Hire an AI Team: The Good, The Weird & The Absolutely Useless
- Filip
- Oct 31
- 5 min read
I've also been there. Drowning in Slack notifications, the team's using seventeen different apps to get shit done, and someone just suggested "trying that new AI thing" to solve everything. Welcome to 2025, where AI team platforms promise to be your digital savior, but half of them are about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
After testing more collaboration tools than any sane person should, I've sorted the chaos into three neat little categories. Spoiler alert: some of these platforms are genuinely brilliant, others are delightfully bizarre, and a few are so useless they make you question humanity's relationship with technology.
The Good: Best Team AI Tools That Actually Get Shit Done
Let's start with the winners—the AI team platforms that actually move projects, not just your blood pressure.
Notion AI — Visit Notion AI — sits at the top for a reason. Consider this your quick Notion AI review: it drafts, summarizes, and reshapes messy notes into usable plans, then learns your workflow so collaboration feels less like chaos and more like choreography.
Notion AI link + code: Visit Notion AI • use code Z4IYTJE1 to get one month trial for free
Slack — Visit Slack — evolved beyond chat. Conversation summaries, legit search, automated statuses, and integrations with basically every best team AI tool you already use.
Asana — Visit Asana — is the clean, no-drama project runner. Timelines, goals, forms, and automation make it one of the best team AI tools for folks who like order and results.
Monday.com — Visit Monday.com — went from pretty boards to predictive PM. It forecasts timelines, flags bottlenecks, and suggests assignments based on who's actually good at what.
ClickUp — Visit ClickUp — is the maximalist dream: docs, tasks, whiteboards, time tracking, and AI that writes task descriptions and meeting agendas. Overkill for some. Perfect for power users.
Trello — Visit Trello — kept its board-based zen and added smart suggestions, email-to-card magic, and due date nudges without breaking the vibe.
Superhuman — Visit Superhuman — makes email tolerable. Thread summaries, tone-matched replies, and a ruthless focus on what's urgent.
The Weird: When AI Gets... Creative
Now for the platforms that make you go "huh, interesting choice there, developers." Experimental AI team platforms can be thrilling and confusing in the same click.
ChatGPT Atlas — Visit ChatGPT — wins the award for most confusing design philosophy. Instead of taking you to actual websites, it spins up AI-generated versions that look like the real thing but aren't. Technically impressive? Sure. Actually useful? Debatable.
Coda — Visit Coda — lives in the weird-but-good zone. It's a doc, a database, and an app builder in one. Build voting systems, dashboards, and wikis that update themselves. Ambitious, but it works.
Grammarly — Visit Grammarly — grew from grammar checker to tone-and-brand enforcer across everything you write. Helpful until it starts judging your DMs.
Some indie platforms are going wild too.
Motion — Visit — auto-schedules your life based on priorities and energy.
Mem — Visit — tries to be a self-organizing workspace that learns you.
Reflect — Visit — connects notes into a network of actual thinking. Future of productivity or digital therapy session? Jury's still out.
The Absolutely Useless: AI Agents Gone Wrong
And now, the disappointments. These AI team platforms promise the moon but deliver cheese (and not even good cheese).
AI agents are supposed to be the holy grail, autonomous assistants that handle complex tasks while you focus on important stuff. In reality? They're more like enthusiastic interns who mean well but somehow always mess up the coffee order.
Take booking travel through AI agents. You'd think "book me a flight from Berlin to Amsterdam on Friday" would be straightforward. Instead, these systems consistently change dates randomly, ignore price preferences, or just... hallucinate flight options that don't exist. A simple Google search and five minutes of your time will get better results every single time.
Many "AI-powered" project management tools are just regular platforms with chatbots slapped on top. They promise smart insights but deliver generic advice like "this project might be behind schedule" (thanks, we noticed when the deadline passed three days ago).
The worst offenders are platforms that use AI to solve problems that don't actually exist. Do we really need AI to analyze whether team members are "engaged" based on their Slack emoji usage? Probably not.
Real Talk: What Actually Matters
Here's the thing about AI team platforms, the best ones solve actual problems you're having right now, not imaginary problems some product manager thinks you should have.
Good AI platforms integrate smoothly into workflows you're already using. They save time on repetitive tasks, surface information when you need it, and don't require a PhD in prompt engineering to operate.
Weird platforms can be worth exploring if you're feeling experimental, but set realistic expectations. That revolutionary AI agent probably won't replace your entire workflow tomorrow.
Useless platforms are usually obvious, if it takes longer to set up than it saves, or if you find yourself fighting with it more than using it, move on. Life's too short for bad software.
Getting Started (With Some Helpful Links)
If you're ready to test AI team platforms, most offer free trials or freemium tiers. Start small: pick one problem area (meeting notes, task handoffs, status updates) and run a focused trial.
Notion AI link + code: Visit Notion AI • use code Z4IYTJE1 to get one month trial for free
Keep it honest: if setup takes longer than it saves, bail and try the next tool. The best team AI tools earn their keep quickly.
The AI team platform landscape changes faster than Berlin's club scene, so what's revolutionary today might be old news next month. The key is finding tools that actually fit how your team works, not forcing your team to adapt to how the tool thinks you should work.
Some AI team platforms will genuinely transform how your team collaborates. Others will just give you material for the next retrospective. And a few will make you fall back in love with a well-organized spreadsheet.
Choose wisely, stay skeptical of grand promises, and remember: the best team AI tool is the one your team actually uses consistently. Everything else is just digital noise.
Affiliate disclosure: Playful Magazine also earns one month free use if you sign up. No money is commissioned in this collaboration with Notion AI link.
Notion AI link + code: Visit Notion AI • use code Z4IYTJE1 to get one month trial for free