In partnership with

Training cutting edge AI? Unlock the data advantage today.

If you’re building or fine-tuning generative AI models, this guide is your shortcut to smarter AI model training. Learn how Shutterstock’s multimodal datasets—grounded in measurable user behavior—can help you reduce legal risk, boost creative diversity, and improve model reliability.

Inside, you’ll uncover why scraped data and aesthetic proxies often fall short—and how to use clustering methods and semantic evaluation to refine your dataset and your outputs. Designed for AI leaders, product teams, and ML engineers, this guide walks through how to identify refinement-worthy data, align with generative preferences, and validate progress with confidence.

Whether you're optimizing alignment, output quality, or time-to-value, this playbook gives you a data advantage. Download the guide and train your models with data built for performance.

Download the guide

Stay ahead with the most recent breakthroughs—here’s what’s new and making waves in AI-powered productivity:

• Recall: The AI-powered personal knowledge base that instantly summarizes, links, and recalls your notes, documents, videos, and more.

• Motion Pro: An intelligent calendar and workflow manager that automatically organizes your day based on shifting priorities and habits.

• Notion AI Workspace: The revamped workspace that now automates project management, turns meeting notes into actionable tasks, and integrates with dozens of other platforms.

• Reclaim.ai Smart Scheduler: A tool for balancing work/life responsibilities with predictive habit tracking and flexible scheduling.

• Fireflies.ai Meeting Intelligence: An app that captures meeting recordings, produces bullet-point summaries, and tracks follow-ups with seamless integration.

Each of these apps integrates with major platforms like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Slack, delivering frictionless on boarding and practical workflow impact.

Recall addresses a common digital pain point: information overload. With Recall, you can centralize disparate notes, bookmarks, PDFs, YouTube clips, emails, and more, all in a self-organizing, secure knowledge base.

What Makes Recall Unique

• Instant Summaries: In one click, Recall distills lengthy articles, podcasts, and documents into concise overviews, tagging them for easy retrieval.

• Augmented Browsing: As you surf online, Recall proactively resurfaces related content you’ve saved before, connecting ideas and prompting research.

• Multiformat Capture: Save content from anywhere—webpages, mobile, PDFs, podcasts—and access it across devices thanks to browser extensions and mobile beta apps.

• Interactive Chat: Query your entire saved knowledge base to quickly find, compare, or analyze information as if you’re chatting with your digital brain.

• Automatic Linking & Categorization: Recall builds a knowledge graph from everything you collect, organizing content while you work.

• Security & Privacy: Data is stored securely and offline-first when possible, and users can easily export their collections in markdown format at any time. Recall doesn’t use your data for anything but providing its service.

How Users Gain Productivity

Professionals use Recall to:

• Master Topics Faster: Rapid summaries and organized notes speed up learning and research.

• Accelerate Research: Upload and annotate complex documents, with Recall surfacing insights from previous research in real time.

• Organize Personal Interests: Never lose track of favorite articles, recipes, or project notes.

Try Recall and build your own second brain: getrecall.ai

Your AI Writing Assistant: Help with Emails, Essays, and Brainstorms

Writing – everyone kind of hates it. But it is still the best way of transferring your thoughts to others (until there’s some sort of mind-link device).

But now there is AI, and it can spit out words even faster than you can think.  You can use this new tech to help in that somewhat tedious task of writing, such as drafting a professional email, outlining an essay, or brainstorming ideas for a project – you just have to use it in the right way so you don’t lose that human touch.

Why Use an AI Writing Assistant?

AI writing assistants are like having a friendly expert on call 24/7. They can:

• Save you time: Generate draft emails, summaries, or outlines in seconds, cutting down hours of staring at a blank page. AI does not know writer’s block, so it can always get you started.
  

• Boost your creativity: Suggest fresh ideas or alternative phrasings when you’re stuck, acting as a brainstorming partner that never runs out of suggestions. AI is not always the most creative, but it is always there and ready to help.
  

• Improve your writing quality: Check grammar, refine tone, and restructure text. A chatbot can even mimic your writing style if you feed it samples of your work, helping maintain your unique voice.
  

• Adapt to various tasks: From drafting a casual note to a friend, to formulating a persuasive business proposal or academic essay, AI can adjust style and formality as needed. The key is in how you prompt it.
  

Tip 1: Start with a Clear Goal or Prompt

The golden rule for getting good results from AI is clarity. If your request to the AI is vague or “fuzzy,” the output will likely not be great. Before you hit enter, take a moment to define what you want. Are you asking for an email draft, an essay outline, or a list of ideas. Do you want some professional editing and suggestions on better writing, or just some proofreading? State that upfront.

For example, instead of asking “Help me with this project,” be specific: “Draft a three-point summary I can present to the sales team on why our new product will appeal to small businesses.” A clear prompt guides the AI and increases the chances you’ll get a useful response. Remember, the AI can’t read your mind. If you aren’t entirely sure what you need, you can even ask the AI to help clarify your goal. Don’t hesitate to say, “I need to write a follow-up email to a client, but I’m not sure what tone to use. What do you suggest?” Smart assistants can ask you follow-up questions to zero in on the goal if you prompt them to do so.

Pro Tip: Treat the AI like a collaborator. If the first answer isn’t spot on, refine your prompt or tell the AI what to adjust. For instance, “This draft is too formal; make it more friendly,” or “That outline missed a section on solutions, please add one.” One powerful approach is to explicitly instruct the AI to ask you for more details if something is missing. Adding a line like “Ask me for any information you need before proceeding” can prevent the AI from guessing and making things up (a phenomenon called “AI hallucination”).

Tip 2: Provide Context and Details

The more context you give, the better the AI’s output. Modern AI models can handle a lot of input (many now can process a whole novel in one go!), so don’t be shy about feeding them information. If you’re drafting an email, tell the AI who the audience is and what the situation is. For example: “I need to email my manager, who is very detail-oriented, about needing an extension on a project deadline.” This way, the AI knows to keep the tone professional and include a clear rationale. In fact, explicitly defining your audience is a proven way to get more targeted results – if you say it’s for your boss versus a friend, the assistant will adjust the tone accordingly.

Context can also include raw data or reference material. You could paste a rough draft of your essay or the bullet points you’ve brainstormed, and then ask the AI to work with that. If you have specific points that must be included, list them. AI works best with specific data you provide, rather than having to rely purely on its built-in knowledge. For instance, if you want an email summarizing a meeting, it helps to give the AI the meeting notes or key decisions.

Also, consider giving style examples. If you want the text in a lively or casual tone, say so. If you have a writing sample (even a paragraph) that captures the voice you like, share it. The AI can mirror writing styles when given examples. This is a great trick to ensure the output “sounds like you” – the assistant can, in a way, learn from you to simulate your voice.

Tip 3: Brainstorming New Ideas with AI

Staring at a blank page? Your AI assistant can help you generate ideas and overcome creative blocks. The key to effective AI brainstorming is to ask for multiple options and push beyond the obvious. By default, a large language model may give a pretty average or common answer if you only ask for one solution. But if you ask for, say, “10 different blog post ideas about X” or “20 alternate titles for my essay,” you force it to dig deeper. The first few ideas might be the low-hanging fruit, but if you force it to keep going, it can get pretty interesting.

You can also specifically request diversity in the answers. For example: “Give me five brainstorming ideas for a novel plot, each in very different genres and styles.” If the initial batch of ideas feels too similar, tell the bot to “make the next ones more surprising or varied.” You’ll often get more creative, less conventional suggestions by explicitly saying you want variety.

Another powerful technique is the “chain-of-thought” prompt or iterative brainstorming. Instead of expecting the perfect idea in one go, treat it like a process. Ask the AI to generate a few ideas first. Then you can respond with, “These are okay, but let’s go bolder,” or “Combine idea 2 and 3 and see what happens.” AI is great at iterating: it can refine or expand on ideas in subsequent rounds. You can even prompt it in one go: “Generate 5 ideas, then combine a couple and elaborate on that new idea.” Turning brainstorming into a step-by-step conversation often yields richer results.

Don’t forget the fun of role-play in idea generation. You can ask the AI to assume a persona or perspective to shake loose different ideas. For example, tell it, “You are a travel agent brainstorming unique vacation ideas for a family of four,” or “Act as a critical editor: what are some plot twists a mystery reader would love?” By giving the AI a role, you nudge it into specific modes of thinking which can lead to insights you hadn’t considered. Similarly, you can have the AI ask you questions to draw out more details. If you’re not sure where to begin a brainstorm, prompt with something like: “I want to come up with a business idea in smart home technology. Ask me questions to help refine my ideas.” This flips the script and lets the AI guide you, almost like a real-time interviewer or coach.

Above all, treat the AI as an endlessly patient brainstorming buddy. It’s there to spitball with you. Some ideas it suggests will be duds – that’s okay. You can explicitly say “No, that’s not quite it, how about something more...?” and it won’t get offended. In fact, telling the AI when an idea is “too boring” or “too common” will encourage it to try more offbeat answers next. The mantra here is prompt, receive, tweak, repeat.

Tip 4: Drafting and Outlining Essays with AI

Tackling a longer piece of writing, like an essay or report? AI can assist at multiple stages of the writing process, but it works best as a collaborator rather than a replacement for your own thinking. Here are some ways to use AI for essays and big writing projects:

• Outline your thoughts: You can ask the AI to create an outline based on a topic or thesis you provide. For example: “I need an outline for a 1500-word essay on the benefits of urban green spaces.” The assistant might give you a structured list of sections and points. This can be a great starting point if you’re unsure how to organize your ideas. You should review and tweak that outline to fit what you want to say – consider it a first draft structure. If the outline misses something important, you can prompt: “Add a section about economic benefits” and the AI will adjust. AI-generated outlines are handy, but make sure they align with your assignment or argument goals.
  

• Thesis and argument help: Crafting a strong thesis statement or argument can be hard. AI tools can offer suggestions or improvements if you share your draft thesis. One approach is to feed your thesis into the chatbot and ask, “How can I make this thesis statement stronger or clearer?” or “What counterarguments might someone raise against this point?” AI can provide quick feedback on clarity and even suggest ways to sharpen an argument. For instance, an AI might point out if your main point is ambiguous or if you haven’t considered a common opposing view. Use these suggestions as guidance—ultimately, you decide which ideas to keep.
  

• Expand or condense content: If you have a section that feels thin, you can ask the AI to brainstorm examples or explain a concept in more detail. Conversely, if you need to cut words, you can ask it to make a passage more concise. A prompt like “Here’s a paragraph from my essay; help me rewrite it in a more concise way without losing meaning” can do wonders for trimming fluff. Always double-check that the revised text still says what you intend, and doesn’t introduce any factual errors.
  

• Review and edit: Think of the AI as an on-demand editor or proofreader. You can paste a chunk of your essay and ask for feedback: “Please review this paragraph for clarity and grammar.” Often, the AI will point out awkward sentences or fix minor errors. You can also be specific: “Does the tone sound unbiased and academic? If not, adjust it.” One clever use is to have the AI create a reverse outline of your draft – basically summarizing each paragraph’s main point – to see if your essay’s structure holds together. For example, prompt: “Summarize each paragraph of this essay in one sentence to show the flow of arguments.” Comparing the AI’s summary to your intended outline can reveal if some paragraphs are off-topic or redundant.
  

When using AI for essay writing, remember ethics and originality. Treat AI as a helper for generating and refining text, not a source to copy from blindly. Always verify any factual content the AI provides (dates, statistics, quotes) against trusted sources, because AI can sometimes produce incorrect information that sounds convincing. The goal is to enhance your own writing with AI’s assistance, not to have the AI do all your writing and lose your voice.

Tip 5: Polishing Emails and Messages

Emails are where AI assistants truly shine for everyday productivity. Drafting a clear, polite, and well-structured email can take time – and this is exactly where generative AI can give you a boost. In fact, as of 2025, Gmail and Outlook’s built-in AI can draft emails based on a simple prompt or a one-line instruction. But whether you use those or a general chatbot, the approach is similar.

First, compose a rough draft or note about what you want to say. You can actually write this in plain language as if you’re talking to the AI. For example: “I need to reschedule a meeting from Tuesday to Friday because I have a conflict. I want to apologize and sound professional.” Then ask the AI to turn that into a well-crafted email. This two-step method (brain-dump your thoughts, then have AI polish it) works great to preserve your voice and intent. It ensures the core message is yours, and the AI just helps “sprinkle some magic” on it – fixing grammar, adding a nice greeting/closing, and adjusting the tone.

When prompting for an email, include key details: who it’s to, the purpose, and any specific points to mention. If it’s a sensitive or important email, also mention the tone you’re aiming for (e.g. friendly, formal, apologetic, confident). For example: “Draft a polite email to my professor asking for an extension on my essay due to illness. Emphasize that I’ve been keeping up with class and propose a new deadline next week.” The AI will produce a draft that you can then tweak. Always read through and make sure it sounds like something you would send. You might add a personal touch the AI missed, like a reference to a previous conversation, or ensure the level of formality is just right.

Another handy use case: proofreading and tone-checking what you’ve written. If you’ve drafted an email but worry it might come off too blunt, you can tell the AI, “Here’s my draft – make the tone more friendly and empathetic.” It can soften phrases and add courteous language where appropriate. Likewise, for a business email, you might say, “Make this sound more professional and concise.” The AI will remove colloquialisms and tighten the sentences. These tools are effectively supercharged editing assistants that can adapt your message to different audiences on the fly.

One thing to keep in mind is that AI, for all its fluency, sometimes doesn’t have all the facts. If your email requires specific information (dates, names, figures), double-check those details. And if the AI suggests something that doesn’t feel right, trust your judgment. It might phrase something too strongly or too timidly; feel free to edit the draft it gives you. Consider the AI’s draft as a starting point – you can always adjust the wording. The end result should be a collaboration: the efficiency of AI combined with your personal judgment as the writer.

Be Mindful: Verify and Iterate

Using AI in writing is powerful, but it isn’t a “set it and forget it” solution. Always verify important details in the AI’s output. This is especially true for any factual content, like statistics or historical dates, and for any citations or quotes the AI provides. You should “verify everything” when using AI because these models can still get things wrong or even fabricate info confidently. Think of the AI as an assistant who sometimes hallucinates – it doesn’t lie on purpose, but it might guess or produce inaccurate text if it doesn’t know the answer. Your role is to keep it honest.

It’s also wise to do a human sense-check on tone and appropriateness. AI might not fully grasp the nuances of your situation or audience. Before sending that AI-crafted email or submitting that essay, read it over. Make sure it aligns with what you intended to convey. If something sounds off or generic, tweak it. The best results come when you iterate with the AI: prompt, get output, edit or refine the prompt, and so on. Don’t be afraid to go back and forth a few times. For instance, you might say, “This is mostly good, but the second paragraph is unclear – can you clarify it?” or “Add a bit more enthusiasm to the conclusion.” Each iteration can improve the result.

Lastly, keep learning and experimenting. AI writing is a skill like any other tool. The more you use it, the better you get at phrasing prompts and guiding the assistant. People who become proficient with AI prompts are finding huge productivity and creativity gains. So treat each interaction as practice. Over time, you’ll develop an intuition for how to ask for what you need – whether it’s a compelling opening line for an email or three fresh angles for your blog post.

Your Writing – But Faster

AI writing assistants are transforming the way we approach writing tasks. They help accelerate the tedious parts – like getting a first draft down or coming up with ideas – so that you can focus on refining and adding your personal touch. From emails that hit the right tone to essays that are well-structured, these tools can be a huge boost to your productivity and even your creativity. Best of all, they’re available to everyone now, often built into the apps we already use.

Remember that you are still the pilot, and the AI is the co-pilot. Use it to explore possibilities, get past writer’s block, and polish your prose, but always keep your objectives and audience in sight. With clear instructions and a bit of critical oversight, your AI writing assistant can become an invaluable partner in crafting emails, essays, and brainstorming the next big idea. It’s still you in control, but now you have an assistant that’s quick and never gets tired of being there to help – even if it occasionally goes insane and hallucinates. It happens to the best of us.

Partner Spotlight: IT Agent

Supercharge your IT Management with AI — IT Agent makes your admins superhuman by automating key IT tasks. Here’s what sets IT Agent apart:

• Remote Access and Monitoring: Secure control across all endpoints with advanced remote management.

• Automated Patching: Keep software up-to-date and patched against vulnerabilities, balancing security needs with disruption risk.

• Intelligent Task Automation: Retrieve information or execute fixes automatically, based on rules you define.

Whether you’re running a small business or a large enterprise, IT Agent empowers your team to automate routine IT work without compromising control or transparency. Get started with IT Agent and discover how you can do more for less.

Visit: itagent.com

Stay productive, stay curious—see you next week with more AI breakthroughs!