Stay informed with our newsletter.

Icon
Leading Brands
January 25, 2024

20 Necessary AI Tools for Starting a Business in 2024

For entrepreneurs launching businesses in 2024, a curated list of essential AI tools includes ChatGPT for customer engagement, TensorFlow for deep learning, and Salesforce Einstein for CRM. These tools cover a range of functions from automation and analytics to natural language processing, empowering startups to thrive in the AI-driven landscape.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a versatile tool. Some AI tools can be used to do everything from conducting research and creating content to planning your day or even helping to start a business.

As more users adopt this technology, AI is becoming a must-have for businesses and entrepreneurs to stay competitive. For instance, A survey from The Conference Board finds that 56 percent of workers are using generative AI on the job, with almost 1 in 10 employing the technology on a daily basis.

In this article, we’re going to look at some of the best AI tools for business in 2024. This includes solutions you can use to answer questions, generate text and images, transcribe and schedule meetings, proofread content, and even write code.

Key Takeaways

  • According to PWC’s report, AI is expected to bring $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
  • The number of AI tools for business is growing progressively.
  • Open AI’s ChatGPT remains the most popular AI tool for business and personal matters.
  • ChatGPT hit 100 million active users by the end of 2023, becoming the fastest-growing application in history.

Top AI Tools For Starting a Business This Year

1. ChatGPT

ChatGPT tops our list of 20 best AI tools for business. ChatGPT is an immensely versatile large language model (LLM), which can be used for everything from answering general questions to market research, content creation, and even generate code.

Currently, the GPT-4 Turbo version is trained on data taken from up to April 2023, this means that the solution doesn’t have knowledge of events that have taken place after this point.

It’s worth noting that if you upgrade your free AI tool to a paid plan, you can also use GPT-4V, which allows you to generate images with DALL-E 3 directly from the ChatGPT interface. It also enables you to interact with the chatbot through voice.

Key Features: 

  • Creates and responds to natural language text
  • Remembers past conversations
  • Generate images (via DALL-E 3)
  • Enter input with voice (GPT-4V)
  • Can be used to create a custom GPT

2. DALL-E 3

DALL-E 3 is a language model developed by OpenAI available to ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise users, which is designed for creating images. This AI business tool is widely used by businesses and individual professionals to streamline graphics creation. Users simply enter a text prompt, and the solution translates it into an image.

Images created with DALL-E 3 can also be sold without requesting permissions from OpenAI. That being said, DALL- E 3 will decline requests that attempt to generate an image in the style of a living artist.

Key Features:

  • Generate images from text input
  • Adjust the level of quality from Standard to HD
  • Choose between different image sizes (1024px by 1024px, 1792px by 1024px, and 1024px by 1792px).
  • DALL-E 3 API available
  • Optimize prompts before they’re input to DALL-E 3 (via API)
  • Available with a ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise subscription

3. Pictory

Video content becomes a must-have for various businesses that want to increase brand awareness, improve customer engagement, and generate leads. Therefore, Pictory has become one of the most popular AI tools for creating and editing videos. To use it, all you need to do is to enter a script, and select a template, and the solution will automatically develop a video.

This includes generating background footage that goes with your voiceover or generating an AI-generated voice and background music. Once you have a draft version of the video, you can also edit it, replacing scenes and videos with content from a library of over 3 million clips.

Key Features:

  • Create a video from a written script
  • Convert blog posts into videos
  • Choose between 34 different AI voices
  • Automatically take excerpts from Zoom, Teams, Webinar and Podcast recordings
  • Captions added to generated videos by default
  • Between 5,000-15,000 music tracks to choose from

4. Plus AI

Plus AI is a virtual assistant that can generate AI custom Google Slides presentations. A virtual assistant allows you to insert new content to slides with a library of presentation themes and presets, remix an existing slide into a different format, and rewrite on-page copy.

You can also enter custom writing style instructions to determine the tone of the copy the AI assistant generates. There is also the option to develop a custom AI model trained on your slide library or to develop custom integrations for Google Slides and PowerPoint.

Key Features:

  • Generate Google Slides presentations with AI
  • Rewrite or remix existing slides into a different format
  • Choose from multiple presentation templates out-of-the-box
  • Add custom logos, fonts, and colors
  • Customizable writing style instructions
  • Integrations for PowerPoint and Google Slides (Plus AI for Enterprise)

5. Clara

Clara is a virtual assistant with conversational intelligence that can automatically schedule meetings. Clara can become an invaluable AI tool for businesses, which facilitates meeting scheduling and business communication. To use Clara, all you need to do is add the assistant to an email thread and it will proceed to schedule a meeting on your behalf. This includes handling follow-up emails.

This means that you don’t have to go through all the back and forth of setting the time and place for virtual and physical meetings. If you want to reschedule or cancel a meeting you can instruct Clara to do so in natural language, as well as assigning it a custom email signature and job title.

Key Features: 

  • Schedule meetings with AI
  • Add Clara to email threats to handle meeting back and forth
  • Instruct Clara to reschedule or cancel emails
  • Add users to list of approved contacts to further automate scheduling

6. Grammarly

Grammarly is a writing assistant that can proofread and edit written content. You can use it via a web-based or desktop app, entering the text you want to proofread and waiting for feedback in the sidebar.

The assistant will provide you with a text score to help you assess the quality of your content while using generative AI to provide recommendations on how to improve the input text.

This includes options to rephrase, shorten, improve, adjust the tone, or simplify it and clickable suggestions that make changes to the word use. You can also use it to generate ideas for blog posts.

Grammarly is a free AI tool for business and personal use cases. However, you can upgrade your account to a Premium version to get more sophisticated tips and recommendations.

Key Features:

  • Proofread text for grammatical errors
  • View an overall score for your content
  • Use generative AI to generate ideas for a blog post.
  • Check for plagiarism (Premium only)

7. Speechify

Speechify is a text-to-speech (TTS) tool, which can convert written text, word documents, and PDF files into speech. Users can determine what speed the voice will read out written content and choose from a library of over 100 different voices, including celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Gwyneth Paltrow.

There is also an image-to-speech capability, which allows you to enter an image, and the solution will read it out to you through the use of optical character recognition (OCR).

You can access the solution via a web-based text editor on the organization’s website, a Google Chrome Extension, a web app, an iOS app, a Mac desktop app, or an Android app.

Key Features:

  • Convert text to speech by entering natural language
  • Drag and drop Word and PDF files
  • Change reading speed
  • Select from over 100 different voices (including Snoop Dogg and Gwyneth Paltrow)
  • Supports over 30 languages and accents
  • Available on Chrome, iOS, Android, Mac, and Edge

8. Fireflies AI

Another handy AI tool for small businesses and large enterprises is Fireflies AI. The tool has been developed to automatically transcribe and summarize your voice conversations and meetings. All you need to do is add Fireflies.ai Notetaker to meetings on your calendar, and it will proceed to transcribe during the live call.

This meeting assistant can integrate with a range of apps, including Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, Webex, RingCentral, and Aircall. All meeting recordings also offer a search and filter function, so you can easily navigate to the key topics in the conversation.

Key Features:

  • Automatically transcribe meetings
  • Add Fireflies.ai Notetaker to meetings on your calendar
  • Integrations with third-party apps, including Google Meet, Zoom, and Teams
  • Add comments, pins, and reactions to conversations
  • Share meeting notes to apps like Slack, Notion, and Asana
  • Search and filter conversations for key topics

9. Jasper

Jasper is an AI copilot for creating marketing content. To begin, enter a description of the type of content you want to get and the tone of voice you want to use, and Jasper will use natural language generation (NLG) to create it.

At its core, Jasper is primarily designed for creating content such as blog posts, articles, long-form content, SEO-optimized copy, social media posts, and newsletters with images if needed. If you want more help, you can choose from over 50 templates.

Key Features:

  • Automatically create engaging content in your brand’s tone of voice
  • Choose from over 50 content templates
  • Scan and define our brand voice
  • Upload brand and style guides
  • Create images with text input
  • Models don’t train on user data

10. Rewind

Rewind is a personalized AI assistant for Mac and iOS, which uses GPT-4 and runs on the background of your computer, compresses, and records your screen and audio. Through the use of Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), Rewind can transcribe meetings and produce automatic summaries of what’s happened throughout your day.

You can interact with Rewind via a traditional chatbot view and request a summary of your data, transcribe meetings, and draft emails. The vendor claims all recordings are stored locally on your Mac, and no one else can access them. Users also have the option to pause or delete recordings.

Key Features

  • Draft emails on demand
  • Automatically record and take notes of meetings
  • Use GPT-4 to generate natural language text
  • All recordings stored locally
  • Integrates with Zoom, Meet, and Teams
  • Available on Mac and iOS
Top 20 AI tools for starting a business

11. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is a platform that you can use to automate marketing and sales processes with prebuilt workflows via Marketing OS and Sales OS.

Marketing OS can automatically repurpose or refresh content, automate inbound and outbound campaigns, create email nurtures, assess SEO posture, and automate internal links.

Sales OS offers workflows to personalize email sequences, lead enrichment, personalized cold outreach, transcript-to-follow up emails, and act as an AI sales manager.

Key features: 

  • Automate sales and marketing tasks with AI actions
  • Build custom AI workflows
  • Choose from out-of-the-box workflow templates
  • Over 2,000 integrations with third-party services

12. Zoho Zia

Zoho Zia is an AI business tool designed to help employees improve their productivity. It can analyze your organization’s past activity and suggest macros or workflows that could improve efficiency. It can also identify and analyze sales patterns and recommend products and services to cross-sell to customers.

Another useful feature provided by Zia is that the user can chat with the solution to update records in a third-party CRM. They can also ask it to generate reports on demand.

Key Features: 

  • Search for customers
  • Suggests macros and workflows to improve efficiency
  • Analyze sales patterns to identify cross-selling opportunities
  • Forecast customer usage activity
  • Translate chats, emails, and messages in 16 languages

13. Otter AI

Otter AI is an audio transcription AI tool for business. It can record meetings and convert audio recordings into text. With Otter AI you can manually record audio calls or synchronize with third-party calendars, including Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and Zoom Meetings. Further, you can share notes with other guests.

Once you’ve made a transcription you can highlight certain words, add reactions, comment, and share it with different experts. You can also use the Chat option to ask the otter chatbot for a summary of the transcript as well as other details about the conversation.

Key Features: 

  • Record meeting audio and convert it into text
  • Edit transcriptions to improve accuracy
  • Free plan with up to 300 minutes of transcription per month
  • Ask questions to the chatbot

14. Motion

Motion is an AI-powered productivity platform designed to act as a personal assistant to help knowledge professionals prioritize tasks. Motion helps employees plan tasks and schedule meetings, blocking time slots on the calendar and eliminating the need to plan the day manually.

If you’re overworked, Motion will issue a warning that it’s impossible to complete scheduled tasks ahead of the deadline.

In a team context, it can also be used for project management. For example, it can add a project to your team’s calendar, prioritize tasks, and give each teammate a custom schedule. The project manager can be viewed via a Board or List view.

Key Features: 

  • Automatically generate a plan for your day
  • Add time block tasks on your calendar
  • Combine multiple calendars into one view (Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud)
  • Automate project management

15. ChatSpot

ChatSpot is a free AI tool for businesses that enables users to integrate ChatGPT with query data sources like the HubSpot CRM in real-time. This means you can ask the assistant to summarize CRM data, evaluate your company’s performance with integrated bar charts, and generate reports to find new ways to optimize your operations.

It can also be used to create written content and images. You enhance your content further by using ChatSpot to improve your SEO strategy and discover keywords and phrases that your target audience uses.

Key Features:

  • Integrate HubSpot CRM and query data in real time.
  • Add contacts, tasks, and notes to your CRM
  • Create written content and images
  • Out-of-the-box prospecting templates
  • Available for free

16. Lavender

Lavender is an email writing assistant designed to help users write emails faster with generative AI, both in self-hosted fine-tuned LLMs and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Lavender analyzes your emails, gives them a score, and highlights ways that it could be improved to increase your reply rate. This includes suggesting ways for email personalization.

In addition, Lavender also allows you to use ChatGPT directly in your email window. This means you can use ChatGPT to generate emails and then use Lavender to improve them. There is also a mobile editor to help optimize emails for mobile devices.

Key Features:

  • Receive real-time recommendations on how to improve and personalize emails
  • Draft emails with ChatGPT in your email window
  • Automatically grade your email performance
  • Integrates with third-party emails, including Gmail, Outlook, OutReach, HubSpot, and more
  • Search and add GIFs to emails
  • Use Mobile Editor to optimize emails for mobile devices
  • SOC2-certified and GDPR compliant

17. Google Bard

Google Bard is a research assistant and chatbot powered by Google’s PaLM 2 LLM that you can use to ask questions and generate content with text, image, or voice inputs. Bard is primarily designed for summarizing articles, proofreading, editing, and generating content.

One of the unique selling points of Bard is that it uses the internet to retrieve information. This makes it ideal as an online research assistant. Another unique feature is that Bard provides you with the option to select between multiple variations in output – to see different ways the LLM responds to your input.

Key Features:

  • Supports text, image or voice prompts
  • Retrieves information directly from the internet
  • Offers multiple output drafts
  • Translates text in over 100 languages

18. Frase.io

Frase is an AI assistant that helps you improve your content’s SEO ranking. You can create content and content briefs with Frase’s AI writing assistant that integrates facts and data points from search engine results.

You can also use Frase as an SEO research tool to identify keywords to include in your content, compare keywords with competitors, and use content scoring to assess the overall effectiveness of your texts.

The solution can also help you analyze SEO competitors’ content, dragging and dropping headings to plan content via an Outline Builder. This outline can then be converted into a full draft.

Key Features:

  • Create content and content briefs with AI
  • Identify keywords to include in your content
  • Optimize content for SEO with content scoring
  • Generate outlines
  • Share documents with other users
  • Analytics integrated with Google Search Console data

19. Murf.AI

Murf.AI is a text-to-speech tool to generate AI voices for videos, podcasts, and professional presentations. Murf.AI gives a wide choice of voices, so you can select one that best fits the tone and style of your brand or communication.

When creating a voiceover, you can also modify how it sounds. For instance, you can change the speed and pitch and insert pauses to control the layout. You can also add video, music, or images.

There is also an enterprise plan with a project-sharing workspace where teams can view, edit, and manage projects.

Key Features:

  • Convert text into an AI-generated voice
  • Choose from 120 text-to-speech voices
  • Add video, music, or images to your voiceover
  • Supports 20+ languages
  • Enterprise plan available

20. Notion

Notion is an AI-delivered workspace and project management tool where users can ask questions, and the solution will respond using data input within docs, projects, and wikis. It can also generate content, including natural language text and tables. The AI can also summarize documents.

The solution can also automate team workflows, from creating tasks and database entries to formulating document outlines. Likewise, when creating tasks, Notion can use AI to automatically add information on project deliverables. Finally, users can filter for tasks assigned to them or those that are marked as urgent.

Key Features:

  • Generate a first draft for projects
  • Write in English, Japanese, Spanish, and German
  • Autofill tables
  • Integrates with third-party tools, including GitHub, Slack, Figma, and Jira
  • Doesn’t train on customer data
  • Data encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2

The Bottom Line

AI tools for business can be a powerful force multiplier. Identify the key processes you need daily, and consider what tools can enhance and optimize them.

A handful of more effective processes can play a critical role in improving your organization’s performance.

Source: techopedia

Stay informed with our newsletter.