These categories deal with information that is often sensitive and sometimes regulated: financial records, contracts, personal documents. They're also where mistakes cost the most, so this guide includes what to be careful about.
Data and analytics
- Data Analytics: analysis, visualization and business intelligence.
- Business Intelligence: dashboards, reporting and metrics.
- Spreadsheets: AI features inside spreadsheet tools.
- Data Extraction: pulling structured data from invoices, forms and text.
- Web Scraping: extracting data from websites. Check the site's terms first.
Tip: when AI summarizes or analyzes numbers, spot-check against the raw data. A chart can look convincing and be built on a misread column.
Documents
- Document Analysis: chat with PDFs and extract information.
- OCR: reads text from images, scans and handwriting. Accuracy drops on poor scans and unusual handwriting, so proofread anything important.
- Knowledge Base: company wikis and internal search.
- Note Taking: notes and personal knowledge management.
- Text Summarization: short versions of long material.
Legal and compliance
- Legal: legal research, document analysis and case management.
- Contract Analysis: reviewing, drafting and summarizing contracts.
- Compliance: regulatory compliance, audits and risk management.
- Insurance: underwriting, claims and insurance workflows.
- Fraud Detection: detecting fraud, abuse and suspicious activity.
- Cybersecurity: security operations.
An AI tool is not a lawyer. It can help you read a contract faster and highlight clauses to ask about. It can also miss issues or invent case law. For anything binding, have a qualified person check it. Also confirm that confidential documents are handled in line with your obligations to clients.
Money
- Accounting: bookkeeping, invoicing and expense management.
- Finance: financial analysis and personal finance.
- Trading: stock, crypto and investment analysis.
Be extra careful with trading tools. No tool can reliably predict markets, and claims of guaranteed returns are a warning sign. Nothing on this site is financial advice. For money matters that affect you, speak to a qualified adviser.
Research
- Research Tools: data collection and information gathering.
- AI Search Engines: search with AI-generated answers. Always open the cited sources.
- Market Research: competitor and industry insights.
- Academia: academic research and writing. Follow your institution's rules on AI use.
- Healthcare: tools in medical settings. Health information from a tool is not a diagnosis.
- Real Estate, Government, Farming and Agriculture, Climate and Environment and Weather: specialist areas.
Before uploading sensitive documents
- Read the tool's data handling policy. See Using AI tools safely.
- Remove names and account numbers when you can.
- Check whether a business plan offers stronger privacy than the consumer one.
- Keep the original, and check the output against it.
