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As a marketing manager leading multiple projects, I’m always looking for ways to save time and stay organized. I decided to explore how generative AI could help with my day-to-day work—not just as a cool new tool, but as something that could take real work off my plate.
From writing project updates to analyzing data and brainstorming campaign ideas, I found that AI isn’t just hype, it's actually helpful. In this post, I break down what generative AI is, how it works for project managers, the top tools I’ve tested, and what to watch out for. If you’re curious about how to use AI to work smarter, not harder, this post is for you.
What is generative AI?
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that creates new content such as text, images, audio, or code, based on the data it’s been trained on. Think of it as a smart assistant that can write reports, draft emails, generate design ideas, and even help with project planning.
What is the difference between AI and generative AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad term that covers any system designed to mimic human intelligence, such as recognizing patterns, making decisions, or automating tasks. Generative AI is a specific type of AI that goes a step further. It creates.
For example, traditional AI might help you sort tasks by priority or predict project delays. Generative AI, on the other hand, could write a project summary, create a project timeline, or suggest next steps based on your input.
What is the difference between generative AI and LLMs?
Generative AI is a kind of artificial intelligence that can create new things such as text, images, music, or videos. Large language models (LLMs) are a type of generative AI that focus only on language. They are trained to understand and produce human-like text, helping with things like writing, answering questions, or having conversations.
While generative AI can work with many types of content, LLMs are designed just for working with words. So, all LLMs are generative AI, but not all generative AI tools are LLMs.
How can generative AI be used in project management?
Generative AI can take a lot of manual work off your plate. It can help project managers draft project plans, write status updates, summarize meeting notes, and even generate risk assessments based on project data.
Need a quick project brief or stakeholder email? Generative AI can create a solid first draft in seconds. You spend less time buried in admin work and more time focusing on leading the team, solving problems, and hitting your deadlines.
5 benefits of generative AI for project managers
Generative AI isn’t just a tool for experts. It’s changing how project managers work by allowing you to reduce the effort of manual tasks, communicate better, and make smarter business decisions.
Here are five key benefits of generative AI for project managers:
Saves time on routine tasks: Generative AI can handle repetitive work like drafting emails, reports, and project plans quickly and accurately, giving you more time to focus on tasks like managing teams and problem-solving.
Improves communication: Clear and consistent communication is key to project success. Generative AI can help you create well-written updates and summaries for your project stakeholders with ease. It ensures your messages are clear and easy to understand, reducing confusion and keeping everyone informed and aligned throughout the project lifecycle.
Improves decision-making: Generative AI can analyze large amounts of data quickly and spot potential risks, allowing you to address issues before they become bigger problems. With AI insights, you can make more informed business decisions based on facts rather than guesswork.
Improves problem-solving: Sometimes you’ll run into obstacles while managing projects and will need fresh ideas to move forward. Generative AI can suggest new approaches, solutions, or strategies based on patterns it has learned. It can help you think outside the box and explore options you might not have considered.
Improves productivity: When generative AI takes care of tedious tasks, you and your team can focus on work that truly makes an impact, and everyone can use their skills more effectively. By sharing the workload, AI reduces stress for project managers and makes managing projects easier.
Limitations of generative AI
While generative AI can be a great help in project management, it’s important to understand where it falls short. Here are a few key limitations to keep in mind:
Can make mistakes: Generative AI sometimes “hallucinates,” producing information that is incorrect or doesn’t fit the project’s needs. This happens because it guesses based on patterns rather than understanding real-world context. Project managers should always double-check AI outputs before using them.
Lacks understanding of emotions and context: AI is smart, but it can’t understand how people feel or what’s going on behind the scenes. It can easily miss things that people are able to pick up on, like what a client really cares about, and why. That’s why some AI suggestions might feel off or just not quite right for your project. Use your own judgment to make sure AI’s input fits the bigger picture.
Depends on existing data and clear instructions: AI works with what it already knows, so it might not be up to date or understand the unique details of your project. If you don’t give clear and specific instructions, it can give you answers that are too generic. Learn how to write clear and detailed prompts, and always double-check the results. It’s a great assistant, but you’re still the one driving the project forward.
5 real ways project managers can use generative AI
Not sure how to use generative AI in your daily project work? Here are five ways it can help you right now:
Writing project briefs and updates: Instead of staring at a blank page, you can ask AI to write a quick draft of your project brief or update. Just give it a few notes, and it turns them into something clear and professional. You can tweak it later, but it gets you started fast.
Summarizing meetings and comments: AI can quickly pull out the most important points from meeting notes or long comment threads. You don’t have to read everything to know what’s going on. Just check the summary and move on with your day.
Breaking big projects into tasks: Give AI a detailed prompt like, "Create a 4-week digital marketing campaign plan to promote our new product, including tasks for the design, content, and social media teams,” or “Break down a campaign launch into steps like goal setting, audience targeting, asset creation, and launch tracking, with owners and due dates.” These specific prompts help AI generate clear, actionable plans so you can move from idea to execution without missing any key steps.
Spotting risks early: AI can look at your project data and tell you if something might go off track, like a task running late or someone being overloaded with work. It helps you catch problems early so you can fix them before they become major blockers.
Coming up with fresh ideas: Stuck on a problem? AI can give you new ideas or different ways to approach something. Whether it’s a campaign concept or a way to speed up delivery, AI gives you a fresh perspective when you need it.
Generative AI tools for project managers
1. Teamwork.com
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As a marketing manager, I use TeamworkAI to help me stay focused on the big picture. It takes care of small tasks like breaking down campaign ideas into to-dos, summarizing long comment threads, and filling in details like expenses. I spend less time on admin work and more time leading my team and hitting our KPIs. It fits right into how I work each day.
Best features
AI-powered task generation: One of the biggest time-savers for me is how easily I can go from a basic project idea to a full task list. I just describe the project, and the AI suggests tasks with helpful structure. It gives me a solid starting point, so I don’t have to build everything from scratch or worry about missing key steps. I can edit as I go, but the heavy lifting is already done.
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Task summary AI: When there are dozens of comments on a task, I don’t have time to scroll through them all. The AI pulls together a clean summary that tells me what’s happened, what’s urgent, and what’s next. It’s like having a personal assistant that keeps me in the loop. I can catch up in seconds instead of reading through every update.
AI autofill for expenses: Uploading receipts used to be a pain—I’d have to manually enter amounts, categories, and dates. Now, TeamworkAI scans the receipt and does the tedious for me. It picks out key info and fills in the fields automatically. I just give it a quick review and hit submit. It’s simple, accurate, and saves me from manual admin work.
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Reporting assistant (Beta): I can ask the AI questions like “What’s our project profitability this month?” and it pulls the numbers for me. No digging through dashboards or building custom reports. It gives me quick and clear answers in seconds, which is especially helpful when I need to update stakeholders on the fly.
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Limitations
Some of the AI tools in Teamwork.com are still being tested, so they’re not perfect yet. During beta testing, Teamwork.com improves their AI features by listening to real user feedback.
Pricing
Deliver: $10.99/user/month
Grow: $19.99/user/month
Scale: $54.99/user/month
Enterprise: Custom pricing (contact for a demo)
Ratings & reviews
A G2 user, Ian, shared, “Teamwork easily allows us to share the workload amongst colleagues with total visibility of progress so far. Jobs are assigned, tracked and archived with complete simplicity meaning our whole team has continuous awareness of 'the big picture'. The customer support team, although only utilised on a few occasions, are extremely responsive and even fixed a bug I noted within a couple of date.”
Read real user reviews of Teamwork.com here.
2. ClickUp Brain
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When I tested out ClickUp Brain, I was impressed by how well it fit into my workflow. It felt like having an assistant built right into my project space. I could ask it questions, have it generate tasks, and even get meeting summaries without switching tabs. It made everyday work faster and more organized, especially when juggling multiple projects.
Best features
Summarizes task updates for the latest project, and pulls in recent comments, due dates, and problems all in one clear answer
Creates full task lists from one-line briefs with deadlines and subtasks
Assigns tasks automatically based on team availability without me needing to jump in manually
Limitations
When I tried to ask Brain questions based on uploaded PDFs or spreadsheets, it struggled to extract meaningful info. It works well with tasks and docs inside ClickUp, but not as well with attachments. If your team shares a lot of external files, you may still need to review them manually.
Pricing
Free
AI Standard: $9/user/month
AI Autopilot: $28/user/month
Ratings & reviews
A G2 user, Jennifer, shared, “ClickUp is hands-down the most flexible and powerful project management tool I’ve worked with. As the founder of WRKSTN, I help agencies and creative teams streamline operations—and ClickUp is central to that. The ability to customize everything from task types to automations, combined with tools like dashboards, forms, and now ClickUp Brain, means I can build scalable, efficient systems for any workflow. Plus, I love how fast the platform continues to evolve.”
3. Notion AI
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When I tried Notion AI, I liked that it worked right inside the pages I already use. I didn’t have to switch between apps, which saved me time. It helped me write faster, sum up long notes, and find important info quickly. But sometimes it had trouble with big projects or working with databases.
Best features:
Notion AI can help you draft emails, blog posts, or project briefs. You just tell it what you need, and it gives you a clear first draft to build on.
Notion AI can suggest fresh ideas, whether it’s for a marketing campaigns, blog topics, or product features. I loved this feature, in particular!
It can rewrite text to sound more professional, casual, or clear. You can also ask Notion AI to translate content into other languages, which is great for global marketing campaigns.
Limitations
When content got dense or too long, Notion AI sometimes froze or misunderstood what I needed. Many users have reported it crashing during long prompt sessions.
Pricing
Free
Plus: $9.50/user/month
Business: $19.50/user/month
Enterprise: Contact sales
Ratings & reviews
A G2 user, Martina, shared, “Notion is incredibly flexible and lets me organize my work and personal life in one place. I love how I can build custom pages, databases, and keep everything from meeting notes to project plans easily accessible. It’s super helpful for staying organized without being tied to a rigid structure. It really adapts to how you think and work.”
Simplify your day-to-day project tasks with TeamworkAI
TeamworkAI helps take the pressure off your daily workload by handling small but time-consuming tasks. Need to write a project update, break down a campaign into to-dos, or summarize a long thread of comments? TeamworkAI does it for you in seconds. Instead of spending hours on admin work, you get to focus on the bigger picture, like leading your team and meeting deadlines.
Even beyond the AI features, Teamwork.com has plenty of built-in tools that make project management easier. You can use time tracking to monitor billable hours, create detailed reports, manage resources, and keep all your files and messages in one place. Its built-in chat, calendar view, and workload planner help teams stay connected and organized. Whether you're managing a marketing launch or other projects, Teamwork.com gives you the structure and flexibility to get things done on time, without stress.
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