In this blog we discuss three AI tools for business every leader should familiarize themselves with to embrace their time-saving potential.
If you’re a leader in your organization, you probably already know how to work quickly and get results. Strong time management skills might be, at least in part, why you hold a position of influence today. If productivity superpowers have served you well throughout your career, don’t let them stand in your way now. Too many top executives are missing out on the time- and stress-saving potential of emerging AI tools for business.
Leaders often say they don’t need AI tools or assistants because they already “have a system” for their daily work. In other cases, leaders may be unaware of new and emerging ways to work smarter, not harder. Some know that AI business tools exist but don’t have time to stop their hectic schedules and learn them.
Regardless, with technology evolving every day, it can be tough to know exactly how the AI business tools available on the market might apply to you. We share three game-changing AI assistants every executive needs to know about, plus simple steps to incorporate them into your routine.
1. Open-Access (and Proprietary) Chatbots
Chatbots: We’ve all heard of them. We all have at least one co-worker who swears they use AI (like ChatGPT or Google Bard, now called Gemini) to write everything now. And yet, many leaders have little or no idea what the implications of these tools are for their organization, let alone their own daily workflow.
Chatbots are a type of artificial intelligence that learns by processing large volumes of text from various sources. They can then generate new text, up to a certain length, in response to prompts or questions from human users.
People often think about chatbots in customer service roles (like the help bots on retail websites). While many companies benefit from that external-facing function, leaders and professionals can use chatbots to help themselves, too. Tools like ChatGPT can generate first drafts of everything from emails to proposals, presentations, surveys, and more.
These tools are often free through the web — simply search for “chatbot” to see various options appear. Advanced and app-based versions are available at subscription rates as well.
Importantly, companies can create “stand-up” or proprietary chatbots that run (at least in part) on text data from their own environment. This capability can help leaders generate original materials and answer on-the-go questions using their company’s own data.
Microsoft Azure is one tool that can help organizations create their own chatbots. Open-source resources are also available for companies with limited budgets.
Don’t Get ahead of Yourself
Once executives realize chatbots’ incredible speed and flexibility, they often use bots as a crutch. Leaders can quickly become over-confident in the quality of chatbot outputs or over-reliant on their help.
Don’t make that mistake. These bots are excellent for idea generation and draft creation but cannot replace human insight.
Read AI-generated materials carefully. Bots can get you about 80 percent “there” in terms of quality and productivity, but you know far more than they do. It’s up to you to fix clunky speech, correct assumptions, weave in stories, and enrich details based on real, human experience.
The good news is that bots can help you start your toughest assignments. Editing a draft is easier than staring at a blank page.
Don’t Let Fear Hold You Back Either
At the other end of the spectrum, we sometimes see hesitation from leaders considering proprietary chatbot solutions. Some worry that allowing AI to run on company data might reduce data security or increase liability. Some fear that making these tools available to employees might change their work culture and values for the worse (such as by making people “lazy” or “dishonest” about their contributions).
These concerns are understandable, but they’re not a reason to reject AI. Instead, this is where AI meets data strategy. Rather than avoiding AI, smart companies will take a careful and strategic approach to AI adoption.
If leaders aren’t sure how to keep their data secure, they can work with third-party vendors to implement the right protections. If they’re worried about maintaining a healthy culture, they should collaborate with employees to ensure AI design and implementation enhances productivity and creativity for all.
Companies that adopt AI tools with open, healthy dialogue tend to thrive. In contrast, companies that just say “no” to AI often may make themselves more vulnerable to risk because employees use chatbots anyway.
2. On-Demand Image and Video Generation
Even if you don’t work with images and videos right now, every leader should know that on-demand image and video generation exists. AI-generated visuals have made remarkable strides in recent months. They are now crisp and high-resolution, often virtually indistinguishable from human-generated images. With the right prompting, these AI business tools can bring the exact scenario you envision to life.
For marketing, communications, and engagement officers, the benefits of AI-generated images are clear: The ability to tell stories and create visuals without the time, labor and costs of original shoots is often invaluable. For leaders in other areas, like business and technology, the speed and ease of AI-generated images introduce new possibilities for business as usual.
Stories are powerful, and visuals bring stories to life. Images can help people grasp the importance or feasibility of a new idea, understand a plan of action, or even consider a prototype. For instance, a chief marketing officer could prototype a marketing campaign and then test and refine their storyboard before investing in it. A chief technology officer could map a new process or create a scaled product model before purchasing a patent.
As with chatbots, AI-generated photos and videos are now remarkably accessible. A quick Google search will turn up dozens of no- and low-cost options. Many of the business tools you already know and use, like Canva or Adobe, now have built-in image or video-generation features.
Remember and Respect Creative Professionals
While the potential to increase the impact of your business deliverables with custom images is exciting, you must use this technology responsibly. These AI tools for business are not a replacement for human work.
While AI-generated images or videos reduce the amount of work available for creative professionals, including photographers and videographers, set designers, and actors, to name some, they also introduce ethical concerns like the possibility of people’s work, personal image, or likeness being used without their consent or compensation.
At the very least, before using any AI-generated images or videos, assess whether the creative professionals whose work is feeding the algorithm or being used to generate new images:
- Were compensated fairly and competitively,
- Will receive royalties for the perpetual use of their work,
- Consented to the use and manipulation of their intellectual property, personal images, or likeness.
On your end, always tell your audience when your images are AI-generated. When in doubt about an AI-related ethical question, turn to the Partnership on AI’s Guidelines for Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media.
3. Accelerated Productivity Microsoft Copilot
Thanks to Copilot for Microsoft 365, Office applications like Word, PowerPoint and Excel can now interact with you in a way Clippy (our little, bouncing paper clip friend from the early days of MS Word) never could. Microsoft Copilot is an embedded AI assistant, available across Microsoft 365 solutions. Microsoft 365 is a suite of products that includes Office Apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and productivity tools such as MS Teams.
You can ask Copilot to create a new slide in PowerPoint, create content about a certain topic, or include a particular image. You can also ask Copilot to generate new content in Word, analyze data and create reporting graphics in Excel, draft professional emails in Outlook, and help increase your productivity by preparing you for the day with a summary of upcoming calendar events. Additionally, it can provide summarized documentation and content on a topic tailored just for you, among other examples.
These features might not seem profound at first glance, but small moments can add up to make a big impact on your time and productivity. If you’ve ever sunk days or weeks into a presentation or research, you’re probably familiar with the tedious, repetitive actions that steal your time and energy.
Seconds and minutes saved — over and over again — eventually can free up hours and days that would be better spent on the things that matter most to you.
To access Microsoft Copilot, first, make sure your Microsoft 365 environment has the appropriate security guardrails and adoption plan in place to ensure secure and effective collaboration. Then, follow this step-by-step guide from Microsoft — or request your IT team to enable it for you.
Ease Into Collaborating With AI Tools for Business
These AI business tools are designed to make your life run smoother. But so were the printing press, typewriter, and computer — and no one learned how to use those in a day.
Give yourself a grace period to explore how these tools work and what they have to offer. Start with something fun when you’re not pressed for time. Thinking about throwing a summer BBQ? Ask ChatGPT for BBQ recipes everyone will love. Work with Microsoft Copilot to create the invitations. Use Canva’s AI image feature to pair your grilling-out playlist with a sizzling party reel.
Build up to a work deliverable next. If you are, for example, a salesperson who does market research before calling on potential customers, let the AI help you. Work with a chatbot to segment and study a new market. Ask yourself, what did the AI miss that your manual search normally finds? Then, do your manual search. Was it more or less effective than the AI?
That kind of experimentation can help augment your workflow, at worst. At best, it could streamline your processes and gather new insights that eventually lead to business wins.
Rose Hayes contributed to this blog.
Microsoft recently changed its licensing model for those who can access Copilot for M365, opening it up to more businesses and individual users. Learn what this means for you.
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