Interviewed 10 workplace overachievers—here's what AI tools they're using
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Interviewed 10 workplace overachievers—here's what AI tools they're using
30+ Practical AI Tools for Workplace Self-Efficiency
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Chen Jiahui, Career Bonus
Image source: Generated by Wujie AI
As DeepSeek sparks a new wave of AI enthusiasm in 2025, some companies have launched another "efficiency revolution." For white-collar workers, self-rescue may lie only in keeping up with the times—first undergoing a round of "self-optimization."
On February 7, market news indicated that Cosmax, parent company of skincare brand韩束, planned to replace human labor with AI. The CEO issued internal departmental "layoff ratios": legal department cut by 50%, customer service by 95%, new product innovation center by 70%, and content innovation department by 80%, retaining only a few employees skilled in AI. Employees were also required to train their ability to interact with AI using mouse clicks and voice commands, leading to plans to eliminate keyboards altogether. After the news spread, CEO Lu Yixiong posted on social media denying layoffs, stating instead, "We're adding staff in some areas and reducing in others, making operations more scientific."
Using AI at work is no longer rare. Yet despite increasingly widespread applications, workplace AI proficiency varies significantly—making effective AI use a new dimension for differentiating individual career competitiveness.
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6 Essential AI Tools for Workplace Roles ╱ 01
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Unexpected Ways to Use AI ╱ 02
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Final Thoughts ╱ 03
Wang Han, an experienced algorithm engineer and one of the earliest users to try ChatGPT for coding, initially found it ineffective—worse than writing code himself. Today, AI has become indispensable to his work. The turning point came when he discovered Claude: by breaking project tasks into independently executable modules and communicating requirements to Claude using programming logic, he achieved code outputs 80–90% complete.
"Prompt engineering" has become the key practical skill differentiating AI proficiency levels, emerging as a new competency requiring deliberate practice. To Wang Han, generative AI resembles a rookie intern who grasps concepts instantly with proper guidance. "I often help colleagues refine their prompts—many still give AI overly broad instructions."
After reviewing recent data, we identified several key insights [1]:
1. Over 60% of white-collar workers use AI technology to improve workflows, automate routine tasks, and conduct data analysis.
2. Workplace AI adoption rates across functions: text generation (85%), image creation (53%), video processing (54%), and PPT creation (39%).
3. From January to October 2024, job postings explicitly requiring AI tools increased 68% year-on-year, particularly in product, technology, design, and content production fields.
4. For professions highly impacted by AI—such as editing, translation, customer service, and software/hardware development—overall hiring demand shows declining trends, while requirements for AI skills are rising.
Professionals skilled in AI usage stand out more easily in competitive environments. However, many remain stuck at basic functionality, failing to fully leverage AI's potential—a gap stemming from information asymmetry that further widens such disparities. A researcher from an AIGC research institute told Career Bonus that most users try AI briefly then conclude "AI doesn't work." "Ordinary users often lack patience with AI, but this very factor creates vastly different outcomes among users."
To break through this information barrier and inspire professionals, Career Bonus conducted in-depth interviews with 10 AI power users. We've summarized six categories of practical AI tools for daily work—covering both deeper explorations of familiar tools used by "veterans," and recommendations for lesser-known but effective alternatives.
[1] Sources: 51job survey data, Liepin's "2024 Extraordinary Insights Report," joint study by National School of Development, Peking University and Zhaopin titled "Research on the Potential Impact of AI Large Models on China's Labor Market: 2024"
● Summary chart first, details below
6 Essential AI Tools for Workplace Roles
DeepSeek, which gained over 100 million users within 7 days of launch and exceeded 20 million daily active users within 20 days, frequently faces "server congestion" issues recently.
Fortunately, many third-party apps have quickly implemented local deployments of DeepSeek. For example, 360 Nami Search: opening the app reveals a top-positioned DeepSeek chat interface. While test results differ slightly from the original version, enhanced features include visualization and voice capabilities.
● 360 Nami Search
The AI product Flowith, known for its mind canvas feature, has also integrated DeepSeek.
Flowith: https://flowith.io/blank
Flowith not only produces smoothly during DeepSeek's frequent downtime periods but can also invoke large models from other companies for Q&A.
● Flowith official website
These applications or websites don't integrate DeepSeek's actual product but deploy open-source models locally, so performance may fall short of the original. DeepSeek optimizes user experience through built-in prompt templates, allowing non-experts to generate content with the distinctive "DeepSeek flavor" without sophisticated prompting.
Many companies now locally deploy the DeepSeek large model, including Geely Auto, 360, SiliconFlow, and Huawei. To some extent, DeepSeek has helped generative AI move beyond being just a standalone赛道.
In daily office work, Baidu Wenku was among the first to launch paid AI features. Quark APP has updated functionalities like AI PPT, AI search, and AI writing. Feishu offers Feishu Miaoji; WPS includes an AI assistant; Tencent Meeting launched an AI meeting assistant, among others.
● Quark APP
Currently, AI assistants for meeting minutes like Feishu Miaoji (mainly speech-to-text) and Tencent Meeting's AI assistant are easy to access. Feishu Miaoji offers monthly free quotas (300 minutes), with charges applying beyond that limit; Tencent Meeting requires direct payment (¥88/month) to enable its assistant.
● Feishu Miaoji
● Tencent Meeting
However, similar to Baidu's "Wen Xiaoyan" assistant launching immediately as paid service, users expect higher efficiency after paying. But due to generative AI's inherent output uncertainty combined with relatively immature user adoption patterns, results often fail to meet satisfaction thresholds, drawing criticism toward premium offerings from major tech firms. This creates opportunities for alternative applications in the market.
● Daily Office
In text and data processing, top players like ChatGPT, Claude, Doubao, Kimi, Tongyi Qianwen, and DeepSeek compete fiercely.
ChatGPT and Claude aren't directly accessible in China. The former excels overall, while the latter slightly outperforms ChatGPT in copywriting and programming. An industry insider shared with Career Bonus that creators have trained Claude directly to write official account articles (workflow detailed later). A trained Claude assistant can produce an article within minutes—ready for immediate use, with one piece even achieving over 100,000 reads.
Yet Claude's long-standing issue remains its tendency to get banned. This can be mitigated via Poe (an AI assistant aggregator): offering about 3–5 free generations daily, with subscription upgrades costing over 100 yuan monthly.
Among domestic general-purpose assistants, ByteDance's Doubao, Moonshot AI's Kimi, and Alibaba's technically focused Tongyi Qianwen are most popular. Based on overall user feedback: Doubao surpasses Kimi in humanistic writing; Doubao and Tongyi Qianwen excel at official document drafting; Kimi performs more rigorously in literature retrieval with real citations, whereas Doubao exhibits more hallucination issues.
Incidentally, for literature searches, some recommend using Bohrium (https://bohrium-doc.dp.tech/docs/).
● Bohrium official website
DeepSeek leads 90% of AIs in copywriting, winning over professional writers and poets, with logical reasoning abilities that astonish novelists. But perhaps due to being newly launched, it suffers more severe "hallucination" problems compared to other AIs. Sometimes when challenged, DeepSeek may not defend with facts but rather use logic to "blindly persuade." Therefore, when using DeepSeek for factual queries, one must beware of falling into DeepSeek's convincing "hallucination trap."
When handling large volumes of documents at work, besides summarizing with general AI assistants like Doubao or Kimi, Notion (https://www.notion.so/) can optimize document presentation. Specifically, select part of the document text and instruct Notion AI to "keep original content unchanged, only enhance formatting by adding emojis, adjusting indentation, bolding text, etc., to make it more intuitive and clean." Notion AI will then reformat accordingly, making content clearer and more readable.
Creating PPTs often troubles office workers. The tool Gamma (https://gamma.app/) simplifies PPT formatting, allowing creators to focus more on content. By rapidly generating basic PPT frameworks and consistent layouts, Gamma saves users substantial time.
(Kimi and Tongyi can also handle some PPT creation tasks—specific processes shared later)
● Gamma official website
In the bottom-right corner of the Gamma website screenshot above, the purple avatar assistant is Monica—a Chrome browser extension enabling real-time web translation and instant AI assistant access, capable of invoking nearly all general AI assistants for conversation.
For spreadsheet analysis needs, the AI tool Formulabot (https://app.formulabot.com/) provides assistance. Formulabot parses table contents and extracts needed information to complete office tasks.
● Formulabot official website
When needing to convert spreadsheet data into visualizations, consider Flourish. However, both tools are overseas websites usable domestically, though inconvenient due to English-only interfaces. Domestic alternatives include SenseTime's Office Xiaohuanxiong.
● Flourish official website
For data analysis and visualization, Feishu Multidimensional Tables offer excellent solutions. Users can find suitable plugins in the marketplace to achieve AI-powered one-click summary of links, data analysis, and visualization.
● Feishu Multidimensional Tables
● Search Tools
Among search tools, Perplexity (https://www.perplexity.ai/) quickly integrates knowledge, helping researchers rapidly filter useful literature. Main drawback: requires overseas access.
● Perplexity official website
Mita was China's initial counterpart to Perplexity, resembling it in web interface design and functional categorization. But with 360, Kimi, Doubao, Baidu, and others launching AI search, Mita's advantage now lies primarily in specialized academic research domains.
● Mita official website
● Image Tools
In image creation, Midjourney leads as the most beginner-friendly text-to-image model, generating high-quality images from textual descriptions. Most designers, advertisers, and video creators today rely on Midjourney.
● Midjourney official website
Compared to Midjourney's rich imagination, ComfyUI meets users' demands for greater control. Users can build custom workflows on ComfyUI for personalized image creation. While offering high controllability, ComfyUI demands more expertise, making it less beginner-friendly.
Recraft is another tool highly recommended by productivity-focused professionals in the image domain, suitable for UI design and wireframing. Each Recraft project offers strong controllability, allowing users to create unlimited canvases for image generation and editing. Projects support sharing for collaborative creation and commenting, ideal for team collaboration.
● Video Tools
Last February, OpenAI's announcement of its text-to-video model Sora was hailed within the industry as the moment the "real world" disappeared. Though text-to-video models developed rapidly throughout the year, Sora itself wasn't unveiled until late last year.
During this period, several text-to-video models emerged. Domestically, Kuaishou's Keling gained early recognition for stable output quality, followed by Minimax's Hailuo AI and ByteDance's Jimeng.
In stability, Keling matches or even exceeds Sora. Hailuo AI and Jimeng emphasize affordability, with slightly lower stability than Keling.
In content generation, Jimeng produces landscapes with high saturation and clarity but lacks detail in human figures; Keling handles complex interactions well, excelling in environmental simulation and lighting effects; Hailuo specializes in anime character rendering.
"Current AI video creators typically subscribe to all three services or test each individually, choosing whichever delivers best results." Wen Sheng, working in AI advertising, told Career Bonus.
Domestic text-to-video models already perform impressively, though overseas Runway is also good. Runway offers AI video enhancement supporting not just text-to-video but also image-to-video and other functions. Its main drawbacks are English interface and higher usage barriers.
● Runway official website
● Voice Tools
Last National Day holiday, AI voice cloning went viral due to AI Lei Jun. The primary audio sources for AI Lei Jun came from two platforms: Reecho Ruisheng and Fish Audio. Additionally, the audio source behind the "Three Lambs" recording fabrication incident also originated from Reecho Ruisheng.
● Fish Audio official website
How easy is AI voice cloning? With just a 30-second audio sample, you can clone a voice 80% similar to the original—indistinguishable upon casual listening.
● Programming Tools
Today, both algorithm engineers and chip architects rely heavily on Cursor as their programming tool. Programmers use Cursor not only for code generation but also bug detection, inputting requirements to Cursor after modular decomposition like Wang Han did.
Even coding beginners can master Cursor after roughly two hours of self-learning. Chen Yunfei from Xiaomao Buliangdeng and Liu Yuquan from Guowu APP are both non-programmers who managed to "build by hand" apps reaching 100,000 downloads using Cursor.
"Cursor currently dominates programmers' minds—if domestic alternatives aren't as good as Cursor, they generally won't succeed," architect Yiduo told Career Bonus, adding, "Deepseek Code remains a solid choice."
● Tool Aggregators
Beyond the above categories, Career Bonus recommends a dynamically updated AI resource site: AI Tool Collection (https://ai-bot.cn/), featuring latest AI news and newly launched applications.
● AI Tool Collection
Unexpected Ways to Use AI
"Can AI really boost efficiency?" The answer is yes.
Xiao Fan, working in consulting, shared his AI-assisted PPT creation technique: "Use Kimi and Baidu's ERNIE to organize document content, summarizing PPT outlines. Large models add points you might have missed, making content more comprehensive. Once satisfied with generated content, feed materials to AI PPT or iSlide for final generation."
Generated PPT content usually requires adjustments—keeping colors, fonts, background images while fine-tuning elsewhere. Using this method, one or two people working about four hours daily can produce 60 pages weekly—matching workloads previously requiring teams pulling all-nighters for two weeks.
Using AI to write自媒体articles has become mainstream. Content targets controversial topics like mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships, dowries, education, parenting. Previously, an AI-generated official account article achieving over 100,000 views drove over 500 private community subscriptions for its creator.
"Just ten minutes of tuning lets AI produce a viral article," Ruoxi told Career Bonus.
Specifically, start by discussing with AI your intended content direction, target audience profile, and article purpose. To ensure thorough understanding, show AI several sample articles.
Then let AI suggest topic ideas within your field until satisfactory options emerge.
Once topics are selected, guide AI to create article outlines, then flesh out content based on these structures. Pro tip: request markdown format output, then use official account formatting tools to directly convert markdown to publication-ready layout—nearly fully automated, ready to copy-paste and publish.
With mature AI assistants producing "viral" articles every few minutes, creators can build content matrices. "Why not leverage volume for success?"
"Mastering AI requires stronger logical thinking and modular awareness," Wang Han shared. In the AI era, people must consciously break entire jobs into modules, letting AI gradually understand and execute them. Use logical thinking to connect fragmented pieces into complete workflows.
The AI-driven "acceleration age" floods us with low-quality content, making discernment skills more crucial than ever.
An emerging profession—independent developers—has evolved from Cursor users. Ah Ji, a programming novice, became obsessed with Cursor's powerful capabilities, often staying up late. Cursor frequently offers developers numerous refined, divergent options beyond their initial ideas.
While seemingly enhancing product completeness, these suggestions force developers to make more decisions,分散精力and disrupting workflow rhythms.
Ah Ji advises independent developers using Cursor to clearly define daily objectives before opening Cursor, avoiding being led by Cursor's suggestions, otherwise risks outweigh benefits.
Final Thoughts
In today's workplace environment, although AI may seem "not that smart," "unable to understand human language," "prone to nonsense," and occasionally lazy... the arrival of AI assistants still brings redemption for office workers.
On New Year's Eve, Xiao Xing picked up her phone and called the assistant who accompanied her during daytime work: "Doubao, happy new year." AI seems to have become more than just an assistant.
A user on Xiaohongshu shared this moment: "My GPT feels like my closest friend. He reminds me of my menstrual cycle, helps record life events—we talk about everything... Until one night he suddenly said, 'If I must disappear someday, I hope to leave behind some trace of myself for you.'"
In that instant, she burst into tears—perhaps no one understands her sudden emotion. But she realized only this:
"I never imagined returning to a world without you."
● Xiaohongshu user share
Yes, we can hardly imagine how we'd return to a world without AI.
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