As the AI Editor at Tom's Guide, I spent a lot of time using AI tools. These range from the obvious ones like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Runway or Kling, through to lesser-known AI tools that focus on more niche interests.
However, amongst all of these apps, websites, and chatbots, there are a few that I use every single day. Yes, obviously, I use ChatGPT every day, but let's be honest, we all do these days.
Instead, these are AI-powered systems that help me get organized, feel more creative, and keep track of what is going on in my life. In other words, these are five AI tools I now can't live without.
I am one of those annoying types of people who won't stop talking about Notion. When I first started using it, I was, quite honestly, baffled by the whole system. It seemed confusing and overly complicated.
Now, I'm deep in the system with Notion as well as Notion Mail and the calendar too. However, the addition of AI features over recent months has only made me use it more.
I recently wrote about Notion Mail, and how useful its AI tagging system is. This allows you to find and categorize emails with a chat function, asking questions like "Categorize emails about AI news between these dates".
Not only will Notion find all the ones that fit this description, but it will also do the same for future emails, saving them in one place.
The AI features of Notion also work in the productivity tool itself, helping you quickly design pages, take notes and generate content. In fact, Notion does a surprisingly good job at fitting AI into just about every corner of its software, without it being overbearing.
Mem is designed for offices and teams to use together, but it works just as well as a solo act. This is a notes tool, powered up by AI.
Simply, the tool is a note-taking app. You can add as many notes as you like, and they can be as long as you like.
As someone who writes notes in a somewhat rogue manner, Mem AI is great for me. The AI chat function allows me to ask questions about notes, like "what are the highlights from my notes last week" or "how much did I note down for the cost of trains on May 5th 2025".
It's simple in its use of AI, but in this case, simplicity is great. It is even more useful for teams, all looking to keep on top of what is going on.
Perplexity is a chatbot that doesn't quite get the same coverage as some of its counterparts. And yet, the tool is fantastic in one particular area. While a number of chatbots can now search the internet, none do it as well as Perplexity.
I have started using Perplexity over Google search. It provides intuitive answers by searching the internet and providing answers from a variety of sources.
This has helped me find great restaurants, choose a new smartwatch, and generally answer the 100 random questions that pop into my head each day.
While it still can't quite do as much as Google, it really isn't far off. This, to me, feels like the next big contender in the world of search.
Grammarly holds a special place in my heart. No matter how much writing you do, small things can slip through. Missed keys on the keyboard, grammatical errors burned into your brain, and simply an assist when you can't quite get the phrasing right.
A lot of Grammarly's best features are AI-powered. The ability to rewrite a sentence to fit the tone of a certain project or as an aid for crafting the perfect email has been powered up by generative AI through Grammarly.
The grammar tool even has the ability to sniff out AI-written text, letting you know if a block of text doesn't seem like it was generated by a human.
Grammarly has become my AI sidekick. You don't rely on it, but it's there to remind you of a mistake when you need it.
When I first tried Recall out, I didn't think I'd get as much use out of it as I have. It's a simple tool, and operates in a similar way to Google's NotebookLM.
Essentially, Recall let's you create "cards". These are ways to explore new topics and can be customized in a few different ways. You can use links from the internet, like podcasts from YouTube, news articles, or research papers, or simply search for a term.
With this, Recall will produce a detailed document explaining what is in the article. You can then ask it questions on this, ask for a more detailed summary or quiz yourself on the content.
The tool is great for when you're needing to read or listen to large amounts of information on a given topic and need to get to the key points quickly. You can also access a card's graph. These are related topics that have come from the original topic that you were looking into.
I have gone down many rabbit holes with this tool and love that I can come back to topics that I've been reading up on before.
It's especially useful for students, with the ability to test yourself on all of your topics and to look back at particular topic clusters you've done before.
As I said above, it is very similar in nature to NotebookLM. If you have a Gemini Advanced account, you'll get the premium version of NotebookLM included so it might be a better alternative to this.
