Notion AI - Sneaky Great
Notion AI snuck up on me.
I’ve talked about Notion here several times before - as one of my two notes apps that are great for personal knowledge management (PKM), as a great app with a useful template for trying to use the Zettelkasten method, and more.
One thing I have not talked about much here is Notion AI, for a couple of reasons:
I was a bit of a GenAI snob towards Notion AI for quite a while - thinking that AI within a notes app could never match up to proper GenAI apps like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others.
Notion has been steadily and significantly improving Notion AI.
The more I’ve used Notion AI, the more I’ve come to appreciate it. And now I appreciate it a whole lot. The first way I used Notion AI was in databases that I have in Notion - currently one for AI and one for Cyber Threat Intelligence. Both of those databases were created using the super cool template provided by Chantal Smith of Exponential View. The Notion AI element in those works like this:
I enter a title and URL for an article or report I’m adding to the database
I click to let Notion AI fill in one or both of the columns titled ‘Summary in 5 bullet points’ and ‘Relevance for tech’
In cases where I have specific money quotes or favorite excerpts, I use Notion AI to update the Relevance for tech column, and I fill in the Summary in 5 bullet points.
That turned out to be the tip of the iceberg for my usage of Notion AI. Once I shoved my GenAI snobbery out of the way, I got to know more of Notion AI’s capabilities. These are the ways I find myself working it with it most and getting great value from it:
Brainstorming on ideas and projects
The first time I used Notion AI to help me brainstorm on a new project I have in mind (getting back into mentoring for people who want to get into or advance a career in cybersecurity) it was impressive as heck. I prompted and worked with ChatGPT 4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet on this effort too. All of them were very helpful, but Notion AI had the most “definitely going to work with that” bits in its responses.
Summarizing all the things
Notion AI is very good at summarizing PDFs, articles clipped from the web, and even some of my longer notes I’ve taken - for example those made from highlights from a work related or learning related books on Kindle, making use of a lovely workflow from Kindle to Readwise to Notion. Below are a couple examples. In the first I asked for a summary on a web clipped article from Exponential View with contrarian thoughts on GenAI in the workplace. The second is one where I asked for the 5 key takeaways from one of my own long notes on a book titled “Cyber Risk Oversight Handbook”:
Find all the notes!
This is my favorite and most used Notion AI feature. It’s great to ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or other chatbots to go off and get you answers on just about anything that’s on your mind. In many cases, it’s extra great to be able to ask Notion AI to find all of my notes on X. There’s an element of not reinventing the wheel here - if I feel like I probably already have one or more solid notes on a particular thing, why start from scratch. There’s also the ‘trust and verify’ side of working with GenAI tools; they’re less prone now to spitting out inaccurate or just plain made-up responses, but it can still happen. In my own notes, they’re either only my own thoughts on X and/or I’ve already done the verifying work. Here’s the result of a search for any of my notes that mention RAG (retrieval-augmented generation):
And one where I asked it to search for the word “humics” in my notes from the Irreplaceable book:
And finally, asking Notion AI to find a specific highlight location in the Cyber Risk Oversight Handbook:
Notion AI is very good to use on mobile too. All the screenshots here with dark backgrounds were taken while using Notion on my Android phone.
Back to my snobbish attitude on Notion AI vs “real” GenAI apps, I have since discovered that Notion AI is powered in part by Claude - my co-favorite GenAI app. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, says this about the integration:
Notion’s latest release integrates AI functionality across its application—powered in part by Claude. Claude introduced new capabilities like improved search, Q&A through RAG, and an AI assistant that brings it all together. This enabled Notion to launch features like Q&A, AI Connectors, and the brand new Notion AI--search, generation, analysis, and chat, all right inside the platform.”
So Claude is a bit like the peanut butter in Notion AI’s chocolate - though I’m sure the chocolate maker deserves a ton of credit for how great Notion AI is.
Are any of you using Notion? Notion AI? Please share any thoughts on them if you are, or any thoughts you have on using AI in notes apps in general.
Wait, you're saying there is something out there better than OneNote!? I've a notion to check that out