With a simple command, you can easily ask AI assistants to help you with daily tasks such as scheduling meetings. But what exactly is an AI assistant? Let’s demystify this concept in this guide. 

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Today’s world is AI-powered: experts expect the global AI market to be worth $1.8 trillion by 2030. You might not realize it, but AI is now everywhere, coming to us in a familiar form: as our assistants.

AI assistants are programs that automate tasks and workflows. For example, you can take out your Android or iOS phone and say, “Hey, do my groceries.” Just like that, the AI assistant will place the order for you.

But that’s not enough to define an AI assistant. In this guide, let’s go deeper than that and discover its key features, benefits, and the most common types of AI assistants. 

What is an AI Assistant?

An AI assistant (also known as a virtual or digital assistant) is software that uses advanced technologies to provide users with relevant information and perform various tasks for them, such as making calls, reading text, etc. 

Via natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and large language models (LLM), these personal assistants can understand voice commands or text inputs and generate responses that sound conversational and human-like.

Think of popular voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. But these two are just the tip of the iceberg. There are many types of AI assistants, but we can talk about that later.

For now, let’s focus on the benefits AI assistants provide. 

What are the Benefits of AI Assistants?

What are the perks of using AI assistants? For one, they automate simple yet mundane tasks, like addressing customer concerns. This frees your agents’ time, allowing them to focus on more high-priority issues. 

But it goes beyond scheduling meetings, producing high-quality content, or responding to questions. Here are some of the other benefits: 

• Provides personalized content: AI chatbots greatly boost customer satisfaction levels and forge stronger connections by delivering more customized content that suits customers’ preferences and needs. 

• Offers accurate responses: Your personal AI assistant won’t beat around the bush. Using the vast internet as its source, it can answer simple or complex queries with ease, in a precise and timely manner. 
• Streamlines routine tasks: Tracking orders, changing passwords, and more are tasks that your HR department doesn’t need to worry about anymore, as the AI assistant can easily handle them. 
• Boosts productivity: With AI taking care of complex tasks, your people can focus on more time-sensitive projects, without distractions. This means a new level of productivity that gives you a competitive edge. 
• Saves time and costs: Again, using AI assistants to perform tasks frees your agents’ time, allowing them to focus on more impactful work. But it also reduces your costs, as you don’t need to hire a specialized team of people to handle these routine tasks. 

Benefits: check.

Now, let’s go through the key features an AI assistant should have.

What are the Key Features of AI Assistants? 

Every AI assistant should have the following capabilities: 

• Natural Language Understanding: NLP is suuuper necessary for an AI assistant. It’s how AI assistants communicate with humans in a natural way, allowing them to comprehend and interpret language in order to provide relevant answers and intuitive interactions. 
• Continual learning and adaptation: Through ML algorithms, the AI assistant continuously learns about the user, gathering enough data to understand their needs better. As a result, the AI assistant will be able to tailor experiences and offer more refined suggestions. 
• User assistance versatility: AI assistants aren’t just good at answering a few questions. They can handle simple and complex tasks alike, such as setting reminders, scheduling meetings, or handling administrative duties.
• Providing relevant and timely recommendations: Since AI assistants continuously learn about client needs and preferences, they deliver tailor-made content that engages the client further. Through personalized interactions, users receive assistance AND learn more about their topic of interest. 
• Third-party integrations: An AI assistant works well alongside plenty of other third-party platforms, allowing you to streamline workflows. With an integrated ecosystem, you can provide seamless interactions between your platforms, letting your workers find the information they need faster. 

Easy to remember, right? With this information in mind, let’s go through the many types of AI assistants. 

What are the Common Types of AI Assistants?

Curious about the most common types of AI assistants? There are coding assistants, for instance, whose market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 41.2% from 2021 to 2028. And then there are customer service assistants. 

But today we’re going to talk about the following types of assistants: 

• AI search assistants
• AI email assistants
• AI scheduling assistants
• AI transcription assistants
• AI writing assistants

As we go through each type, we’ll explore some of the best options in that category, so you’ll have a better idea of what to expect from that AI assistant. 

Disclaimer: This list was last updated on July 12, 2024. 

AI search assistants

An AI search assistant is a tool that helps users find and retrieve information based on their search intent. Basically, it uses NLP and ML to understand user queries and provide accurate or relevant responses, similar to an AI search engine. 

ChatGPT + Guru

Our first AI search assistant is actually two tools in one. 

First, we have OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that everyone’s familiar with. It mainly uses LLM to interact with users in a conversational manner, generate new content, write code, and summarize documents with a single prompt.

Second, we have Guru, an enterprise AI search, an employee intranet, and a wiki — all in a single tool. With Guru, you can search everything from the internal knowledge base and get instant answers in the tool you use.

What do they achieve together? Well, you have AI search across the internet (via ChatGPT) and all your company information (via Guru). 

Key Features:

• ChatGPT understands multiple languages, making it easier to write natural-sounding prompts.
• Guru gives you personalized answers directly in your workflow, so you don’t need to switch tabs anymore. 
• Together, they put relevant answers at your fingertips as you can allow ChatGPT to search within your company. 

Apple Siri

Apple Siri is a popular digital assistant for iOS and macOS operating systems. It uses AI voice recognition and NLP to understand user intent and perform a variety of tasks. So, through a simple “Hey Siri,” the AI assistant can provide the weather forecast, make phone calls, or get directions. 

Built into the Apple ecosystem, it seamlessly integrates with all your devices and apps, even allowing hands-free operation. 

Key Features:

• Siri has multilingual and dialect support, so it’s accessible to plenty of people around the world.
• Siri learns from previous interactions and usage patterns, so it can provide personalized responses and suggestions. 
• Through voice commands, Siri can automate tasks such as setting reminders, creating calendar events, etc.

Google Assistant

Another popular AI search assistant, very similar to Siri, is Google Assistant, a tool that uses artificial intelligence, NLP, and voice recognition to provide information and perform tasks. Unlike Apple’s Siri, though, this assistant is for Android users, as it integrates with Google’s hardware and software tools. 

By searching the web via Google’s search engine, this AI app can provide the weather, check sports scores, or answer questions easily. 

Key Features:

• You can interact with this assistant in two ways: via voice commands or text input.
• Google Assistant integrates with smart homes, allowing you to control devices, such as lights, security cameras, and appliances.
• This AI assistant can recognize different voices and offer personalized responses. 

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Our list of AI search assistants is complete. Now, let’s move on to AI email assistants. 

AI email assistants

Tired of losing important emails or trying to find order in the chaos that is in your inbox? Email optimization is a walk in the park for an AI email assistant, a tool that leverages artificial intelligence to categorize and prioritize emails and respond to messages. 

SaneBox

SaneBox is an AI-powered email management tool that helps users organize their email inbox, making it more efficient, enhancing communication, and reducing clutter. As a result, by prioritizing and sorting incoming emails, you can focus on the emails that truly matter. 

You can try SaneBox for free or opt for one of its pricing plans for more advanced features. 

Key Features:

• Through the SaneLater feature, you can move less important emails out of the main inbox to focus on the critical ones first. 
• Create custom folders and filters to keep your inbox organized. 
• Set reminders so you can send emails on time. 

Shortwave

Shortwave, created by a team of ex-Googlers, is a modern AI email assistant that uses intelligent algorithms to categorize and prioritize emails, ensuring that you view only the most important ones first. 

Moreover, it has a powerful search functionality that makes it super easy for users to find the email they’re looking for. In a nutshell, this AI tool enhances email productivity and management, allowing for a more streamlined user experience. 

Key Features:

• Shortwave has a feature where it bundles related emails together to make finding them easier. 
• Through collaboration features, such as comments, you can enable communication and teamwork. 
• Use custom labels and filters to organize your emails based on certain criteria.

Mailbutler

Mailbutler is a tool that makes your inbox smarter and more organized. With the help of its smart AI assistant for Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail, you can manage your emails better and enhance productivity. 

Mailbutler has Smart Compose, a feature that allows you to draft an email with a few keywords. Moreover, if you don’t want to spend too much time responding to emails, let the AI assistant generate a response for you. 

Key Features:

• Mailbutler has customizable email templates that you can use for repetitive emails. 
• Track your sent emails and see how many have been opened or read, etc. 
• Add notes or tasks to your emails, which you can share and collaborate on with your team. 

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Our next type of AI assistant focuses on scheduling. Let’s meet them. 

AI scheduling assistants

How often do you forget a meeting you didn’t put in your calendar? It most likely happens a lot. That’s why an AI scheduling assistant greatly helps you keep track of your schedule by automating the task of organizing meetings and identifying the best time slot for them. 

Clockwise

Clockwise is an AI-powered time management and calendar optimization solution that helps you organize your schedule more efficiently, successfully allowing you to coordinate work and appointments in your preferred way. 

It’s a tool that calculates the best time for meetings and tasks, based on your unique needs and preferences. Clockwise integrates with Google Calendar to automatically organize meetings and events to minimize disruptions and maximize productivity. 

Key Features:

• With shared calendars, you and your team can find the optimal time to meet.
• Clockwise integrates with work management tools like Slack and Asana so you can get notifications directly in your workspace. 
• This tool gives you insights into how you spend your time and offers useful productivity reports. 

Kronologic

Kronologic is an AI scheduling tool that streamlines the scheduling of meetings and time-sensitive appointments. This tool uses AI to propose and schedule meetings based on your team’s availability, also taking their preferences into account. 

Furthermore, Kronologic offers intelligent time suggestions, identifying the most optimal time slots for meetings based on participants’ time zones and work schedules. 

Key Features:

• Kronologic integrates with popular email providers to automate the scheduling process. 
• This AI scheduling assistant makes sure to sync your meetings with popular calendar systems. 
• Scheduling candidates is easier with Kronologic, as it sends reminders to ensure everyone is ready. 

Scheduler AI

Scheduler AI is your very own customizable and conversational AI agent that optimizes the scheduling process. Through the use of AI, this tool improves your time management and enhances your productivity by finding the best times for appointments. 

You can personalize this tool according to your preferences, meaning you can prioritize certain types of meetings or set meeting lengths, buffer times, and locations. 

Key Features:

• With this tool, it’s easier to set meetings for multiple participants and find a common available time. 
• Scheduler AI has automated recurrence, so it can schedule routine meetings at regular intervals. 
• If you need time to focus on your work, Scheduler AI automatically dedicates time blocks to help you manage your time better. 

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That’s all about AI scheduling assistants: moving forward, let’s explore AI transcription assistants. 

AI transcription assistants

In general, AI transcription assistants automate the note-taking process, helping you easily convert spoken language in audio or video recordings into written text. Plus, based on the notes, it provides summaries of meetings, making it very useful for sharing outcomes with stakeholders and peers. 

Otter.ai

Otter.ai is an AI-powered transcription tool that transforms any spoken language into text in real time. You can use it for recording and transcribing conversations, lectures, and meetings. All you have to do is fire this tool up during a meeting and it will automatically transcribe what’s said. 

Otter.ai does all these tasks with accuracy, making it easy to organize your content and foster collaboration among your team. 

Key Features:

• Search through your notes by looking at specific keywords or phrases. 
• Organize transcriptions into folders, which you can easily export in various formats, such as PDF, TXT, or DOCX. 
• Add custom terms, names, and acronyms to improve the accuracy of your transcriptions. 

Gong

Gong is an AI platform that focuses on sales conversations. What does this mean? That it uses artificial intelligence to analyze and extract valuable info from sales calls, meetings, and interactions. With these insights, you improve your sales outcomes and increase revenue. 

By using automated call recording and conversation intelligence, Gong can capture both audio and video, which it can later analyze to extract insights. 

Key Features:

• Gong is a great tool for coaching, as it allows managers to review recordings and provide feedback.
• This AI platform uses the latest advances in security to ensure your data is safe.
• Through comprehensive analysis, Gong identifies patterns, trends, and best practices that lead to success.

Fireflies

Fireflies.ai is a versatile AI-powered tool that automates notes, which makes it easier for your team to transcribe, summarize, and analyze meetings and voice conversations in real time. 

Across Google Meet, Teams, and Zoom, you can get automatic notes, follow up on action items, and extract valuable information from your meetings. As a result, you enhance decision-making and streamline communication. 

Key Features:

• With AI-powered summaries, you can see key points and action items discussed in the meeting.
• Fireflies has speaker identification, which allows the tool to recognize the speaker in the transcript for better visibility.
• Search for specific keywords to retrieve the information that interests you the most. 

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The last type of AI assistant we’re gonna explore is AI writing assistants. Let’s go! 

AI writing assistants

Need to improve your writing skills and stop making so many grammar or spelling mistakes? An AI writing assistant is just the cure you need to boost your writing, as it highlights errors, proposes suggestions for improvement (in different writing styles), and so helps you write quality content. 

Rytr

Rytr is a free writing assistant and content generator that helps teams of all sizes craft content, including emails, meta titles, or LinkedIn posts quickly. Due to its versatility, you can choose from over 40 content templates to start writing your content. 

You can also pick the tone and style of the writing. Or give Rytr a sample of your writing, as it can easily mimic it when drafting new copies. 

Key Features:

• An auto-complete feature that allows it to finish your sentences, enabling a more seamless flow. 
• Whenever you’re experiencing writer’s block, use Rytr to generate unique ideas and outlines. 
• Rytr has multi-language support that caters to different people. 

Grammarly

Grammarly is a popular AI writing assistant that you can use to improve your everyday writing and boost the quality of your work. It has multiple tools for this job, varying from spelling correction and style improvement to vocabulary enhancement. 

Grammarly offers personalized suggestions based on your writing tone and style, so it’s completely suitable for your target audience. It can also generate AI-powered content. 

Key Features:

• Grammarly has a plagiarism checker to ensure your content is 100% original. 
• You can use Grammarly on your phone, thanks to a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
• To measure your progress, Grammarly offers weekly reports on your improvements.

Wordtune

Wordtune is our last AI writing assistant, a free tool that’s able to enhance your written content. It does so by rewriting sentences and refining the language used, offering suggestions on how to improve the clarity of your text. 

It also uses artificial intelligence to generate or rephrase entire sentences in various tones but it can also create sentences from scratch. Confidently use it for writing emails, creating briefs, or chatting with your friends. 

Key Features:

• Wordtune makes sure your written text is error-free by improving your grammar. 
• Deliver the right message by rewriting your content for clarity.
• Wordtune also has summarization features that reduce long-form content’s reading time. 

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That’s all we have to say about the different types of AI assistants. Now let’s talk about how to choose the right one. 

How to Choose the Best AI Assistant For Your Needs

Here are the criteria for selecting the best AI assistant: 

• User-friendliness: Make sure the tool you choose has an easy-to-use interface and that even beginners can understand it quickly. 
• Effective task handling: Think about what you’re trying to accomplish with this tool. For instance, you’re aware that generative AI for content creation increases performance by 58%, so if that’s your goal, choose a solution only for this specific task. 
• Cost-to-value: Don’t select a multi-purpose platform if you only need to transcribe meeting notes. It might be a bit too costly in the future.
• Accuracy and reliability: Your AI writing assistant should solve tasks easily and accurately, which means it needs to be reliable both now and as your business grows. 
• Data security: Since AI assistants play with sensitive data, make sure the provider you choose has all the security measures in place to keep it safe from risks. 

That’s it! Let’s wrap it up. 

Over To You!

Out of all these AI assistants, there’s a unique one you should definitely try. Can you guess which one it is? 

ChatGPT + Guru is the best combination of tools when it comes to improving your workflows. You can also try Guru for yourself, as it connects your chats, docs, and apps in a single streamlined platform. 

Meaning that you can get answers anywhere, without constantly switching apps.

Sign up today to try it! 

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