Can AI Chatbots Be Your Virtual Assistant?

AI chatbots will not be the tireless 24/7 assistants that tech corporations promised, however with the appropriate method, they will nonetheless assist you be extra productive and get extra performed. This is what it is advisable to know to make use of AI chatbots as digital assistants.

Understanding Digital Assistants vs. Digital Assistants vs. AI Chatbots

A digital assistant (VA), within the conventional sense, refers to a distant employee who offers administrative help. Some VAs are expert at utilizing particular instruments and can even assist with inventive or technical workloads. They’re primarily employed by busy professionals—like CEOs, startup founders, and VIPs—who want an additional pair of arms to maintain their private {and professional} lives working easily.

Folks rent VAs to delegate the extra mundane and repetitive duties of the day to allow them to focus their thoughts and power on extra mission-critical workloads that require their full consideration. Now, this would possibly make you surprise, “Would not it’s nice if we additionally had a VA in our lives to assist out with our every day chores and boring work?” That is the place digital assistants are available!

Instruments like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa had been designed to assist us streamline a few of our mundane day-to-day duties with easy voice instructions. The issue is that these digital assistants don’t understand natural language, and it is advisable to use particular phrases to make them do what you need—and even then, their breadth of capabilities is fairly slim. Nevertheless, AI chatbots clear up most of those points.

Based mostly on Large Language Models (LLMs), AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Copilot can have interaction in pure dialog with you and perceive what you are attempting to say. This makes dialog with chatbots as seamless as with an precise VA. They will additionally carry out a wide range of tasks like textual content formatting, picture technology, and e-mail writing. So, does that imply we’re lastly dwelling in a world the place everybody can have their very own private digital VA?

AI Chatbots Can Assist With These Digital Assistant Duties

AI has been advancing at breakneck pace, and fashionable AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude are beginning to deal with duties as soon as reserved for human assistants. Listed here are some workloads, usually reserved for VAs, that you are able to do with an AI chatbot:

Set Alarms and Reminders

Some of the easy but beneficial makes use of of AI assistants is managing your schedule. I hate to dive into my cellphone sporadically to set an alarm, calendar occasion, or reminder. I discover it a lot simpler to simply use my voice to inform my Gemini to remind me to “feed the canine at 7 p.m.” or “name my editor at 8 p.m.” To not point out, that is significantly helpful when you find yourself engaged on one thing and don’t need to distract your self by unlocking your cellphone.

Speaking Companion

Generally you simply want somebody to bounce concepts off of—particularly when working by means of complicated issues. Whereas AI chatbots won’t change significant human conversations, they make excellent sounding boards when it is advisable to course of your ideas verbally. I usually use them throughout my writing course of to discover completely different angles of a subject. It’s like having a Watson to your Sherlock!

Summarizing Transcripts From Calls

Taking detailed notes throughout conferences is usually a actual ache, to not point out distracting in case you are attempting to have a productive two-way dialog. That is the place AI instruments can are available to soak up the voice recordings, transcribe them, and even generate concise summaries of the dialog. As an alternative of frantically scribbling notes, you possibly can concentrate on the dialogue and let your AI assistant deal with the documentation.

Prioritize Your Studying or Watching Lists

In case you are something like me, you most likely have an countless queue of articles, movies, and podcasts saved for later consumption. The issue is that while you begin going by means of them, you discover that loads of these items is fluff and never price your time. Fortunately, you need to use your AI assistant to investigate this checklist (and its content material) and recommend what to devour first primarily based in your pursuits or deadlines. It’s like having your personal model of the Netflix suggestion engine—however for every part.

Writing Emails and Primary Documentation

If solely we may write “hmm” or “ok” in our skilled communications, however sadly, you’re required to be a bit extra well mannered and articulate in your speech. Fortunately, an AI assistant can do that for you. Simply give it context in regards to the e-mail or message you bought together with what you need to say, and it’ll draft knowledgeable response in seconds. You may then fine-tune or personalize it as per your wants earlier than sending it. This makes AI a wonderful software for dashing by means of your every day communications or documentation work, so you possibly can concentrate on the extra essential stuff.

Serving to With Artistic Blocks and Brainstorming

Many people are satisfied that AI will change inventive employees, however as a writer-marketer, I hardly ever discover AI content material producing my desired degree of engagement. That being mentioned, it’s actually useful in the creative process. Whereas none of what it recommends is sweet, it is ready to get my inventive juices flowing once more, which finally helps me be extra productive.

Understanding the Limitations—The place AI Chatbots Come Quick

Whereas AI chatbots could be extremely useful, they nonetheless lag behind human VAs in a number of vital areas. Listed here are some potential points with the present state of AI chatbots that make them irritating assistants.

You Have to Use A number of AI Chatbots—There’s No “One AI to Rule Them All”

Within the earlier part, I listed a bunch of VA-type workloads that AI chatbots can do—nevertheless, I ought to point out {that a} single AI software can’t do all of this. Regardless of speedy advances in AI expertise, we’re but to see one software to rule all of them. Every main AI assistant—whether or not it’s Google Gemini, Siri, ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity—has its own strengths and limitations. The secret is understanding which software to make use of for which job primarily based on what they’re good at.

For instance, Gemini on Android (or Siri on iPhone) is geared in the direction of serving to you handle your sensible residence units, e-mail summarizations, and comparable phone-based duties with easy voice instructions. Nevertheless, these instruments wrestle with work that requires extra logical and nuanced pondering. That is the place you need to use one thing like ChatGPT or Claude, that are higher for coding, writing and basic brainstorming—at the very least for now!

They Received’t Do Your Job for You

Regardless of how superior AI expertise turns into, it can not replicate your distinctive experience, judgment, and creativity. Consider your AI assistant as a supportive software fairly than a substitute for human intelligence. It’s there to assist you do your work, as a substitute of doing it for you.

It could actually assist with brainstorming or iterating in your work, however won’t (or can not) do your be just right for you—at the very least not on the similar degree of magnificence as you possibly can. Compared, a VA, particularly if in case you have labored with them for a very long time, will know your tastes and preferences and may do among the work in your behalf.

You Have to Be Painfully Articulate With What You Need

As a human, VAs normally have loads of context and perceive nuances in human discussions. This primarily signifies that, even with imprecise directions, you possibly can count on your VA to do your work similar to you need them to—particularly if in case you have labored with them for a very long time.

In distinction, AI instruments thrive on particular, detailed directions. There’s a saying within the AI neighborhood: “rubbish in, rubbish out.” Imprecise instructions may also result in equally imprecise or unhelpful responses. If you’d like an AI chatbot to carry out a selected job, it is advisable to be very clear about what you want, why you want it, and how you want it done.

Whereas attempting to be this particular, you would possibly assume, “May I not have completed the work sooner if I had simply performed it myself, as a substitute of prompting the AI to do it for me?” And sure, in lots of instances, it’s sooner to do the work by yourself—particularly in case you are creating one thing distinctive and one-of-a-kind. AI assistants grow to be productive when you find yourself utilizing them to automate your boring and repetitive work.

So, Can AI Chatbots Be Your Digital Assistant?

Whereas AI chatbots have made outstanding strides in dealing with duties historically carried out by digital assistants, they’re finest considered as highly effective instruments fairly than full VA replacements. Consider AI chatbots as your first line of help—they’re at all times obtainable, by no means drained, and may deal with many fundamental duties immediately. Nevertheless, these instruments can not assist you coordinate complicated tasks, deal with delicate shopper interactions, or assist with outside-the-box pondering. These are areas the place getting a VA continues to be the higher selection!