Open any app right now. Chances are there's a little sparkle icon somewhere you didn't notice before. That's the AI assistant they added sometime in the last six months without telling you.
Notion has one. Spotify has one. Your bank probably has one. Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat — all have some version of "ask me anything" built in now. It's the new hamburger menu. Everyone has one, most people ignore it, and the ones who try it are usually underwhelmed.
Here's the thing though: a few of them are actually good. And figuring out which ones is worth your time.
The ones that work
Notion's is legitimately useful if you're already in Notion all day. You can say "summarize this doc" or "turn these notes into action items" and it does a decent job. It's not magic — it's basically a shortcut for stuff you'd do manually — but the speed is real.
Email AI in Gmail and Outlook has gotten surprisingly competent. Draft replies, summarize long threads, pull out action items from a 47-email chain. If email is a big part of your job, this saves real time every day.
Google Maps has been quietly using AI to improve recommendations. Ask for "coffee shops that are actually good near me" and it gives you something more useful than the default results. It's filtering by reviews, recency, your past behavior. Small upgrade, meaningful difference.
The ones you can skip (for now)
Social media AI assistants. Instagram's, Snapchat's, LinkedIn's — these could eventually be useful for things like drafting posts or analyzing engagement. But right now they're mostly general chatbots stuffed into apps where nobody asked for them. The AI doesn't have enough context about your content strategy or audience to be more useful than just using ChatGPT directly. They exist because every company needs an AI story for investors.
Banking AI. In theory, a smart banking assistant could surface spending patterns, flag unusual charges, or help you optimize your finances. But most bank chatbots today are the same decision-tree chatbots from 2021 with a shinier interface. They still can't do the one thing you actually need, which is resolve a specific issue without bouncing you to a human. When they catch up, they'll be worth revisiting.
The pattern
The useful AI assistants are the ones built into tools where you're already doing work. The useless ones are bolted onto apps where you go to scroll or socialize. That's the filter. If the app is where you produce things, the AI probably helps. If the app is where you consume things, the AI is a gimmick.
Save yourself some time: only engage with the AI features in your actual work tools. Ignore the rest.