimately, you want an AI assistant to do something you’d have otherwise done manually, only better in some way. It could be doing it faster, automatically, or even preempting your next steps without needing to be asked.

The first thing to ask yourself: What problem are you hoping to solve?

• Is your never-ending inbox slowing you down?

• Do you struggle to focus when writing?

• Are you looking for something to help you make sense of your files?

Whatever your needs, and no matter how different each AI assistant’s functions may be on the surface, there are a few common principles that all AI assistants can be graded against:

• Features and functions—does it do the things you actually need it to do?

• Comprehension—does it make use of large language models (LLMs), built-in AI chatbots, or natural language processing to interpret complex queries?

• Accuracy of output—can you trust the information it provides?

• Quality of output—is the output useful for your needs?

• Integration with other apps and services—can it access your files, emails, or meetings, for example?

• Ease of use—are you finding the interface clear, or do you need a degree in machine learning and computer science to get it up and running?

• Cost—is it within your budget, or do you need to sacrifice other tools and subscriptions to afford it?

• Privacy and security—what is the AI assistant doing with your data?

With these questions in mind, you can start to compare the options available.

The best AI assistants and tools for boosting workplace productivity

There are thousands of AI-powered tools and assistants out there, and while we can’t talk about all of them, we can highlight some of our favorites for boosting workplace productivity.

We’ve focused on tools that solve a specific problem for your team, with the intention that multiple tools in this list can be used together to create a suite of purpose-built, advanced AI software at your fingertips.

1. Motion

Best for: Calendar management

Motion is a self-described AI calendar assistant that combines task management, scheduling, and calendar functions to help users automatically plan their day based on their tasks and priorities.

How it helps:

• Powerful scheduling engine with advanced task tracking ensures deadlines are met

• User-friendly interface suits productivity lovers, keeping critical information accessible

• Scrollable list of upcoming tasks and detailed calendar views (day and week)

• Easy scheduling with click-and-drag functionality, and automatic to-do shuffling

• Comprehensive project and task management features, including Kanban view

• Detailed task settings with priority levels and deadline strictness options

• Warning system for tasks at risk of missing due dates, prompting action

• Rich project management tools: task notes, sub-tasks, labels, activity feed, and templates

• Meeting templates with priority settings, enhancing scheduling capabilities

• Integration with Zapier for automation and connectivity with other tools

Potential limitations to consider:

• Calendar updates and task shuffling can be slow, requiring patience

• Complexity in settings and controls may have a learning curve for new users

• Non-manager users may find the project management dashboard simplified

Runners up:

• OneCal—syncs your Outlook and Google calendars in real-time, helps avoid scheduling conflicts, and saves time

2. Otter.ai

Best for: Meeting transcription

Record and transcribe the audio from meetings automatically, using artificial intelligence to generate a summary of the meeting with corresponding timestamps. Tools like Otter AI specialize in this by providing real-time transcriptions, and summaries, making it easier to review and share meeting details efficiently.

How it helps:

• Integration with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, Slack, and more

• Very helpful for making meetings more productive

• Provides a breakdown of action items assigned during meetings

• Allows users to ask various questions about meeting content and decisions

• Supports workspace features for team communication and task assignment

• Integrates with Slack for seamless communication and task management

• Offers account-wide chat-based search for information across recent meetings

Potential limitations to consider:

• Transcribing complex audio can be challenging, and accuracy can suffer as a result

• Otter can struggle with identifying the end of sentences

• US and British English are currently the only supported languages

• It’s pricey compared to other transcription apps

Runners up:

• Equal Time—provides meeting transcripts, notes, and action items, ensuring all participants have a chance to contribute

• Zoom AI companion—transforms meeting management for distributed teams with automated transcription, real-time translation, and AI-driven summaries

3. Grammarly

Best for: Writing assistance

Grammarly helps to improve writing by providing real-time grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style suggestions, along with contextual recommendations for clarity, engagement, and tone. Its AI assistant helps you to rephrase text, generate new copy, or adjust writing to a specific tone of voice.

How it helps:

• Cross-functionality: Browser and app extensions make Grammarly available in a variety of use cases—writing emails, working on documents, and even chat applications

• Comprehensive grammar and spelling checks: Identifies and corrects grammatical errors and misspellings

• Clarity and conciseness suggestions: Enhances readability and suggests more concise wording

• Tone detection: Adjusts writing tone to be confident, friendly, formal, etc.

• AI writing assistant features: Offers text generation, content rephrasing, and style adjustments

• Vocabulary enhancement: Recommends sophisticated and varied word choices

• Sentence restructuring: Suggests improvements for sentence flow and readability

• Genre-specific style guides: Provides tailored writing suggestions for different genres (e.g., academic, business)

• Plagiarism checker: Detects potential plagiarism by comparing text to billions of web pages

Potential limitations to consider:

• Limited to writing use cases

• Over-reliance: Users may become too dependent on Grammarly, affecting their proofreading skills

• Potential for false positives/negatives: Can occasionally flag correct sentences as errors or overlook nuanced mistakes

• Premium cost: Advanced features are only available with a paid subscription

Runners up:

• Writer—allows businesses to integrate AI into their writing processes, tailoring AI to reflect a company's tone and style. It’s useful for building function-specific apps for different writing use cases.

• Copy.ai—combines AI-powered content creation and purpose-built AI tools for common sales and marketing tasks, like lead management and account-based marketing.

• Jasper.ai—provides AI-powered content writing tools for marketing teams, as well as image generation tools.

4. Gong

Best for: Sales teams

Gong is an AI-powered sales assistant that enhances sales team performance through automated call analysis, targeted coaching, and revenue acceleration insights.

How it helps:

• Automated call analysis: AI-driven insights into customer interactions and areas for improvement

• Coaching and feedback tools: Enables targeted coaching based on AI-generated data

• Revenue acceleration insights: Identifies opportunities for growth and tracks performance metrics

• Performance enhancement: Helps sales teams improve performance and drive revenue growth

• Full integration with Dropbox Dash, learn more about the Gong connector in Dash

Potential limitations to consider:

• Reliance on AI: The effectiveness of insights and coaching depends on AI accuracy

• Learning curve: Users may need time to adapt to and fully utilize the tool

• Integration challenges: Potential difficulties in integrating Gong with existing systems and workflows

Runners up:

• Salesforce Sales AI—brings AI-driven support to CRM platforms, helping teams predict future pipeline performance and optimize sales interactions

• Clari—utilizes AI technology to simplify RevOps, sales interactions, and conversational analysis to prevent loss of revenue

• Hubspot Breeze AI—enables sales teams to build pipelines and close deals with AI tools including predictive sales forecasts, guided selling, and automated sales reporting

5. Topaz Labs

Best for: Creative teams

Topaz Labs is your team’s AI-powered editing suite, offering photo and video enhancement software to sharpen, denoise, upscale images, adjust lighting, and more—with minimal manual effort.

How it helps:

• AI-generated slow motion: Produces incredible slow-motion footage from any source

• Natural video upscaling: Upscales videos to higher resolutions effectively

• Faster performance: New multi-threaded architecture for quicker previews and exports

• Improved user experience: The latest version comes with a redesigned interface for better usability and aesthetics

• Batch processing: Allows previewing and exporting multiple videos simultaneously

Potential limitations to consider:

• Slow motion encoding speed: Slow motion encoding can still be time-consuming

• Queue management: The export queue needs refinements for a smoother workflow

• Hardware intensive: Performance may be affected when running other memory-intensive applications simultaneously

Runners up:

• Runway—offers powerful tools for video editing, with features such as slow-motion generation and upscaling

6. Leapsome

Best for: HR teams and employee development

Leapsome is an AI-powered team performance management and enablement platform offering extensive features for performance reviews, goal setting, employee surveys, learning paths, compensation management, and continuous feedback.

How it helps:

• Performance reviews: Create 360°, simple, or anonymous reviews using automation and AI

• Goal setting: Easily set flexible, recurring goals with fixed timelines

• Employee surveys: Tools for creating engagement surveys with sentiment analysis and actionable insights

• Learning and onboarding: Provide guided learning paths and development tools for employees

• Compensation management: Automate workflows and templates for transparent compensation and promotion strategies

• Competency framework: Create roadmaps for job positions and individual achievements

• Continuous feedback: Send ongoing feedback and recognize employee achievements

• 1-on-1 meetings: Create shareable agendas and predefined meeting types for better preparation

• Integrations: Import data from HRIS tools and integrate with Slack, MS Teams, calendar apps, and project management systems like Jira

Potential limitations to consider:

• Learning curve: Takes time to get used to due to the extensive feature set

• Interface issues: The UI can be clunky and slow at times

• Cost: Not the most affordable option

• Suitability: May be over-featured for small or mid-size companies

Runners up:

• Leena AI—reduces the workload of HR, IT, and finance teams by resolving common employee queries without human intervention. It claims to automate up to 70% of internal queries, streamlining operations.

• Paradox AI—simplifies the recruiting process by automating time-consuming tasks, allowing candidates to progress from the initial contact to hiring more efficiently.

7. Nanonets Flow

Best for: Finance and accounting teams

Nanonets Flow is an AI-powered platform that automates finance tasks, streamlines document processing, and integrates with existing financial systems to enhance efficiency and accuracy.

How it helps:

• Advanced data extraction: Accurately extracts information from invoices, receipts, and bank statements

• Process automation: Automates workflows, reducing manual effort and minimizing errors

• Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with existing financial systems and accounting software

• Efficiency boost: Claims to process invoices 10 times faster, enhancing productivity

• Cost-effective: No fees for Automated Clearing House (ACH) or card payments

Potential limitations to consider:

• The work process could use more checkpoints to make sure the information taken out is what the customers wanted

• Some users have critiqued the user experience and interface

Runners up:

• Stampli—an AI-powered Accounts Payable automation solution that brings all AP-related communication, documentation, and workflows into one place

8. Github Copilot

Best for: Developers

GitHub Copilot is an AI assistant for developers that integrates with popular code editors to provide real-time code suggestions, documentation help, and automated code completion.

How it helps:

• Boilerplate code and autocompletion: Excels in generating boilerplate code and repetitive code fragments, reducing time spent on mundane tasks

• Syntax assistance: Helps eliminate the need to remember complex syntax, offering suitable syntax options

• Accelerates coding process: Provides smart hints, guesses, and suggested syntax, significantly speeding up coding

• Context understanding: Understands code context and can auto-complete comments

• Versatility: Facilitates seamless transitions between coding languages and offers predefined document structures

Potential limitations to consider:

• Intellectual property concerns: Raises questions about the use of code protected by intellectual property for training AI systems without explicit permission
  • Lack of direct interaction: Absence of an integrated chat feature limits direct interaction with Copilot
  • Irrelevant suggestions: Sometimes suggests excessive or irrelevant code
  • Complex task handling: Struggles with understanding and assisting with advanced or complicated tasks

Runners up:

• WhatTheDiff—this AI tool does three things: it writes descriptions for pull requests automatically, it sends out simple notifications to non-technical people to keep them informed, and it helps you fix small problems during the review

• TabNine—assists with code review against your team’s unique rules, both for pull requests and in the IDE, providing guidance to fix issues when something doesn’t look right

Ready to elevate beyond AI assistants? Meet Dropbox Dash

Best for: All-in-one AI-powered universal search, organization, and answers across your entire workflow

Ever found yourself struggling to find a file or email? The title is on the tip of your tongue but you just can’t quite remember it—and, until you do, that file is as good as gone.

Meet Dash, the AI-powered universal search and organization tool that helps your team move faster—while keeping sensitive content secure and access under control. Unite and protect your company files and data with universal search, knowledge management, and data access governance. Find, organize, share, and secure all of your company content effortlessly—so you can focus on the work that matters most.

While it’s not an AI assistant per se, it’s much more like a dedicated tool for teams to work together, Dash can handle many of the tasks other options on our list can do.

How it helps:

• Seamlessly integrate with tools like Google Drive, Slack, and Notion, enabling Dash to unify your workflows
• Search all of your connected apps at once, for example, searching Dropbox, Google Drive, your emails, and your calendar simultaneously
• Use queries to ask Dash to find your files with AI
• Ask Dash questions and get context-aware responses from the Chat feature
• Organize files, meetings, web pages, and more into stacks that you can then share with others to make collaboration simple
• Allow Dash to use AI to automatically sort new files into stacks
• Easily view and filter access permissions across multiple cloud file applications in one interface via the admin console
• Bulk update permissions for any amount of data or assets in seconds
• Ensure employees and external partners see only the right content, and that sensitive data isn’t surfaced unintentionally, with strong data governance controls

Things to consider:

• Limited to the connected apps: Dash won’t use information from the web to inform its answers like some AI tools might—the benefit of this is that you’re working with a controlled data source, providing you with more focused, relevant answers about your files
• Dash won’t create documents for you—instead, it focuses on making it easy for you to work with your existing files and data, though Dash Chat can help with drafting content when you need it

Which AI assistant is right for me, or my team?

Whether you’re looking to organize your inbox, speed up repetitive daily tasks, or draw inspiration from generative tools—there’s a lot that AI assistants can help with.

Choosing the ideal app for you will ultimately depend on your specific needs and personal preferences. It’s worth taking some time to fully assess what you’re trying to do, the more specific you can be, the easier it will be to evaluate whether a given tool fits the brief.

Beyond the capabilities of basic AI assistants, if you’re looking for a dedicated tool to speed up the way your team works with company files, along with a variety of supported platforms, Dropbox Dash might be just the tool you’ve been looking for:

• Rapidly find files and data from your cloud storage and any connected apps, with query-based searching that doesn’t require you to remember the file name

• Organize files, emails, webpages, and meetings into AI-driven stacks that update over time

• Ask questions about your files and get answers without needing to open the file yourself

• Create a central knowledge base that your entire organization can access, taking advantage of the intuitive built-in universal search and AI-powered summary tools

• Administrators can easily, quickly, and effectively monitor and manage cloud-sharing permissions for all of their company’s content, significantly reducing security risks

Elevate your productivity with Dash

Ready to streamline your workflow with Dash? Book a full demo to see it in action.