In the fast-paced world of product development, product managers need to make sure communication flows clearly and teams feel aligned and empowered. However as tasks pile up and each to-do seems to generate two more, it’s easy for PMs to feel overwhelmed. Fortunately, AI is emerging as a game-changer for many professions, and product managers are in a prime role to benefit from this technology. If you’re a PM who is feeling overwhelmed, here are three ways AI can help:

1. Remain present during meetings

The Challenge: Participating in and/or leading meetings while also trying to record decisions and document action items means something will inevitably slip through the cracks.

How AI Can Help: There are several AI tools that can transcribe and summarize meeting notes, so that you can be fully present while knowing key points and action items are being captured. You can use the built-in transcription functionality if using Google Meet, or one of several AI meeting assistants such as TLDV (also one of my favorite TikTok accounts), Otter, or Fireflies. Sending out a recap of the decisions made and open questions, and assigning tasks for each action item means you can help keep everyone accountable and on the same page.

2. Customize content to various formats and audiences

The Challenge: Spending time re-writing and re-formatting the same information over and over again takes up a ton of valuable time. A memo becomes a PRD, which becomes an email, which becomes a deck… all presenting the same information in slightly different ways.

How AI Can Help: Tools such as ChatGPT can help accelerate your writing by taking your thoughts and generating targeted content efficiently. Start by writing bullet points about everything that’s relevant to your project. This might be things like goals, teams, key dates, risks, approvals, dependencies - just jot everything down. Then, paste that into ChatGPT (or upload as a document, if you have access to Code Interpreter with a Pro subscription) and craft your prompt for what kind of document or writing you’d like it to generate.

Here’s an example prompt you can customize:

Of course you’ll fact-check and edit the output, but these generated first drafts will certainly help cut down time and get you back to the rest of your to-do list.

3. Synthesize UXR and inspire roadmap ideas

The Challenge: You have tons of great insights from user research, but lack the time to sit and brainstorm around what features to build.

How AI Can Help: Here’s another example of why ChatGPT Code Interpreter is so powerful. Upload your user research data - be it user interview transcripts, survey results, or other forms of feedback - along with your OKRs, and prompt the AI to generate a list of 50 potential product ideas that could help meet your goals while addressing user feedback. While many generated ideas will probably be awful, there could be a few gems in there that might continue to spark your creativity or provide a fresh perspective.

Once you have this AI-generated list, you can curate and refine it with your team. I like to host a brainstorming session where we review, discuss, and build upon ideas to see which ones resonate most. From there, you can use a prioritization framework like RICE to help determine which concepts have the most potential. Finally, I like to prototype the top concepts and put them in front of users for directional feedback before adding to the roadmap.

AI is not just a futuristic concept; it's a present-day tool that, when used right, can significantly amplify a product manager's capabilities. By integrating AI into communicating, writing, and brainstorming, PMs can camp up their efficiency and fly through their to-do list faster and more thoughtfully. If you’re a PM, how have you been using AI? Let me know in the comments!