Here's Your Cheat Sheet of AI Tools That Actually Work, According to Real Entrepreneurs Whether you're creating images or summarizing huge amounts of data, these tools are worth your time — according to entrepreneurs who use them.

First came the hype, with people claiming that AI would do everything. Next came the fear, with people claiming that AI would replace everyone. Then came the scramble, as seemingly every company raced (often clumsily) to integrate AI into their products. And now, finally, we've arrived at the best part: reality. The reality is this: AI can't do everything, it won't replace everyone, and you cannot rush it. But you can use it — with excellent results. Because as entrepreneurs are finding out, AI is great at improving your workflow, speeding up your tasks, catching your errors, and many other applications. There's also a wide range of useful, practical, under-the-radar, AI-powered products and services out there. That's why we started calling entrepreneurs with a simple question: How are you using AI right now, and how is it helping you? The market is full of AI tools, but which ones are legitimately useful?

Here's a rundown on 20 you can use now, recommended by entrepreneurs who love them.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT may sound like an obvious recommendation, but it still has many nonobvious uses — like helping to bridge language barriers. That's what Florida-based jewelry company Artizan Joyeria uses it for:The company's offshore customer service employees, who aren't native English speakers, "can now produce higher-quality written content in all forms, such as presentations and emails addressed to customers," says Sasha Slimak, the company's COO.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft's AI tool Copilot has a range of features across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more. Chad Stark especially loves using Copilot in Teams, Microsoft's video meetings platform. Stark is the CEO of Stark, a luxury carpet and rug brand, and he has Copilot summarize important meetings and send the summary to all participants. "You could prompt ChatGPT to do the same, but because Copilot is integrated with Teams and our emails, it saves us the extra step," says Stark.

Photoshop's Generative AI

Photoshop's AI tools can help in big and small ways — by, say, creating new backgrounds for images, or quickly fixing tiny details. Video editor Poll Bravo uses it a lot in his work for Johns Hopkins Hospital. For example, if he shoots an interview against a window, and then notices a distracting reflection in the window during postproduction, he can just take it out. "Photoshop's Generative AI also works very well to create depth in the frame background," Bravo says. "This gives you a lot of flexibility."

Copy.ai

Copy.ai is designed to understand your brand's voice, and then write marketing copy in that voice. Rachel Beider is a perfect case study for its versatility: She's the CEO and founder of two businesses — the play and movement studio Canopy, and the massage studio Press Modern Massage — both of which have a distinct style and character. Beider likes how Copy.ai understands both brands and complements her human staff. "It has given us backhundreds of hours in time saved," she says. "I still have
the same phenomenal marketing person — now it's like she has an assistant."

Related: 10 AI Tools That You Should Be Using In Your Business This Year

Midjourney

Midjourney is one of the most popular text-to-image tools, where you can write simple prompts and create stunning images. Stark's creative team often uses it to jumpstart their process. "This helps us pinpoint angles, furniture and styling, lighting, and overall look for concepting and creating, while maintaining control over certain elements," explains Hayley Doren, Stark's manager of graphic design. For Stark's senior vice president of marketing Monika McCommon, AI tools such as Midjourney are helping the company save time on operational tasks and scale its creative output.

Jasper

Jasper has become a go-to tool for brands that want short, laser-focused marketing and social media content consistent with their voice — fast. This AI tool features numerous preset templates and will ask you which platform you want to publish on — great for getting the job done quickly. "If you want to write a short blog post, a TikTok or Instagram caption, or even a short email reply, Jasper gives you the ability to plug in what your brand is about," Artizan Joyeria COO Sasha Slimak says. "You will see that reflected in every piece of content it provides."

Lex

Lex is an AI-powered text editor that's as sleek as Google Docs, and can help streamline your creative process and defeat writer's block. Amanda Natividad, vice president of marketing at Seattle-based audience research startup SparkToro, uses it for many things. "Sometimes I'll have Lex help me brainstorm headlines. Sometimes I'll have it suggest some additional copy — which I then use as a springboard for ideas as I rewrite from there," Natividad says. She also likes its grammar-correction capabilities and uses it to analyze her writing for anything unclear, wordy, or cliche.

Speechify

Speechify is an AI-powered text-to-speech tool, which can generate good-quality voice-overs. It works with Chrome and Safari browsers and features accents in more than 40 languages. Bravo, the Johns Hopkins cinematographer, thinks the tool isn't humanlike enough to use in long-form videos — but it's still very useful. "It helps me fine-tune a script and it gives me a good idea of what type of voice actors we'll need to hire for the final product," he says. The voice is good enough for short social media voice-overs, he says.

Related: I Tested AI Tools So You Don't Have To. Here's What Worked — and What Didn't.

Grammarly Business

If you like the free version of Grammarly — the tool that can fix grammar and syntax errors, detect plagiarism, and more — then you'll love its business tier. ModMed, a Florida-based company that makes specialized healthcare software, uses Grammarly Business to alleviate administrative overhead and increase staff productivity, says co-CEO and cofounder Dan Cane. "Grammarly helps us to be more concise and efficient with our communications, which translates into better, more efficient teamwork," Cane says.

Fathom

There are many AI notetakers out there, including Otter and Fireflies, which join your virtual meetings and write postmortem summaries of what everyone said. Entrepreneur editor in chief Jason Feifer has come to rely on one called Fathom. He likes it for three reasons: It's fast, it understands the context of a conversation, and it organizes its notes in a coherent way that's easy to navigate. "When you click on a point in its meeting summary, it'll take you to the specific moment when that point was discussed," he says. "That's been a game changer."

Elicit

Elicit analyzes and summarizes research papers, which are often dense and time-consuming to review. "It's more than just a scholarly search engine," says software engineer Matias Faure, now a political science researcher at New York University. "It can look into the academic articles, identify the most important aspects of each paper, and present the aggregate information in a table." The free version works well, but if you pay, you can upload scholarly papers from other databases and have Elicit summarize methodologies used in those papers, which can save hundreds of work hours, he says.

Perplexity AI

AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI offers a feature no other finder does: It can create a full-fledged web page with charts, video thumbnails, and summaries of relevant results with citations. David DeLallo, founder of content marketing agency David Loren, uses this tool to avoid making PowerPoints. After Perplexity finishes its work, DeLallo can edit the page and share it with his clients. "You've got your sources [in the results], so you know what you're getting," he says. And the research happens much faster than using Google.

Related: How AI Is Transforming Keyword Research (and Why You Can't Afford to Ignore It)

Dall-E 3

The latest version of OpenAI's text-to-image tool is Dall-E 3, and it's capable of generating high-quality images in multiple styles. "It is transformative," says Jimmy Duran, global design director at GEP, which provides procurement and supply chain software and consulting to Fortune 500 companies. Dall-E 3 has enabled Duran's team to get from initial drafts to final art production within one day. First, they use the paid version to create initial concepts for, say, an ad, presentation, or social media banner. Then they create the final work with their Adobe suite or buy appropriate images from a place like Shutterstock.

Sybill

Sybill is an AI sales assistant that can generate call summaries and follow-up emails, and it even autofills your CRM. Dale Gibbons, founder of Business Breakthrough Advisors, especially loves Sybill's ability to summarize the problems and challenges his clients mention during their conversations. "In our business, it's important to know where clients are hurting so we can better serve them," he says. "Sybill helps me to quickly identify clients' needs."

Castmagic

Castmagic began as a podcast management tool, but now uses AI to turn audio (whether it's a podcast or a meeting recording) into content (whether it's LinkedIn posts, episode summaries, or more). Jordan Wilson, founder of media and consulting company Everyday AI, uses it for his company's podcast, and likes how Castmagic's abilities have expanded over time. "You can save more than 50 custom prompts, and it runs them automatically when you upload an audio file," Wilson says. "I don't know of any other tool that does that."

Madgicx

Madgicx helps you buy, manage, target, and even automate your digital ad buys — but its biggest draw might be its AI marketer. This virtual sidekick will scrutinize your ad account and tell you how it thinks you can maximize your spending. "Every day, it gives recommendations to optimize, and you click a button to execute," says Markus Karjalainen, a growth marketing consultant at Four Sigmatic, a mushroom-centric coffee and supplement brand. "It does feel like we are cheating, but it's improving our efficiency daily."

Related: 7 Ways You Can Use AI to 10x Your Leadership Skills

Motion

Motion is an AI assistant that streamlines your days. It can manage your calendar, projects, and to-do lists, and you'll see everything you need to get done in one place. Don't stress if you aren't sure how to organize your schedule — Motion will do that for you too. Catherine Connelly, a speaker and author of Growing Up Startup on Substack, says Motion has helped her solve the "I have 30 free minutes, what should I use it for?" problem. Now, she says, she's not wasting time trying to figure out what to do next.

Notion

Notion is a productivity, organizational, and note-taking tool — and as its fans know, its uses (and useful templates) are endless. Photographer Irina Logra especially loves how it manages her projects and contacts. "I have an ever-growing list of connections to track and, unfortunately, a short memory," she says. "In a matter of seconds, Notion searches through all my notes about a contact and spits out a handy profile of them, complete with where they work, their family connections, hobbies, and how they take their coffee."

Kindo AI

Overwhelmed with AI subscriptions? Kindo AI aspires to be your one-stop shop — by integrating with multiple AI models (be it ChatGPT or Google Gemini), supporting more than 200 SaaS integrations, and offering enterprise-level data security. Although it's built for large companies, it's available for anyone. "It helps me create workflows that get real work off my desk," says Dale Gibbons from Business Breakthrough Advisors.

Descript

Descript is a well-established production tool for podcasts and video creation. Now its AI editing assistant, called Underlord, can save you hours of tedious work — removing filler words like "um" and "uh," making it appear that someone is making eye contact with the camera, cutting social media clips from longer videos, and even writing scripts. "It makes their already magical tool that much more magical," says Matt Gartland, cofounder and CEO of Smart Passive Income, an online community that serves creators (among others).

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