by While the AI is built into the app may Writing full-length articles (I asked it to write a blog post about Notion AI’s announcement and it spat out 385 words, only some of which were correct), the company pitches it more as a “thought partner.” In its announcement post, the company says that one of the features alpha testers used the most was asking them to improve the text they wrote. For example, you can highlight text and ask Notion to rewrite it in a different tone, use simpler language, or simply fill in or shorten a sentence.
Notion AI is also said to help with other types of tasks – it can, depending on the company, summarize an article or notes, create a to-do list based on selected text, and do translations.
Like ChatGPT (and unlike Microsoft’s Bing), Notion’s AI doesn’t really seem to have much inkling of recent events. I asked it to write about the latest news from Artifact (a personalized news app), and it wrote a reasonably accurate summary of Valve’s 2021 announcement that the company was no longer working on a virtual trading card game. Notion warns that the AI can give out false information, and its guide to using the AI’s features also states that it can be biased or “give out harmful content when prompted”.
According to Notion spokeswoman Becky Sosnov, the company is “working with multiple partners, including OpenAI and Anthropic” to push the feature forward and is “continuously testing more” over time.
You can currently try Notion AI for free, with every workspace user getting 20 free AI answers; This promotion ends on April 5, 2023, according to Notion. After that (or after you’ve used up your 20 responses), it’s $8 per month per Workspace member billed annually, or $10 per month per member billed monthly be billed, giving you unlimited access to the feature.
It’s not just Microsoft either. The company that makes Raycast, a productivity tool set to replace Apple’s Spotlight, announced Wednesday that it’s integrating OpenAI’s technology to do many of the things Notion’s AI does — albeit for use with the signup for a waiting list is required. And another note-taking app, Mem, promises to use AI to organize your notes, while the craft note-taking tool has an “AI Assistant” based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 technology. As other big tech companies like Google work on their own AI chatbots, it’s likely that these kinds of features will spread to even more apps and services.
