AI Titans Tools Council: Navigating the Evolving Landscape | June 2025

In late May, the WOMEN x AI: AI Titans Tools Council—an expert-led roundtable of AI practitioners, builders, and founders came together to dissect the tools shaping their daily workflows. From advanced research assistants to intuitive content creation platforms, the conversation spanned a dynamic range of use cases across the fast-evolving AI ecosystem.

Whether it was refining long-form writing with language models, taking smarter notes, or experimenting with “vibe coding,” our Council didn’t hold back in evaluating what’s actually moving the needle—and what’s falling short.

This post distills the most impactful insights from that session, offering a practical look at which tools are rising to the top, how real professionals are using them, and what limitations are worth flagging.

Don't forget to join our WxAI Membership to learn AI in community, like these Titans did!

Note: This recap was co-created using Gemini 2.5 Pro in Canvas mode, in partnership with members of the AI Titans Tools Council.

Infographic of all 30+ AI Tools

Top Tools Highlighted: What Women in AI Are

Top Tools Highlighted: What Women in AI Are Actually Using

The AI Titans Tools Council shared real-world insights into the tools powering deep research, strategic content, and day-to-day productivity. One standout: Notebook LM, praised for organizing complex source material and simplifying admin tasks like creating spreadsheets from scattered documents. Its new mobile app makes on-the-go access easy, though some council members noted its podcast voice features are still limited.

Another favorite was Custom GPTs—especially niche assistants like “hook generators” that deliver high-quality content prompts for marketing. While finding the right one can take effort, the payoff is reuse-friendly, problem-specific solutions.

What set this roundup apart wasn’t just the tools, but the lived experience behind them. These aren’t sponsored shoutouts—they’re battle-tested insights from women actively using AI to lead, build, and create. Want in? Explore our full Council Report below to see what’s working—and where it flops.

AI Deep Dives, Paperwork, and Content Strategy

Notebook LM

• Use Cases: Deep dives on communication strategy (company or personal branding), automating paperwork tasks (e.g., creating spreadsheets from multiple documents).

  
  

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Ability to upload up to 50 sources per notebook.

  • ✅ New mobile app for easy access and listening on the go.

  • ✅ Effective for straightforward data extraction and compilation (e.g., creating an Excel sheet from employee forms).

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Limited variety in podcast voice options (only two, not changeable).

  • ❌ It's always good to ask it to double-check its work, though it's generally accurate for simple tasks.

• Council Members: Jenny Kay Pollock, Meg McWilliams

• Link: Notebook LM

• Notes: A mobile app version was recently released.

Custom GPTs

• Use Case: Content Creation (specifically, a "hook generator" was mentioned).

• Link: Hook Generator GPT Example

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Highly detailed solutions to help you with a specific problem. 

  • ✅ When I find one that works I tend to keep reusing it.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Asking broad questions isn’t great it needs to be related to the specific CustomGPT’s goals and capabilities. 

  • ❌ There are a ton out there so it can be hard to find the right one for your needs. 

• Council Members: Jenny Kay Pollock

• Notes: This entry was brief, highlighting a specific custom GPT for generating hooks there are many more customGPTs and if you have the paid plan you can create your own. You can see our customGPT to help you pick which WOMEN x AI membership tier is right for you!

  
  

  

  
  

ChatGPT-o3 (referring to a specific model/version)

• Use Case: Strategy development, idea generation for issues.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Asking what questions/prompts/ideas you could be having about any issues (strategy/tactics).

  • ✅ Uploading background documents/websites to provide context.

  • ✅ Using voice input for detailed explanations.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Asking broad questions with little detail yields poor results.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: ChatGPT (User note: Select the "o3" or latest powerful model, likely referring to GPT-4o).

  
  

Claude

• Use Case: Copywriting.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Perceived as better at copywriting than some other models.

  • ✅ Can be trained on a specific style for one-liners, elevator pitches, and longer pitches, then consistently apply it.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Requires initial effort to train the chat on your style and provide all relevant information; less effective otherwise.

• Council Member: Meg

• Link: claude.ai

  
  

ChatGPT-4o

• Use Case: Deep Research for content creation (social media posts, articles, high-level content).

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Effective for in-depth research when directed properly.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Outputs can change drastically as the model iterates.

  • ❌ Crucial to continually check source legitimacy and attributions.

  • ❌ Reliant on good prompting.

• Council Member: Miri 

• Link: ChatGPT

  
  

  

  
  

Note-Taking

Granola

• Use Case: Note-taking for meetings or personal thoughts, recording in-person conversations, generating meeting notes, ideas, reflections, or asking questions of your data. Syncs with Limitless tech and calendar, allows manual note addition.

• What Works (Pros): 

  • ✅ Records in-person conversations for notes, ideas, reflections.

  • ✅ Syncs with Limitless tech and calendar.

  • ✅ Allows manual note addition.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Only works with business accounts not @gmail accounts.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: Granola.ai
  

My Notes in Granola while listening to AI Startups & Venture Capital: Powering the Future of Innovation | WxAI Event:

Granola's enhancement of my notes and it's suggested follow up email to attendees:

Otter.ai

• Use Case: Note-taking/recording Zoom meetings.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Seamlessly joins calendar video calls.

  • ✅ Records full meetings, provides transcripts, visuals, voice, meeting notes, action items, and insights. Described as indispensable.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Can be too good at joining meetings; it will join any calendared meeting and needs to be manually removed if recording isn't desired by all attendees.

• Council Member: Malinda Johnson

• Link:Otter.ai

  
  

Email Assistants

Gemini Pro (for Gmail)

• Use Case: Assisting with email replies within Gmail.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Reads the email received, allows you to type notes for the reply, and Gemini drafts the email.

  • ✅ Good for short replies or drafting longer replies that need more thought.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Requires careful review and tweaking of every email; writing just a few words and expecting a perfect draft won't work. It improves over time.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Notes: Requires a Gemini AI Pro subscription for the 'help me write' button to appear.

10-minute mail

• Use Case: Subscribing to email lists to get access to content/products without receiving spam in your primary inbox.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Provides a temporary email address to bypass mandatory mailing list sign-ups, protecting your identity and avoiding spam.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ A very slight, unlikely chance of missing an important email sent to the temporary address.

• Council Member: Malinda Johnson

• Link:10minutemail.net

  
  

AI Wearables / Memory / Ambient Audio Capture

Limitless

• Use Case: Passively recording meetings, hallway chats, or brainstorms to surface follow-ups, commitments, names, and thematic insights; an external memory/reflection device.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Helpful for surfacing action items, writing follow-up notes, and answering "What did I say I’d do?".

  • ✅ Great for end-of-day reflections, analyzing leadership presence, and remembering contacts from networking events.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Sometimes mishears or misspells names, so not always perfectly accurate.

  • ❌ Built-in AI isn't as powerful as top models (e.g., GPT-4o) for deep strategic thinking; transcripts might be better exported to a stronger model.

  • ❌ Battery life can be limiting (requires nightly charging).

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: Limitless.ai

• Notes: Anticipation that this tech category might be similar to upcoming ChatGPT hardware.

Vibe Coding (No-Code/Low-Code Development)

Bolt

• Use Case: Text prompt to web or mobile app.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Incredible for website creation (e.g., a data dashboard created in 10 minutes).

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Trouble uploading PNGs (SVGs work better for logos).

  • ❌ Limited customization.

  • ❌ Takes more effort to prompt the mobile version for correct formatting.

• Council Member: Meg

• Link: bolt.new

Jenny vibe coded this WxAI Membership quiz with bolt.

Heyboss AI

• Use Case: No-code "vibe coding" for creating simple prototypes or visualizing ideas quickly.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Easy to use for creating quick mockups in meetings to show how something might look.

  • ✅ Good for building very dummy prototypes to convey ideas to developers.

  • ✅ Code can be downloaded and potentially refined in other tools if the prototype shows promise.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Struggles with anything slightly complex; many bugs reported when trying to build finished products or complex features.

  • ❌ Poor integration with other technologies (databases, software). Best for very simple websites or visual idea representation.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link:heybossai.com

Lovable

• Usecase: Vibe coding

• Link: lovable.dev

• Notes: Highly popular vibe coding app!

General Assistant

Lindy

• Use Case: Can take on hundreds of low-level tasks from different business departments; tested as a personal assistant.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Requires diving in and trying various features to see what works for you (offers a free trial with credits).

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Not a "hit and hope" tool; users should test if it provides what they need faster than doing it themselves.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: Lindy.ai Templates

Presentations

Gamma

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde & Reut Lazo

• Link: gamma.app

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Helps you create a slide deck really fast

  • ✅ You can change out the content easily to iterate your way to a strong presentation.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ You can't use one of the templates you already have. 

Research Tools

Vallum hosting Claude agentic or Fireworks hosting Llama 4 Maverick

• Use Case: Creating insights reports for clients and users by mining messy data; building repeatable automated analysis chains/trees for AI agents.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Automates multi-step, time-consuming data analysis.

  • ✅ Using a host like Vallum or Fireworks offers more security and easier agent direction.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Can be hard/time-consuming to set up initially (good to assign to a data person).

  • ❌ Can be verbose and overly conclusive; needs instruction on tone/length and caution with findings.

  • ❌ Requires built-in self-review steps in prompts to avoid hallucinations (e.g., one agent reviewing another's work).

• Council Member: Rachel Skeates-Millar

• Links: Vellum Orchestration, Fireworks Llama4 Maverick

Dovetail

• Use Case: Interview analysis, e.g., go-to-market research synthesis.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Extracts and synthesizes takeaways from recorded meetings, interviews, and documents.

  • ✅ Handles large volumes of messy information, makes sense of it, and can display it visually.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Primarily an analysis tool; doesn't include strategy capabilities but provides good input for strategy work with other tools like GPT.

• Council Member: Rachel Skeates-Millar

• Link: dovetail.com

Perplexity

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: perplexity.ai

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ It always cites its sources

  • ✅ The deep research feature is really helpful

Deep Research (referring to a feature or specific prompting technique within a larger model like ChatGPT)

• Use Case: Deep market research (total addressable market, competitors, relevant publications).

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Can get much more detail and reliable sources than standard ChatGPT interactions for this purpose.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons): 

  • ❌ It can be slow so set it up and go do something else. It’s the modern day equivalent of waiting for your dial up internet connection. 

• Council Member: Meg

• Link: chat.openai.com |  perplexity.ai

  
  

  

  

Diagrams

Napkin AI

• Use Case: Making diagrams for presentations, posts, or in meetings.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Uploading a blog post, idea, or text can result in a great diagram.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons): 

  • ❌ It has limited look and feel options with the free plan 

• Council Members: Jenny Kay Pollock / Jenny Wilde

• Link: Napkin.ai

Whimsical AI

• Use Case: Making diagrams (especially process diagrams) on the fly.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Used to sketch out ideas visually in real-time during meetings, especially for mapping action pathways, processes, or early product discussions.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Can get cluttered without some tidying up later.

• Council Member: Rachel Skeates-Millar

• Link: whimsical.com

People / Connections

Distill

• Use Case: Quickly researching people/companies by name, pulling information from across the internet.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Useful for fundraising, recruiting, sales, networking.

  • ✅ Getting background on investors/partners pre-meeting.

  • ✅ Researching event guest lists to identify interesting contacts.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Still in beta.

  • ❌ Sometimes doesn't find a person or confuses them with someone of a different name.

  • ❌ Can have hallucinations, so important facts need checking.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: distill.fyi

• Notes: Sign-up available for beta access.

  
  

Happenstance

• Use Case: Connecting LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook, X (Twitter) to search your network for specific purposes.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Finding people in your network for specific asks (e.g., "who is a preseed investor," "who works at Anthropic," "who has written a book").

  • ✅ Good for starting projects, finding further connections, networking, and reminders of existing contacts.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Requires specific prompts, or results are too general.

  • ❌ Doesn't seem to "think" deeply about options, so specificity is key.

  • ❌ With vast networks (especially LinkedIn/X), it might show breadth over depth compared to a Gmail network.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: happenstance.ai/search

Hirebase

• Use Case: Job seeking; scrapes job boards.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Described as the most powerful job search tool.

  • ✅ Quickly identifies open jobs you're qualified for with good filters and search.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Only for identifying jobs to apply for; doesn't help with referrals or introductions.

• Council Member: Malinda Johnson

• Link: hirebase.org

  
  

Founder's Tool Kit

Conversa AI

• Use Case: AI recruiting; identifying top applicants and increasing diversity.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Automated interviewing and resume review.

  • ✅ Alerts when top candidates apply.

  • ✅ AI designed to increase diversity.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Not designed for outbound sourcing.

• Council Member: Malinda Johnson

• Link: getconversa.com

  
  

Trustcloud.ai

• Use Case: Managing SOC2 compliance and other security needs for founders.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Easiest way to get through SOC2.

  • ✅ Provides templates for everything.

  • ✅ Customer-facing page to share with sales leads about security, appearing "pro" even before full SOC2.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ SOC2 is still tedious; templates are provided, but the work to fill out policies remains.

• Council Member: Malinda Johnson

• Link: trustcloud.ai

  
  

Juicebox.ai

• Use Case: Outbound sourcing/recruiting tool; LinkedIn with a ChatGPT wrapper for identifying candidates and sending messaging sequences.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Better search and filtering than LinkedIn.

  • ✅ Higher candidate response rate than platforms that "spam" candidates (e.g., Loxo).

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Only for outbound sourcing; doesn't screen inbound applicants.

• Council Member: Malinda Johnson

• Link: juicebox.ai

  
  

Thought Leadership / Content Creation

Riverside.fm

• Use Case: Podcast recording and editing.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ AI editing of podcasts.

  • ✅ AI-generated show notes and suggested keywords.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons): 

  • ❌ If you use Ai to take out all the pauses it can feel inauthentic. Pro tip, leave a few in!

  • ❌ When they release new AI features they sometimes have bugs. Be patient or report them the Riverside.fm team is pretty good about fixing them fast.

• Council Member: Reut Lazo & Jenny Kay Pollock

Check out our Team page to learn more about Reut and Jenny and their journey that led them to create WOMEN x AI.

Want to see Riverside.fm in action? Check out our WOMEN x AI podcast. Most episodes are recorded here and all are edited with Riverside.fm. Here's a peek into our WxAI Riverside Studio and the AI Producer tools on the right panel.

Descript

• Use Case: Training and web video content creation; editing and repurposing internal training videos and conversations.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Record presentations and quickly turn them into training and web content.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Still needs a final pass to ensure the tone feels human.

• Council Member: Rachel Skeates-Millar

• Link: descript.com

  
  

Maybe Pile - Tools Under Exploration

This section includes tools that council members are currently exploring or have heard good things about but haven't fully vetted.

Superinterviews

• Use Case: Interview preparation. 

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: teamsidebar.com/superinterviews

• Notes: Heard it's great for interview practice but not personally used yet.

Particle

• Use Case: News.

• Council Member: Jenny Wilde

• Link: particle.news

• Notes: Currently playing with it to see if it's useful.

Claude Artifacts

• Use Case: Creating interactive prototypes, diagrams, user experience flows by prompting Claude.

• What Works (Pros):

  • ✅ Very easy to create interactive prototypes and UX flows.

  • ✅ Claude can suggest new features, acting like a collaborator for visual brainstorming.

• What Doesn't Work (Cons):

  • ❌ Not polished; not meant for final products.

• Council Member: Meg McWilliams

• Link: claude.ai

• Notes: Achieved by asking Claude to "make an artifact."

This month’s AI Titans Tools Council reinforced a core truth about working with AI today: while the tools are becoming more powerful and accessible, the real magic happens through hands-on experimentation and learning together. 

It’s not just about knowing what’s out there, but about understanding how to apply these tools in meaningful, context-specific ways.

Our conversation highlighted a wide range of use cases—from deep research and automation to creative exploration and workflow design—but also reminded us that no tool is perfect. Each has its strengths and limitations, and the only way to truly know what works is to try it, iterate, and share those learnings with others.

The most valuable insights didn’t come from product pages or feature lists—they came from lived experience. What works for one founder might flop for another. What seems like a minor tool to one person might be a game-changer for someone else.

And that’s what makes this Council so powerful: it’s a space where we can can learn from each other, challenge assumptions, and co-create better, smarter ways of working with AI.

As the landscape continues to evolve, we’ll keep experimenting, sharing, and spotlighting the voices shaping the future. Whether you’re building a company, creating content, or automating your inbox—we believe your perspective matters.

Our community is powered by stories. The AI Spotlight is your chance to empower others by sharing your wins and insights in the AI space.

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🔍 See what other women in AI are working on → Browse AI Spotlights