An assistant. This is how Notion wants to define it, even if the perspectives go beyond that. On Thursday, November 16, the American note-taking application passed a new milestone in its development with the arrival of Notion AI, a tool that will improve over time to allow you to let the virtual create for you. On the platform, appreciated for a large number of uses, the brainstorming like writing entire blog posts can now be delegated to an AI-based program.
The current beta is still for internal teams only, but a waiting list is now available (already 50,000 people have signed up) to be among the first to test Notion AI. A small number of journalists have been able to access it in recent hours. David Pierce, of the media The Verge in the United States, reported on the possibilities of using the tool after trying it out. He wanted to point out that the content generated, especially for the blog post, had several errors, but that the general ideas were correct.
What Notion AI can do for you
The range of possibilities offered by Notion AI is still enough to amaze anyone who has never used a tool of this kind (Google with Wordcraft, Jasper or Grammarly). Opening a new page, Notion AI presents itself as a set of new actions offered under the main title. Among them: generate a list of advantages and disadvantages on a subject, write an email (recruitment, sales, etc.), or even write a blog article. The journalist from The Verge showed that more specific tasks were possible, such as “providing the ranking of the best Formula 1 teams”.
How does Notion AI work? As with other tools, artificial intelligence will draw on the web to obtain precise information on the subjects, before formatting them. But the San Francisco company wishes to remain discreet and does not give any details on its suppliers for the technical part. It would indeed seem that they are external to Notion. The public release of the tool has no specific date. “Wait until next year”said only Ivan Zhao, the CEO of Notion. “He is convinced that it is today that generative AI is moving from a scientific project to a consumer tool”retained David Pierce after their exchange.
Why go through a waiting list? In an FAQ, Notion explained its choice not to publish Notion AI directly to all its users for the simple and good reason that the tool is not yet trained, but that it will need guinea pigs to refine itself. “We are rolling out Notion AI slowly to ensure the quality of AI-generated content remains high and to get your early feedback to inform future features. We will open this feature to more people as our AI improves.”
30 million users
Notion has more than 30 million users, the company said in early July, without giving details on the number of active users. On the other hand, according to him, they would be 4 million to have subscribed to a paid offer – for a turnover of 67 million dollars in 2021. Growth is there: in 2019, the platform barely exceeded the million. In France, the deployment accelerated after the announcement of Notion France, which is purely and simply a translated version of the platform in English.
In December last year, lemon squeezer posted a review of some of Notion’s features at the time, ideal for both professional and personal use. Notion AI is one of the big innovations launched since then. But in the meantime, the platform continues to refine itself thanks to the support of its community. Unlike closed software, the tool seeks to rely on users to offer new templates.
To join the Notion AI Alpha waiting list, click here.
Source: Presse-Citron
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
