Emails and Office Work
To start the ball rolling, we’ll review ways people are using AI for writing emails and performing routine office work. Applying these examples to your own tasks may be just the ticket to help you increase your productivity.
1. Drafting Client Emails
You might be aware of or even tried using AI for crafting emails and responses. When Freelance Graphic Designer Shawn Wright experimented with ChatGPT for writing email pitches, he found that AI produced polite and well-structured content. However, the drafts felt generic and needed adjustments to make them feel genuine.
Now, Wright uses AI to generate a starting prompt rather than the final product. “I would never take any of these emails and send them to a client. But I would use them as a prompt for writing my own email – something more personal…that AI would never know about.”
📌 Source: Shawn Wright, Using ChatGPT to write my emails
On the receiving end, Designer Neven Mrgan stated after getting an AI-generated email from a friend, “It felt like getting a birthday card with only the prewritten message inside, and no added well-wishes from the wisher’s own pen.” So, even though the text was grammatically correct, it didn’t contain the personal touch Mrgan expected.
📌 Source: Hidde’s Blog, Friends and AI
💡 Tip: Along with using AI to create emails, you can use smart features in tools like Clean Email to organize incoming emails. Create Auto Clean rules to automatically file messages, use Smart Folders to see related emails in one spot, and much more. Clean Email is safe to use and enhances focus and organization without any drawbacks associated with AI.
2. Building an AI Assistant for Email Replies
For true personalization with an automated, time-saving AI tool, consider following Venture Capitalist Tomasz Tunguz’s lead. To write emails using his own voice and historical context, Tunguz decided to build his own AI assistant. Instead of generic content, “…the system learns from my actual email history. It knows how I write…because it’s seen thousands of examples.”
📌 Source: Tomasz Tunguz, Voice, Context & Control: The Three Pillars of Useful AI Email
3. Automating Routine Office Work
If you’ve never tried using AI tools to speed up routine tasks and enhance your productivity, you may be missing out.
An Operations Specialist (aka Whispers Of Words) for a SaaS company secretly used ChatGPT. He had it handle tasks like drafting replies, summarizing discussions, writing documents, and generating spreadsheet formulas. He found that it significantly increased his productivity.
But with the productivity boost came jitters — the possibility that AI could replace him. All ended well for Whispers Of Words as he now uses ChatGPT in his daily workflow and assists coworkers in using it too.
📌 Source: Whispers of Words, I Used ChatGPT to Automate My Job—Here’s What Happened
Healthcare
What are the implications of a physician using AI to obtain answers? Or are there better ways to use AI in the medical field? Let’s take a look.
4. Gaining Medical Knowledge
Dr. Nabil Ebraheim put AI to the test by identifying muscles in a cross-section of the leg and found that the responses were inaccurate. This solidifies what many already suggest, which is to always verify the information you receive from AI with trusted sources and to “Use AI as a starting point, not the final authority.”
📌 Source: Dr. Nabil Ebraheim, AI’s Errors and the Value of Human Oversight
5. Generating Patient and Family Explanations
Because the accuracy of AI’s responses isn’t always spot on, as discovered by Ebraheim, you might consider using the tool in a different medical aspect.
Emergency Physician Dr. Josh Tamayo-Sarver had a similar experience with incorrect AI responses and instead began using ChatGPT to create explanations for patients and loved ones. Rather than describing complex medical treatments and diagnoses that the average person may not fully comprehend, he learned that AI could successfully put them in simpler terms.
Marketing
When it comes to marketing, professionals can use AI in various capacities. From content generation to brainstorming, here’s how a few marketers feel about AI’s capabilities.
6. Creating Social Media Content
Marketing Consultant Nick Nolan used ChatGPT to generate social media content. But the results brought a mixed experience. “I’ve tried using ChatGPT to create social media content a few times, and I usually don’t love the suggestions it gives me.”
Nolan found that the generic content he received didn’t meet his creative marketing standards. In this case, AI was successful at producing ideas, but lacked the originality necessary for an effective social media marketing strategy.
📌 Source: Nick Nolan, What Happens When You Hire ChatGPT as Your Social Media Strategist
7. Crafting Marketing Blog Content
Content Marketer and Copywriter Jessica Mehring had a comparable experience as Nolan when using the AI tool Jasper to create content for her company’s marketing blog. She discovered that AI “could be a good starting point for thinking BUT it’s generic. It still needs a human touch to add nuance, narrative and soul.”
She also mentions that you must verify the output for accuracy and meeting your objective. You may need to make corrections or manually add points to support your intent. While AI gave Mehring a “little kick-start,” it didn’t significantly increase the speed of completing the task.
📌 Source: Jessica Mehring, I Used AI to Write a Blog Post Here’s What I Learned
8. Brainstorming Campaign Ideas
With a slightly different experience, Marketer Richard Fang uses ChatGPT daily. From brainstorming to writing content, he finds that AI provides successful results and stresses its usefulness for day-to-day productivity in creation, ideation, and refinement.
📌 Source: Richard Fang, Why Every Marketer Should Be Using ChatGPT Every Day
Education
Teachers are experimenting with AI to handle tedious tasks and reduce their workload. And AI does have a place in education — typically when used with human intervention.
9. Creating Lesson Plans
Primary School Teacher Stephen Lockyer used ChatGPT to create lesson plans. He found that AI could generate the basics of the plans that he could then improve. “Your lesson plans are your recipe — you still need a chef. You still need a teacher to make that recipe come alive.”
📌 Source: Stephen Lockyer, We Gave ChatGPT 5 Common Teaching Tasks
10. Writing Educational Content
Going a step further, you can consider using AI to craft educational content. Educator Dr. Patrick Regoniel experimented with AI as a writing aid. His findings were like those of Stephen Lockyer, “There's a need to edit each time to say what you mean. Humans, still, fortunately, have an edge.”
📌 Source: Patrick Regoniel, Medium comment
11. Tailoring Content for Students
Another educator, 8th Grade History Teacher Gabriel Vigil, tried ChatGPT for content generation and was quite pleased with the results. “I used ChatGPT to teach my students about the Erie Canal — and it worked better than I expected.”
But where Vigil took advantage of AI was modifying the resulting content. He used ChatGPT to tailor the article to different reading levels and translate it into Spanish for bilingual students. “Using AI saved me time and helped me reach all my students.”
Legal Services
When it comes to using AI in the legal field, attorneys have mixed results. As you’ll see below, 1) verifying the results you receive from AI is extremely important, and 2) you may find other ways to use AI to your advantage.
12. Performing Legal Research
Attorney Carolyn Elefant decided to compare two tools, ChatGPT Deep Research and LexisNexis in her legal research and was impressed with the ChatGPT results. “ChatGPT didn’t just return a list of cases. It produced a comprehensive, reasoned memo that restated the question clearly and then walked through relevant federal and Maryland law.”
She went on to explain that ChatGPT identified a significant court case from the get-go which the other tool missed.
📌 Source: Carolyn Elefant, My Experience Comparing Lexis and ChatGPT Deep Research
On the flip side, Attorney Steven Schwartz used ChatGPT for his legal research and ended up with detrimental results. As he used the tool to prepare a court brief, he wound up with fake information and was completely unaware of it. “I simply had no idea that ChatGPT was capable of fabricating entire case citations or judicial opinions, especially in a manner that appeared authentic.”
Although he deeply regrets his decision and vows to not use ChatGPT for legal research again, his law firm was fined $5,000.
📌 Source: A law firm was fined $5,000 after one of its lawyers used ChatGPT
13. Expanding Legal Knowledge
Attorney Skeptikal Vakil used ChatGPT in a more unique way — to expand his legal practice. He wanted to add corporate law to his specialties and was able to do so with the help of AI. “However, with ChatGPT, I was quickly able to add a practice in my bouquet...ChatGPT helped me quickly come to terms with the principles, terms, doctrines, and practices — all of it in a very accessible way.”
Software Engineering
Like other fields, those in the software engineering industry have different feelings about using AI in their workflows. But as you’ll see, it’s mostly positive.
14. Explaining, Debugging, and Brainstorming
Software Engineer Arsian Ahmad uses ChatGPT to explain and debug code, learn patterns, practice mock interviews, and brainstorm — all with great success. “ChatGPT has become one of my favorite tools in tech... As a software engineer, I’ve found it’s like having a mentor, a debugger, and a brainstorming buddy all rolled into one.”
📌 Source: Arsian Ahmad, 5 Ways to Master ChatGPT as a Software Engineer
On the other hand, Software Engineer Vibhor Agrawal has an opposing view of using tools like ChatGPT in the field. He acknowledges that ChatGPT can be helpful, but it means less depth and breadth of knowledge. “If you doesn’t [don’t] understand a solution before copy/pasting it you’re putting your entire software system at risk. You don’t learn the thing if it comes to you again.”
📌 Source: Vibhor Agrawal, Why you shouldn’t be using ChatGPT to find a solution as a software engineer?
15. General Coding Usage
Another Software Engineer, Edwin Popham, tried a different AI tool in his profession. He incorporated GitHub Copilot into his workflow with mixed results. While he believes that it does boost his productivity on time-consuming tasks, it can also make mistakes or incorrect assumptions.
“I still have a love-hate relationship with AI developer tools like Copilot…On the one hand, it might take my job tomorrow, but on the other hand, the technology is fascinating, powerful, and extremely useful for the work I do.”
📌 Source: Edwin Popham, My experience with Github Copilot so far
Design
If there’s one industry that appears to benefit from the use of AI at work, it’s the design field. But remember that human eyeballs on the results are still important.
16. Content Creation, Research, Exploration, and Inspiration
UI/UX Designer Priyanshu Gupta found useful ways to work AI into his daily workflow for content creation, research, solution exploration, visual inspiration, and prototyping.
Gupta makes a crucial, well-worded point, “While AI has transformed many aspects of my work, it remains just one component of my broader design toolkit. The human elements of empathy, contextual understanding, and intuition remain irreplaceable in creating truly meaningful user experiences.”
📌 Source: Priyanshu Gupta, How I actually use AI as a designer
17. Design Decisions, Organizing Data, and Synthesizing Interviews
Like Gupta, Product Designer Jess Brown has experimented with AI. She thinks of it as a “thought partner and a practical helper.” She uses it in her design decisions including synthesizing interviews and knowledge gathering along with organizing and enriching data, exploring content, performing market research, and creating realistic mock data.
Brown has had success with AI in her work but also notes limitations to watch out for such as hallucinations and errors.
Human Resources
Going beyond general office work and crafting or cleaning up emails with AI, professionals in human resources can use AI to increase efficiency.
18. Finding Job Candidates, Creating Interview Questions, and More
Recruiter Jasmine Cheng launched her own recruiting firm after leaving a similar position at Amazon and finds that using ChatGPT saves her at least 10 hours per week.
From finding candidates to creating interview questions to crafting job descriptions, and more, Cheng states that “The way I use ChatGPT helps me become more efficient and I always fact-check each piece of information…I still swear by ChatGPT as my workflow would be much slower without it.”
📌 Source: Jasmine Cheng & Robin Madell, I use ChatGPT to save 10 hours a week, as a recruiter
Real Estate
You might not think about using AI in the real estate industry. But as you’ll see, one agent finds it to be advantageous.
19. Drafting Listings and Property Descriptions
Luxury Real Estate Agent Randy Baruh has embraced technology using VR viewers and TikTok content to aid in his profession. After trying ChatGPT for creating listings, he has added another time-saving tech tool to his and his team’s toolbox.
“…since I've discovered the power and ease of it, it's become my go-to resource. I've found that it puts a fresh take on descriptions and dramatically streamlines the process of writing them, allowing us more time to focus on other aspects of our business.”
📌 Source: Randy Baruh & Jenny Powers, I use ChatGPT to save time with mundane tasks and nail SEO in my writing
Finance and Entrepreneurship
Wondering how to use AI for work productivity in the finance and entrepreneurial fields? One professional finds that it improved his skills.
20. Performing Financial Analysis
One final example of how to use AI for work comes from Investor and Entrepreneur Austin Starks. By his own account, he credits OpenAI with making him a “(much) better investor.” He used tools like ChatGPT to analyze a company’s fundamentals and went on to explain use cases of financial analysis made possible with LLMs.
Starks examined both the hallucinations and facts he experienced, but concludes with “Whether it’s identifying stocks that meet specific financial criteria or comparing companies based on key metrics, AI has proven to be an invaluable tool that can outperform traditional methods of financial analysis.”
📌 Source: Austin Starks, I trusted OpenAI to help me learn financial analysis
Conclusion
So, which fields can best use AI for work? As you can see, there are plenty of options!
The key in these stories and examples; however, is the human element. Even though AI works well in a variety of scenarios, applying that personal touch to emails, verifying facts with trusted sources, and reviewing results for accuracy all take an actual person. Keep this in mind as you experiment with AI in your job.
And as we’ve covered several industries here, why not take a peek at some of the best AI tools for business productivity across departments that may help your coworkers or staff.
