These are the best AI tools that I use to boost my productivity

If you’re looking to improve your productivity, there are a lot of ways to go about doing that. You can obviously look through the myriad of productivity applications that are available for Windows machines, and you can even make tweaks to your Windows system in aid of productivity as well. However, there are some AI tools specifically that can help you be your most productive self, and here are some of the ones that I use the most.

1 ChatGPT

It had to be on the list somewhere

Starting with the biggest and arguably most important AI tool of the last few years, ChatGPT is a boon for productivity. Not only can I ask it for ideas when I’m really stuck, it can do things like meal plan, help with fitness prep, and even proofread text for me when I’m struggling to figure out why something doesn’t sound right.

ChatGPT is one of the most powerful tools you can use in the AI landscape, and there are a lot of ways that you can use it to power up your productivity. It’s not a tool you can rely on to do everything for you, but it’s a tool that can help you massively in different ways depending on what you need. Even if you work a lot in spreadsheets, one thing it can help you with is writing Excel formulas. Brainstorm how ChatGPT can help you; there’s never been a better time.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is one of the best LLMs out there, and it’s completely free to use. You’ll need to make an account, but there’s not much else to it. 

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2 Otter.ai

Transcribe your meetings

Otter is a tool that some of us use here at XDA, and it’s a powerful note-taker that can join your Google Meet calls and keep transcriptions of what was said. It’ll even create action items after the call so that everyone knows what needs to be done. It supports Microsoft Teams and Zoom as well, and will keep a timeline of who was speaking when in order to help you go back and quickly check things from past meetings.

It’s not perfect, and we’ve found that it can sometimes struggle identifying certain speakers, but by and large it’s a useful tool. Plus, it’s free for up to 30-minute transcriptions, so you can try it out and get a feel for it before investing any money into it.

Otter

Otter is an AI-powered transcription software that can join your Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom calls and give you time-stamped transcriptions of what was said and by who.

3 Final2x

Upscale your images

If you have older, low-resolution images, Final2x could be the solution to enhance their quality. This straightforward tool allows you to drag and drop images, effortlessly upscaling them to double their original resolution. Compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux, we tested its performance to assess its effectiveness. Here is the original image:

I then halved the size of the image and ran it through Final2x to upscale the image back to the original resolution.

Not bad at all, right? This free tool is accessible to everyone and offers a quick way to upscale images before sharing them with friends. On my M1 Pro MacBook, it took less than ten seconds to upscale that image.

4 Whisper

Transcribe everything yourself, locally

There are several methods for transcribing interviews or videos, and one of which is Otter AI that we mentioned above. However, the most time-consuming (but accurate) approach is manual transcription, which involves listening and typing out the content. Alternatively, there are more automated services and tools that you can use. For example, in the past, I’ve utilized YouTube’s auto-captioning feature, downloading the subtitles and refining them for accuracy. There are more options though, with a stand-out being OpenAI’s Whisper.

Whisper by OpenAI is an open-source tool that you can run locally with ease. It’s compatible with Mac, though setting it up involves some additional steps. Specifically, you’ll need to compile a C++ version of Whisper from the source code yourself. While not an official port, this method is the only way to run it natively on Apple Silicon. A helpful tutorial on Medium can guide you through the process.

If you need to do transcription work, I highly recommend Whisper. It’s been invaluable to me in many situations and is particularly beneficial for content creators looking to generate captions. It’s a game-changer.

The AI world has something for everyone

If you’re looking to up your productivity, then I genuinely believe at this stage that AI tools are where you should begin. They’re powerful and can be massively assisting in all things that you need without overstepping. Especially in the case of the likes of ChatGPT, you’re the one that controls how far it goes, making it hard for it to overstep while still unleashing your creativity.

We’re a big fan of all the tools we’ve listed here, but there are countless more, too. Do some digging, see what you find!

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