If you run a small business, you've probably heard a lot of noise about AI lately. The good news? You don't need a big budget or a tech team to get value from it. These five tools are free or low-cost, and each one can save you real time starting today.
ChatGPT (from OpenAI) is the most versatile AI tool available right now. Use it to draft emails, write social media posts, summarise long documents, or brainstorm ideas. The free version is surprisingly capable, and the paid version ($20 USD/month) is significantly better for business use.
Try this: Paste in a customer complaint and ask ChatGPT to help you write a professional, empathetic response.
Canva has quietly built AI features into its platform that can generate images, write copy, and even create entire presentations from a brief description. If you're currently paying a freelancer for basic graphics, Canva AI is worth exploring first.
If you spend time in meetings, Otter.ai records and transcribes them automatically. It highlights action items, generates summaries, and lets you search back through what was said. The free plan gives you 300 minutes per month — plenty for most small business owners.
Notion is a flexible workspace tool, and its built-in AI can help you write, summarise, and auto-fill information across your notes and documents. If you're already using Notion, adding AI to the mix costs just $10/month.
If your business uses Google Workspace, you may already have access to Gemini — Google's AI assistant built directly into Gmail and Google Docs. It can help you draft emails from bullet points, summarise long threads, and clean up documents.
Don't try all five at once. Pick the one that solves your biggest time problem right now and spend a week learning it properly. Once it becomes habit, add the next one.
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