AI Tools for Executive Assistants: How Top EAs Reclaim 20 Hours a Week


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TL;DR
Summary
- Top AI tools for executive assistants (such as Thunai) can reclaim up to 20 hours per week by automating cognitive load and repetitive tasks.
- The AI Trinity: Reasoning (drafting & summaries via Gemini/ChatGPT), Coordination (smart scheduling via Clockwise), and Execution (meeting notes & task automation via Otter/Fireflies).
- EA Evolution: The role shifts from admin “gatekeeper” to Strategic Architect, emphasizing judgment, relationship-building, and protecting executive time.
- Future Skills: EAs must develop Prompt Engineering and Workflow Automation expertise to personalize and train AI for maximum leverage.
Overwhelmed by emails, meetings, and notifications?
Discover how today's executives and managers can escape relentless demands, regain focus, and achieve strategic productivity.
Back-to-back virtual calls and persistent decision fatigue exhaust even the most organized leaders. Delegating to human assistants helps, but traditional EAs are not round-the-clock. Outsourced virtual help often requires heavy supervision.
Tired of the manual madness? Weeks of rigorous testing led us to these AI Executive Assistants…
The AI Trinity: The Three Essential Capabilities to Look for in AI Tools for Executive Assistants
AI tools for executive assistants that support executive work fall into three core categories. Each removes a major layer of administrative burden: reasoning, coordination, and execution.
1. Generative AI (The Reasoning Partner)
Generative AI tools are the thinking engines behind modern workflows. These include LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini and dedicated executive AI systems like Thunai.
These tools process, summarize, and generate human-like content, helping executives make faster, smarter decisions to play smart than Executive Assistant’s.
Key applications include:
Executive Briefings and Synthesis
Instead of reviewing dozens of files, the AI scans reports, board minutes, sales results, or research papers—and creates a clear one-page summary highlighting risks, insights, and next steps.
Contextual Email Drafting
Top AI tools for executive assistants understand tone and context with a short instruction like:
“Decline Friday’s lunch meeting but propose late February and add a friendly tone,”
it creates a polished email that sounds natural. Thunai's email reply assistance is a suitable feature for this.
Content Generation at Scale
Whether a keynote draft, an internal announcement, policy update, or LinkedIn
post—AI accelerates writing while keeping consistency in tone.
Generative AI becomes a thinking partner—not a simple tool.
2. Intelligent Scheduling and Workflow Automation (The Coordination Engine)
The next category helps manage time, which is an executive’s most valuable asset.
AI tools for executive assistants, like scheduling tools, do more than send calendar invites. They optimize time.
Examples include:
Smart Time Blocking
Platforms like Clockwise or Reclaim.ai rearrange meetings to protect deep-focus hours. Instead of chaotic meetings scattered across a day, these Ai tools for executive assistants helps your time become intentional and protected.
Automated Logistics Coordination
Rather than emailing five people to find a 30-minute slot, AI scheduling tools or systems baked into assistants like Thunai coordinate the back-and-forth automatically.
Proactive Calendar Intelligence
AI scans weeks ahead to flag overloads, travel conflicts, or unrealistic meeting density—and recommends fixes.
With AI scheduling, the calendar becomes a strategic blueprint, not a chaotic log of obligations.
Meeting Documentation and Knowledge Management (The Execution Accelerator)
AI tools for executive assistants in Meetings generate valuable insights, decisions, tasks, and commitments. Yet many executives walk away with vague notes or none at all.
Automated Meeting Capture
Top AI tools for executive assistants like Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and features like Thunai Meeting Assistant transcribe meetings, capture important moments, and generate clear summaries with decisions and action items.
Knowledge Search Instead of File Searching
Instead of remembering which folder stored a proposal, the executive can ask in natural language:
“What was the agreed budget for Project Phoenix?”
Workflow Automation
With tools like Zapier or native automation, AI takes meeting outputs and creates tasks in platforms such as Notion, Asana, or Trello—without manual data entry.
This removes hours of note-taking, clerical work, and follow-up per week.

AI Tools Making the Biggest Impact for Executive Assistants
| Tool / Platform | Category | Key Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Thunai | All-in-one AI Executive Assistant | Learns the executive's preferences, manages communication, scheduling, and follow-ups. Acts like a smart Executive Assistant. |
| Google Gemini | Generative AI | Writes drafts, summaries, and produces presentations from stored files. |
| Otter.ai / Fireflies.ai | Meeting Automation | Takes notes, extracts tasks, and generates follow-ups. |
| Clockwise / Reclaim.ai | Smart Scheduling | Creates focus time and reorganizes meetings intelligently. |
| SaneBox / Superhuma | Email Automation | Sorts, filters, prioritizes, and snoozes emails automatically. |
| Airtable / Coda | System Automation | Organizes workflows, contracts, SOPs, reminders, and recurring tasks. |
1. Thunai
Thunai an “agentic” AI platform for customer service and operational support (thunai).
This AI tool for executive assistants ingests company data such as documents, videos, CRM, transcripts into a central as “Thunai Brain” and then deploys specialized AI agents (voice, chat, email, etc.) that act on that knowledge Backed by high-profile AI investors.
Thunai emphasizes multilingual support more than150+ languages(apollotechnical.com) and claims very high accuracy.
Key features: Thunai’s core is the Thunai Brain
- A Voice Agent that handles live calls in 80+ languages, auto-generating tickets and summaries.
- A Chat Agent that fields customer chats with context-aware, script-free replies from the Brain.
- An Email Agent that reads and replies to emails in context.
- Enterprise integrations (CRM, helpdesk tools, knowledge bases) and analytics dashboards.
- Notably, all plans allow unlimited seats, encouraging wide deployment.
Pricing:
- Thunai uses a freemium/usage model.
- A free tier grants 100 AI credits and 1 AI agent; paid tiers start around $7–9 per user/month (billed annually).
- For example, one review notes “free (100 credits, 1 agent); paid from $9 to $499/user/month” depending on usage.Thunai's AI pricing offers overall cost efficiency.
Pros:
- Reviewers praise Thunai’s automation and scalability.
- Multilingual capability and easy deployment (minimal onboarding) earn strong marks and some users highlight a “modern, feature-rich” experience with robust integrations.
Cons:
- On the downside, its relative newness means few third-party reviews exist.
- Users caution it’s best suited for high-volume enterprise use: its only notable limitations are that it can struggle with nuanced “delicate escalations” (AI lacks human empathy) and must rely on a well-maintained knowledge base.
2. Google Gemini
Gemini is Google’s family of large AI models and chatbot, successor to Bard.
Google’s advanced, natively multimodal AI assistant, positioned as the primary AI interface within the Google ecosystem.
This AI tool for executive assistants is a Multimodal LLM integrated across Google’s product Gemini 3 is touted as Google’s “most intelligent AI model,” and Google claims the Pro model outperforms its predecessor on all benchmarks.
Features:
- Gemini offers free chat via web or app (with Gemini Basic on standard LLM tiers) and paid tiers.
- It is multimodal: understanding text, images, audio or video, and generating all of these. Advanced models (Gemini Pro/Ultra) excel at coding, translation, reasoning, and even artistic tasks (e.g. image and video generation with Google AI tools).
- Gemini Ultra (included in Google AI Premium “Ultra” plan) adds a “Deep Think” mode for long-form reasoning.
Pricing:
- The basic Gemini chatbot is free for anyone with a Google account.
- The “Gemini Advanced” add-on costs $19.99/mo and grants access to Gemini’s highest LLMs and features like video generation.
- EDU and Enterprise users can also access Gemini via Google Cloud services.
Pros:
- Exceptional ease of use and intuitive interface.
- Seamless integration with Google services is highly valued, enhancing drafting efficiency.
- Includes 2TB storage for the Google AI Ultra plan.
Cons:
- Tech media point out that free Gemini is useful, but less creative or accurate than paid models.
- One Reddit user found Gemini “impressive” in capability but criticized its “horrible and barely functional” chat-history interface.
3. ChatGPT (OpenAI)
ChatGPT is OpenAI’s flagship AI chatbot, launched November 2022 using the GPT-3.5 model.
This AI tool for executive assistants quickly grew to 100 million users in two months.
ChatGPT is a versatile generative AI for writing, coding, Q&A, and more.
Key features include conversational chat, “Custom GPTs”, a plugin ecosystem (for browsing, document search, etc.), voice/video chat, and tools like advanced code assistants.
ChatGPT also provides “Copilot” style AI in Office and workflows.
Pricing Tiers:
- ChatGPT’s Free tier uses GPT-3.5 and ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) unlocks GPT-4/GPT-4o for faster and more complex tasks.
- ChatGPT Pro ($200/month) adds unlimited GPU usage.
- Teams and Enterprise plans ($30–50/user) offer collaboration, unlimited GPT-4 access, data retention options, and security compliance.
Features:
- ChatGPT excels at drafting emails, writing code, summarizing documents, tutoring, and its natural language understanding and creativity.
- The GPT Store offers hundreds of specialized chatbots for wellness coaches, travel planners and more.
- Unique tools include “Code Interpreter” analyze user-uploaded data files and GPT memory for custom data retention per user.
Pros:
- ChatGPT makes repetitive writing tasks far faster, especially in the Plus plan.
- G2 mentions pros like extensive GPT libraries and strong generative ability, and cons like outdated information (for free tier) and hallucinations.
Cons:
- However, common complaints are that it sometimes “mixes up” different contexts or requires very precise prompts.
- Users also note the UI is straightforward but can feel bland the productivity comes from the AI, not fancy UX.
4. Perplexity AI
Perplexity.ai is an AI-powered “answer engine” that blends web search and AI reasoning.
This is one of the best AI tools for executive assistants that works like a search interface, where you can ask a question, and it fetches live information from the web, then synthesizes an answer with citations.
Unlike traditional search, Perplexity’s chatbot format produces concise, conversational answers with linked sources.
Features:
- Perplexity gives users a chatbox that answers with real-time data from the internet.
- Key tools include “Labs” experimental add-ons for custom charts, slide generation, text-to-image, and Excel-like sheets and a “Copilot” mode for guiding complex tasks.
- Recent updates add a “Code Copilot” which lets you run code inside the interface (e.g. Python analysis).
Pricing:
- A Perplexity Pro subscription ($20/month) increases usage caps and unlocks features like unlimited answer length, file uploads, and advanced Labs.
- The Pro plan includes 8000 answer characters and priority usage.
Pros:
- Perplexity’s speed and accuracy on factual queries.
- One review notes it “blends web search with AI reasoning to deliver concise, sourced answers” and that it’s faster than Google for quick questions.
Cons:
- On forums, some warn that Perplexity’s cap limits and response format (sometimes very brief or verbose) can be annoying.
- A discussion thread points out that Perplexity frequently adjusts limits without notice, and that it’s primarily meant for search, not free-form chat.
5. Otter.ai
Otter.ai is an AI note-taking and transcription service launched in 2016 (by AISense).
Otter automatically transcribes meetings, interviews, and voice notes into text and generates summaries and action-item lists like Thunai.
Otter’s AI identifies speakers, captures key moments (screenshots of slides), and can sync transcripts to Google Docs, Dropbox, or CRM systems for further work.
A notable new feature is OtterPilot™, this is one of the top AI tools for executive assistants that can answer questions during a call.
Features:
- Otter provides real-time transcription with speaker labels, live subtitles in meetings, and post-meeting AI summaries/action items.
- Otter also offers a Chrome extension to capture Google Meet calls and mobile apps for on-the-go recording.
- Otter’s AI assistant can answer questions about your meeting after the fact.
Pricing:
- Otter has Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise tiers.
- The Basic (Free) plan gives unlimited meeting transcription (300 minutes/month limit), basic summary features and integrations.
- The Pro plan is about $8.33/user/month (annual) and raises transcription limits (1,200 min), adds advanced AI workflows and 90-min meetings.
- The Business plan is ~$20/user/mo (annual)with 6,000 min transcription, collaborative notes, unlimited file imports, and more admin controls.
Pros:
- The automatic summary and slide-snapshot features earn high marks, as do integrations that auto-join meetings and log notes to calendars and CRM.
Cons:
- On the downside, accuracy can strong accents or poor audio often cause errors.
- One reviewer noted that Otter “handles standard English very well, but much less so African, Arabic, Somali, or non-native French accents,” leading to misspellings and manual fixes.
- In short, the main weakness is speech recognition limits: background noise, crosstalk or accents reduce accuracy.
6. Fireflies.ai
Fireflies.ai is another AI meeting assistant (founded in 2016) that serves as an AI tool for executive assistants for transcription and conversation intelligence.
Like Thunai, it captures meetings and also brands itself as an “AI Teammate” that transcribes, summarizes and analyzes voice conversations.
Fireflies also provides analytics: you can search across transcripts, measure talk-time per speaker, and generate team-level summaries and can integrates with common tools (Zoom, Google Meet, Slack, CRMs) and even dialers (Aircall, RingCentral).
Features:
- Fireflies features like AskFred an AI that can retrospectively answer questions about any meeting contents and live meeting assistance.
- Fireflies bot can auto-join scheduled calls, or you can use a Chrome extension for on-the-fly recording.
- A notable feature is Live Assist this assistant can chime in during a live call with suggested responses or data lookups.
Pricing:
- Fireflies has Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.
- The Free tier offers unlimited transcription but limits storage to 800 minutes/seat.
- Pro is $10/user/mo (annual) and includes 8,000 minutes storage, unlimited AI summaries, talk-time analytics and all basic integrations.
- The Business plan ($19/user/mo annual) adds unlimited storage, video recordings, and advanced admin/team analyticsi.
Pros:
- One of the Major advantage for Fireflies is’ high accuracy and summarization.
- Otter’s competitor Fireflies is noted for easy setup with Zoom/Google Meet, Even Thunai can make more easier.
Cons:
- On the downside, critics point out similar issues: errors with names (especially unusual or accented names) and dependence on audio quality.
- One user lamented that the UI still labels speakers generically, requiring post-editing. Another minor drawback: some wish for multi-language UI (one reviewer noted the absence of a Spanish interface).
7. Superhuman (Email Client)
Superhuman replaces standard Gmail/Outlook interfaces with a lightning-fast, keyboard-centric UI.
Superhuman’s provides an extensive shortcut palette like a command-line interface and productivity features.
For example, this top AI tool for executive assistants“opens in under 100 milliseconds,” and all navigation (search, compose, triage) is done via keystrokes.
Features:
- Superhumant has “Snippets”, send-later, undo send, and offline support.
- You can schedule meetings directly from email without leaving the composer.
- AI features include one-click email summaries and suggested replies.
- The iOS and Android apps mirror many shortcuts (swipe gestures, floating account switch button, etc.) for seamless mobile usage.
Pricing:
- Superhuman is very expensive.
- The Starter plan is ~$25/user/month and Business $33/user/month(billed annually).
- Users report the $30+ cost is only justified if you spend many hours in email each week and there are no lower-cost tiers or ads to subsidize the cost.
Pros:
- Superhuman users love its speed and polish.
- The high level of keyboard automation (command-palette, shortcuts) lets experts mail extremely quickly.
- Many call it the “fastest email experience” – e.g. every function (archive, reply, snooze) occurs instantly without waiting.
Cons:
- it’s expensive for limited additional functionality beyond standard apps.
- Privacy concerns are also raised such as Superhuman tracks opens very closely.
- Steep learning curve (all-shortcuts UI requires practice), no unified inbox across multiple accounts (each inbox separate), and mobile app limitations.
Coda
Coda is an all-in-one doc/spreadsheet platform launched in 2017 by ex-Google/Khan Academy executives.
This AI tool for executive assistants lets users build documents that function like apps, combining text, tables, and visualizations with programming logic.
In Coda you can create project trackers, interactive dashboards, and custom workflows – essentially anything from a spreadsheet or simple database to a miniature CRM or task manager.
Features:
- Coda’s power comes from its flexible building blocks.
- Documents can contain tables with spreadsheet formulas, buttons that trigger actions, and “Packs” that integrate with external services (e.g. pulling live data from calendars, Slack, GitHub, or OpenAI).
- It has a formula language that can reference entire tables and ranges, making it far more powerful than Notion’s databases.
- There’s also Coda AI for writing assistance. Collaboration features include comments, conditional formatting, and linking between docs.
- Coda offers templates and a “Gallery” (like an app store) where users share pre-built docs.
Pricing:
- The Free tier lets small teams create unlimited docs (with some size limits).
- The Pro plan is $10 per Doc Maker/month (annual), removing doc size limits, adding version history, custom branding, and access to more automation and Packs.
- The Team plan is $30 per Doc Maker/month, adding unlimited automations, advanced controls (doc locking, folder permissions), and team support.
Pros:
- You don’t even need formula expertise to create powerful tables and workflows.
- Highly flexible and versatile, allowing for sophisticated knowledge documentation without significant upfront procurement costs.
Cons:
- Navigation and layout can be non-intuitive.
- Mobile app limitations are often cited:
- several Redditors say the iOS/Android apps are weak – “terrible… a huge dealbreaker” for some long-time Notion fansreddit.com. Exporting data can also be cumbersome (no straightforward full-doc export).
III. The New Role of the Executive Assistant: From Gatekeeper to Strategic Architect
With AI taking over repetitive tasks, the Executive Assistant’s role evolves.
A. Insight Over Input
Instead of compiling reports manually, EA’s now analyze them.
Example:
If an AI tool for executive assistant generates an automated spending report, the executive assistant can then spend their time:
- Identifying patterns
- Compare vendor rates
- Recommend process improvements
They become a contributor to strategic decisions—not only logistics.
B. Curator of the Executive’s Attention
The modern EA’s most important job is not scheduling—it is protecting cognitive bandwidth.
With AI tools for executive assistant filtering email, setting meeting priorities, and predicting overload, the EA becomes the architect of the executive’s personal productivity ecosystem.
They design an environment where the leader works only on what matters.
C. The Human Layer of Trust and Judgment
AI tools for executive assistants draft, predicts, and organizes—but it cannot replace emotional intelligence or business intuition.
The Executive Assistant becomes:
- The editor
- The relationship manager
- The ethics and security guardrail
They ensure tone, context, and confidentiality stay protected.
AI amplifies the Executive Assistant it does not replace them.
IV. Challenges and Skills Needed for the Future EA’s
Adopting AI comes with hurdles.
1. Trust and Accuracy
AI output must be reviewed. A wrong date, name, or assumption can damage relationships. Verification remains essential.
2. Customization and Model Training
AI becomes powerful only when it learns the executive’s style, vocabulary, and decision patterns. This requires setup, iteration, and patience.
3. Data Ethics and Security
EA’s need strong understanding of:
- Access control
- Compliance standards
- What can and cannot be shared with external AI systems
The best AI tools for executive assistants like Thunai Brain, are built for enterprise privacy, are gaining preference for this reason.
The Future Skill Set of the AI-Enabled Executive Assistant
AI tools like Thunai don’t replace an EA—they amplify them. They take care of the tedious, repeatable work so the EA can focus on judgment, relationships, timing, and priorities—the things only humans can do well.
Here are the skills every future-ready EA will need to thrive in this new environment:
1. Prompt Engineering: Knowing How to Talk to AI
Talking to AI isn’t about typing long paragraphs—it’s about being clear.
A few examples:
- “Summarize this email thread into 5 bullets and highlight decisions.”
- “Rewrite this message to sound firm but still polite.”
- “Create three options: short, medium, and detailed.”
Top AI tools for executive assistants like Thunai learn the tone, word choice, and preferences of the executive, so over time the prompts become shorter but the outputs become better and more aligned.
2. Workflow Automation and System Connection
Instead of being the person who updates calendars, sends reminders, and copies task lists from one system to another, the EA of the future builds with Thunai’s Common Agents for automated workflows.
For example:
A meeting recorded in Thunai can automatically:
- Generate action items
- Assign them in Asana
- Send a follow-up email
- Schedule a check-in
No copying. No transcription. No retyping.
The EA becomes the architect, not the administrator.
3. Training and Personalizing the AI
AI tools for executive assistants doesn’t magically know how a leader communicates—it has to learn.
Future EAs will help train tools like Thunai by feeding:
- Past emails
- Tone guidelines
- Preferences
- Repetitive tasks
- Decision patterns
With time, the AI starts anticipating needs—not just responding to them.
That’s when the system becomes a real extension of the executive’s brain.
4. Judgment and Emotional Intelligence
Even the smartest AI tools for executive assistants cannot replace human instincts.
There are moments when:
- A message needs a softer tone
- A meeting should be rescheduled delicately
- Something feels urgent even if it isn’t marked urgent
- A situation requires empathy, patience, or diplomatic timing
The EA becomes the filter, advisor, and trusted interpreter of the executive’s energy and priorities.
5. Privacy Awareness and Ethical Responsibility
As AI tools for executive assistants becomes embedded in the workflow, trust and confidentiality matter more than ever.
Future EAs will need to understand:
- What data is safe to upload
- Where information is stored
- Which tools are compliant
- How to set boundaries for AI access
This is why platforms like Thunai, which are built with enterprise-level privacy and governance, will grow faster than generic AI tools.
6. Continuous Learning — And Comfort With Change
AI tools for executive assistants is evolving fast. The best EAs will stay curious.
Instead of fearing automation, they’ll ask:
- “What else can this tool handle?”
- “How can I remove one more repetitive step?”
- “What can I now focus on that brings more value?”
Growth becomes a mindset not a task.
Using an AI-Powered Assistant Like Thunai for Better Systems
The role of the Executive Assistant isn’t disappearing it’s transforming. Instead of spending every day in reactive mode using AI tools for executive assistants can create better strategic partners who focus on impact rather than manual busywork.
Thunai isn’t here to replace the Executive Assistant it’s here to amplify their capabilities, reduce their workload, and help them operate with clarity, speed, and precision.
Huge time savings
EAs can automate scheduling, reminders, note-taking, and email triage — freeing up hours every week.
Consistency and accuracy
No forgotten tasks, missed follow-ups, or lost communication threads.
Scalable productivity
Whether supporting one leader or multiple teams, Thunai can scale without burnout.
Ready to see how thunai can help you? Reach out for a free demo and trial!
FAQs in AI Tools for Executive Assistants
Will Thunai replace Executive Assistants?
No. If anything, it makes EAs more essential. Thunai takes over the repetitive work so assistants can finally focus on strategy, communication, and protecting the executive’s time not drowning in admin tasks.
How long does it take to see a real difference?
Most people notice a shift in the first 2-4 weeks. The more it learns your style and patterns, the more powerful it becomes.
Can AI personalize communication to match my executive's tone?
Yes. AI can learn writing style, tone preferences, sentence structure, formality level, and common phrases but it may require a bit of training or examples to get it right.
Is my data safe?
Yes. Thunai was built with enterprise privacy as a requirement, not a feature. Information stays protected and confidential.
Who benefits the most from using it?
Executives, managers, and assistants juggling constant communication, frequent meetings, and heavy decision-making. If your workday always feels full but never finished — Thunai is for you.



