The AI Tech Stack for Comms

A short piece in which the reader benefits from my addiction to trying new apps

Welcome back! I took a little summer break from writing, but we’re back in the saddle.

I thought I’d try something new here and talk about my favorite apps and tools for comms through the lens of the dizzying array of AI apps and features now available. This moment reminds me of c. 2005 when iPods became mainstream, and every consumer electronics company updated their products to include an iPod dock. AI is going through its iPod dock-ification, with the same uneven quality of offerings.

That said, there are some great and legitimately helpful AI-powered products that can make comms people’s lives easier. Luckily for you, dear reader, my compulsive desire to tinker with all these offerings (no joke—at one point, I had eight discrete AI offering subscriptions at once, and that’s not counting the ones I churned out of) means you get to benefit from my follies.

I think six apps are worthy of being declared the AI Tech Stack for Comms.

• Claude - Like others who love to test these tools, I’ve found that Claude is the best of the general-purpose LLMs, especially at working with written works - critiquing the logic and structure, offering suggestions of areas for improvement, and otherwise acting as a sort of pseudo-writing partner. I’ve found its feedback and guidance to be the most sophisticated, thoughtful, and useful of all the big names. (Side note: I found Google’s Gemini far and away the worst for this, for reasons unknown. It just really isn’t game to be generous with feedback.) The paid version also offers Workspaces, which is handy when you want to create a specialized space for a particular project or topic and be able to reference specific sets of documents or resources you upload.

• Perplexity - Getting up to speed quickly on news events or new technical developments and concepts is a must in tech comms. Perplexity, particularly the paid Pro mode with its multi-step query process, does the best job of any tool I’ve used. Its real-time search capabilities (the subject of some debate) and the richness with which it contextualizes answers distinguish it from every comparable service. This emphasis on real-time also makes it a great tool for reporter and outlet research. The ability with the Pro version to select among multiple different LLMs and image generative models, including the latest from Anthropic, Midjourney, and OpenAI, is another considerable bonus of using Perplexity for a wide range of work.

• Spark Mail - As comms people, we live out of our email accounts for better or worse. Not exclusively, but predominately. This existence puts a premium on having a fantastic email experience, even if you have to pay for it. Spark’s +ai Summary feature offers the best distillation of long threads I’ve experienced, offering the option of choosing between short, detailed, and action-point summaries. I’ve found this particularly useful as, being on the West Coast, I too often wake up to long threads of conversations already happening between those in other time zones. Spark’s +ai email compose feature also ingests your past emails (with your permission) to mimic your writing style, so its auto-generated replies feel more natural than other apps I’ve used. It’s $8 a month (or $60 a year) for all the AI-powered premium features, but the time savings make it worth it. It’s also a much better deal than other, pricier products whose functionality is no better.

• Grammarly - Sure, Google Docs and Microsoft Office do spell check and have some proofreading tools to save you from the most egregious errors. But upgrading to Grammarly is a no-brainer if you want a tool that approaches the feedback you’d get from an actual copy editor. Beyond its grammar and syntax suggestions, seeing how it grades each document’s tone, clarity, engagement, and delivery is valuable for ensuring you hit your work’s intended mark. It’s difficult for me to remember writing without it.

• Sembly - I hate taking meeting notes. It detracts from active participation, and invariably, I leave out some little detail or assignment that proves crucial and impossible to remember later. AI tools are very good at this, though. Sembly is my favorite tool for dropping into both remote and in-person meetings. It provides everything you’d expect - high-quality transcripts and summaries shared with you and all attendees if you choose - but goes one further by identifying tasks and who they’ve been assigned to. Its integrations with services like Asana, Notion, and Todoist mean those tasks assigned to you can be automatically pulled into your team workflow. As an avid Todoist user, this has been a game changer.

• Descript - For any comms person who has to work with podcasts, videos, or even just audio files of interviews, there’s really nothing as useful or powerful as Descript. Its transcription quality is stellar,  as is its ability to distinguish and identify different speakers and remove filler words. But its seamless editing capabilities are where it really shines. My mind was blown the first time I cut down a video interview just by selecting the portion of the transcript I wanted to be removed and hitting backspace. My favorite fact about Descript, though, is the identity of its founder: Andrew Mason, the (endearingly) goofy Groupon guy! What an amazing personal story arc he’s had since those days.

I’d love to hear what you all are using and finding valuable. Is there something I’m missing in the software stack? Do you disagree with the assessments? Are all these AI features just handwavy upselling? Am I too addicted to new productivity tools and thinking each one will totally revolutionize my work life? (That one is simple: yes.) Let’s hear in the comments.