Notion AI

Understanding Notion AI

What is Notion AI?

Notion AI is a combination of features for Notion that help you get more done with the help of Large Language Models.

Notion AI can take over different tasks for you so you don’t have to to them yourself. A few examples include:

• Notion AI can search through your workspace and find answers in documents that you forgot exist.
• Notion AI can create databases or auto-fill properties like tags so you can focus on your work (instead of reorganising things for the 7th time this month).
• Notion AI can help you edit your writing to fix spelling, improve grammar, translate texts or condensing key information.

AI can sometimes still be a bit tough to grasp, so let’s use a metaphor here instead. Using Notion AI is a bit like hiring a team of personal assistants that work side-by-side with you.

These assistants have access to all the information in your Notion Workspace (and even some of your other tools like Slack or Google Drive, if you want) and can take actions for you.

Does Notion Have Its Own LLM?

Unlike companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, Notion does not develop an AI model themselves.

Instead, Notion integrates with these tools so that they can work within your Notion environment.

To keep with our metaphor of smart assistants, Notion AI acts like the team lead for a set of smart assistants (the individual AI models, for example GPT-4 or the Claude models).

Whenever you ask Notion AI to perform any task, whether that’s writing a summary, brainstorming an idea or answering questions based on your documents in Notion, the team lead identifies the best suited assistant (i.e. the best AI model) for this task, provides the assistant with additional helpful information and then makes sure that the response fits right into your Notion Workspace.

That means Notion AI can do things that other AI tools can’t – for example adding rich block elements like callouts to your Notion Pages or answering questions based on information that isn’t publicly available but documented somewhere in your Notion Workspace.

What Data Can Notion AI Access?

Notion AI can access all unstructured content you have access to. This means any text in your pages, whether it’s in paragraphs, bullet points, or other text blocks (basically all text in your workspace). However, there are some important limitations to keep in mind.

When it comes to databases, the access is more limited. While AI Properties can work with database content to help you organise and categorise information, the Q&A feature currently can’t pull information from databases to answer your questions.

Notion AI can’t directly access external files like PDFs and documents. You can share these files with AI by dropping them directly into the chat interface, but Notion AI won’t be able to access files that are simply attached to a page.

Currently, Notion AI cannot perform web searches or access external data sources beyond what’s available in your workspace. This means all insights and answers will be based solely on the information you’ve stored in Notion.

However, the scope is widening and Notion AI connectors extend Notion AI’s scope to apps like Slack or Google Drive.

Pro Tip: I would recommend copying the important content from your documents directly into Notion pages whenever possible – this ensures that Notion AI can fully understand and work with your information.

The Evolution of Notion AI

Notion AI was released in November 2022, right when ChatGPT became popular. Since then, Notion has kept updating and improving its AI features. Notion AI started out to to be just a GPT model integrated in Notion blocks and did not have a dedicated chatbot console until 29.07.2024 (which was covered immediately in our ongoing Notion Update Report). Now, the interface is similar to the leading AI assistants out there:

• chat interface
• history sidebar
• search functionality for finding past conversations and
• export options

In March 2024, Notion added Claude, Anthropic’s powerful Large Language Model. This LLM is great at technical tasks, logical reasoning, and detailed analysis. We can expect Notion to keep making deals with the market leaders to make sure Notion AI always uses state-of-the-art technology.

Recent updates have used Claude’s enhanced search and Q&A capabilities to enable features like AI Connectors and real-time document analysis directly within Notion.

All in all, Notion AI is definitely not “any other” AI Wrapper, even though it shares a few similarities. Sure, it lacks some features like web-search and you cannot set different AI models yet, but its unique advantage is that it knows your Notion workspace through and through.

If you’re interested to find out what difference that makes, and how to make the most out of it, this is the right article for you!

What’s the Difference Between Notion AI and other AI Apps?

Notion AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and DeepSeek are all AI tools that work in similar ways. Think of them as different apps that use the same basic technology under the hood.

To understand the difference between uniqueness of Notion AI, it’s easiest to use an analogy:

• The system powering your mac is your OS (operating system). It’s responsible for enabling all the functions on your computer.
• Applications on your Mac, like Safari, FaceTime or the Notion Desktop App all use the OS to show you things and trigger actions. They have different ways of interpreting and utilising the abilities of the OS, but they are all confined to what the OS allows them to do.

Tool	Primary Focus	Key Strength	Best For
Notion AI	Workspace integration	Seamless operation within Notion documents	Notion users who want AI assistance without switching apps
ChatGPT	Versatile conversation	All-purpose problem solving	General AI tasks across various domains
Claude	Nuanced reasoning	Complex thinking and detailed conversations	In-depth analysis and coding
Perplexity	Real-time information	Web search with citations	Research and up-to-date information
DeepSeek	Specialised problem-solving	Domain-specific capabilities	Targeted problem areas

What makes Notion AI special isn’t that it’s “smarter” than other AI tools – it’s actually just as smart as ChatGPT because they use similar technology. The real advantage of Notion AI is that it works directly with all your Notion documents and workspace, making it extremely helpful for organising and working with your own information. Maybe the only way to really experience how helpful it is to have AI work right inside your Notion workspace is to try it out yourself.

Notion AI Pricing Overview

Notion AI is available as an add-on to existing Notion plans. The pricing is simple but changes based on your particular situation and needs.

For individual users, Notion AI costs €9.50 per month on top of your existing plan when billed monthly. Choosing annual billing brings this down to €7.50 per month, offering a 21% saving throughout the year. So if you plan on integrating AI long-term into your workflow, yearly billing might make sense.

Teams need to consider a different factor: Notion AI must be implemented across the entire workspace. This means every member in your shared workspace will get access to AI features, and your per-seat pricing is increased by the cost for Notion AI (€9.50 per user and month on the monthly plan and €7.50 per user and month on the yearly plan).

A team of 5 members would pay €47.50 monthly (€9.50 × 5), while larger organisations with 50 members would see costs reach €475 per month.

At first glance, this feels like significant cost. But if your team is a good fit for Notion AI, I’m pretty sure that getting it is a no-brainer and will pay for itself in no time. But more on that later in the ROI section.

For educational institutions, Notion offers a special deal. Students and teachers can get a 50% discount on Notion AI pricing after they verify their status.

Startups can get a great deal too. Eligible new ventures can apply for a free six-month trial with unlimited AI usage, giving them plenty of time to build these tools into their workflows without immediate cost concerns. Find the application form here.

Before subscribing, Notion provides free trial credits so you can test the AI features. These credits are shared across your workspace and won’t be refilled once used up.

Important to note: adding Notion AI requires desktop access and can only be done by a workspace owner. Also, while guests in your workspace don’t increase your subscription costs, they cannot access or use any Notion AI features.

Quick Overview:

User Type	Monthly Price	Annual Price (per month)
Individual	€9.50	€7.50
Team (per member)	€9.50	€7.50
Students/Educators	€4.75	€3.75
Startups	free 6-month-trial	free 6-month-trial

Operational Benefits

Notion AI delivers three key benefits that make teamwork more efficient and save money in the end. It improves information sharing by breaking down knowledge barriers (the biggest workplace problem according to a 2024 HBR Report), so everyone can find what they need. It reduces workflow disruptions because team members can ask Notion AI instead of interrupting colleagues. And it speeds up new employee training, helping newcomers become productive faster while freeing up experienced staff from basic teaching duties.

All of that makes the return on investment for organisations substantial. Let’s examine the ROI in detail for a 100-member team using Notion AI at €7.50 per member monthly, based on the results of other Notion customers as cited in the Harvard Business Review report.

Cost Analysis

• Monthly Notion AI cost: 100 members × €7.50 = €750 per month
• Annual Notion AI cost: €750 × 12 = €9,000 per year

Time Savings Calculation

Using the formula

• 2.7 Q&A (Notion AI) queries per day × 100 employees × 0.0833 hours saved per query × 249 work days × 33% adoption = 1,848 hours saved annually
• At an average wage of €50/hour: 1,848 hours × €50/hour = €92,400 in annual value

Immense ROI

• ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment × 100%
• ROI = (€92,400 – €9,000) / €9,000 × 100%
• ROI = €83,400 / €9,000 × 100%
• ROI = 927%

A 927% ROI suggests that for every euro invested in Notion AI, organisations receive €9.27 in return – a pretty crazy value proposition. The HBR report reports impressive results, like Osaka Gas cutting search time by 35% and Remote saving 10 minutes per search across 300 daily queries. But does that translate so easily to your business? Let’s take a closer look.

The calculation relies on several assumptions that are not guaranteed for every team.

1. The formula assumes consistent usage (2.7 queries per day per employee) and adoption rates (33%). In reality, some co-workers will probably not use the AI after all.
2. It values time savings at a fixed rate (€50/hour), which may not accurately reflect all roles.
3. It presumes that time saved translates directly to productive work rather than being absorbed by other tasks.

Not to forget the training time you need to get your staff familiar with Notion AI and potential productivity dips during adoption phases.

While the case studies from dbt Labs (€35,000 annual savings) and other organisations provide credible evidence of substantial returns, you should approach this ROI calculation as a potential ceiling rather than a guaranteed outcome.

If you’re curious about your particular case, I’d recommend testing this formula with your company-specific metrics and conservative estimates. Feel free to book a free discovery call with me to get help identifying if Notion AI is right your company!

🌐 If you were wondering what the ROI of using Notion in general is – Here’s a mini-tool which does that calculation for you.

Cheaper than competitors

Notion AI offers clear financial benefits at €9.50 per person per month, which is significantly lower than the €19.00 monthly costs for both ChatGPT Plus and Claude.

Companies like dbt Labs have achieved over €35,000 in annual savings by replacing multiple specialised AI and search tools with Notion AI’s integrated capabilities. By combining these systems, you can save money and make the technology setup easier to manage.

If you are interested in trying before purchasing, Notion provides a limited amount of free AI credits.

Getting Started with Notion AI

You have made up your mind and want to get started with Notion AI for yourself or for your team? Then this section is right for you. Continue if you haven’t added Notion AI to your plan yet. Otherwise, feel free to jump to one of the following sections to learn and adapt use cases.

• Notion AI First Steps & Quick Wins
• Using Notion AI on a Block-Level
• Using Notion AI on a Space/Page-Level
• Best Notion AI Use Cases to Try

How to Activate and Use Notion AI

1. To activate Notion AI, go to workspace Settings, navigate to Plans, and enable Notion AI.
2. Open any Notion page and press Enter to create a new block.
3. Press the spacebar to make the Notion AI block appear (alternatively, type “/” to find AI block features in the command menu).
4. Select your desired AI block, such as Add a summary.
5. Press Enter.
6. Choose to accept, discard, insert below, or try again.

Done? – Perfect! Now, you can try some other ways to call Notion AI for help!

Alternative Ways to Access Notion AI

• Through the floating widget in the bottom right corner
• Through the Notion AI main page in the left sidebar
• By pulling up any search menu through Notion Search
• By highlighting any text and then clicking on the AI option
• By using any of the following shortcuts (Cmd + J, Cmd + Shift + J, Cmd + Shift + K)

All Notion AI Features and Use Cases

Notion AI First Steps & Quick Wins

As you will see if you keep scrolling through the article, there are bunch of use cases for Notion AI.

But if I had to break it down to the ones that create the most value without much effort, it would be these. Feel free to jump through the article:

• Let AI represent text as visuals
• Let AI create translated pages
• Let AI adjust text and format according to your guideline document
• Let AI digitalise your hand-written notes
• Leverage AI for personal and organisational knowledge management

Using Notion AI on a Block-Level

If you’ve never used an AI tool before or just want to play around with some simple use cases, start by learning these ten essential features.

Method 1: Write Anything

Generally speaking, Notion AI can be used to write, draft and edit any text. What an easy way to get over the writer’s block!

Method 2: Ask Anything

Want to quickly find anything in Notion? Just use Ask a question!

Click the search bar at the top of your Notion and type what you want to know. The AI will look through all your stuff – pages, lists, and even connected apps – to find what you need.

Method 3: Explain Anything

Using AI to explain complex topics is an awesome new superpower – but one that you need to use with caution.

It can be super helpful to have it explain terms, concepts or whole theories and you can even combine it with the above method to make the explanations simpler and simpler.

Just be sure to keep the risk of hallucinations in mind. Whenever you ask AI to come up with something on its own, always double-check for accuracy.

You can either use Notion AI’s built-in explain prompt, or type something like:

Prompt: You are my expert teacher in [area]. Your job is it to explain a topic by first giving an abstract definition and then walking me through topic with examples and questions. The topic to explain is [topic].

Method 4: Summarise

One of the easiest ways to leverage Notion AI and LLMs in general? Use them to speed up your text processing!

To do so, simply highlight some text in Notion, click on the appearing Ask AI option (or click on the six dots to force the context menu to open) and then opt for the pre-built summarise method.

Method 5: Translate

Now here’s a fun one: quickly translate your text into a different language without having to worry whether you can actually use this expression or not.

This is super handy for anyone working with multiple languages, whether you’re a student or a sales person in a multi-national company. Me, as an example, I have asked Notion AI to check whether this article is consistently written in British English.

Method 6: Improve Writing Style (and Grammar!)

You’re never sure where a comma goes in a sentence and whether it’s ok to end your sentence with a proposition?

Don’t worry, Notion AI is a great help for that. Whether you want a more advanced spell- and grammar check or want to make your writing sound more corporate (or a lot simpler), quickly rewrite things choosing one of the following tones Notion AI has to offer:

• professional
• casual
• straightforward
• confident
• friendly

Method 7: Brainstorm

Notion AI can’t replace your thinking, but it can certainly supercharge and inspire you. When starting a new project, ask it for help to come up with ideas or visualise the scope of a topic without any effort.

Method 8: Research

You can also use Notion AI as your personal research assistant. Keep in mind that the cut-off point for the data is late 2023 and no web-research is possible at this moment. However, there might be occasions where this is enough.

Method 9: Visualise as Flowchart and Tables

Flowcharts help map out processes, hierarchies, or decision-making pathways, while tables organise information into clear categories for comparison or analysis.

If you need to pitch information to someone, you don’t want to give him three paragraphs to read. Instead, let AI quickly create a visualisation! This may be useful for meeting protocols, workflows or a break-down of costs.

Method 10: Write Code

What’s AI best at? – Not losing its head when coding something from scratch. Although you don’t get an explanation for the provided code it’s quite practical to have your code changed, improved and corrected inside of Notion and saved in your workspace. Try the Get help with code function yourself!

Using Notion AI on a Space/Page-Level

There are two more ways how to interact with Notion AI aside from the block-level one.

One way is to click on the Notion AI widget in the bottom right-hand corner. You’ll find many similar options to the block-level. Since this Chatbot is operating beyond just this page, you can use other prompts, like Find all pages mentioning the ‘PARA’ method and your entire workspace will be searched. If you have apps connected to your Notion workspace like Slack, Google Drive or GitHub, you can expand the search within these apps, too.

Another interesting function is find action items which could be used to extract all the to-do’s from a transcribed meeting protocol.

Also, you’ll have the option to attach a file to your prompt. An exemplary use case is to analyse a PDF and paste it into the page.

Using the Notion AI Console

Another way, is to use the main Notion AI Chatbot Page which you can find in the side-bar. Here, the functionalities are exactly the same as in the small chatbot, but the interface might be more intuitive since it’s very similar to other apps like ChatGPT or Perplexity.

Best Notion AI Use Cases to Try

Now that you learned a few basic use cases, let’s take a look at more complex workflows.

Use Case 1: Let AI Build Your Database

Since February 2025, Notion AI can also build databases from scratch (Notion Update Timeline). You can simply describe what you want – the AI will make a proposal – you can ask for adjustments – and start using your desired database inside of your workspace right away.

It’s great for beginners who aren’t sure how to organise their data and for experienced users looking to speed up the setup. However, it’s not perfect—it struggles with multi-database setups, can’t create relations between databases, and won’t generate formulas. It’s a solid starting point, but you’ll still need to tweak things to get them just right.

Here’s how to go about it:

1. First, you have to create a new database. The new “Build with AI” feature will show up automatically on the side.
2. Then, it’s you job to write a prompt. For now, it’s enough to describe a vague structure or idea you have in mind. We can make adaptations in the next step!

Step 1 & 2

Step 3. Database properties will be created and views will be customised according to you description.

Step 4. Once the first Database draft is created, you are asked to select or deselect the properties you need or don’t need. If something else is missing or should be structured in a different way, you can send as many follow-up prompts as you need!

Step 5. Once you’re satisfied with the draft, simply click done and your final database will be created.

Limitations of Notion AI Database Builder

• Single Database Creation: It can only create one database at a time and cannot generate multiple interconnected databases.
• No Relations Between Databases: It does not support relational properties, meaning databases cannot be linked together.
• Inconsistent Execution of Instructions: Sometimes ignores or misinterprets prompts, such as grouping views when asked not to or failing to apply sorting/filtering correctly.
• No Formula Generation: It cannot create formula properties, even when explicitly requested.
• Limited Customisation Features: Does not support sub-items, dependencies, or other advanced database settings, requiring manual setup.

🌐 I’ve recorded a full tutorial for the Notion AI Database Builder in case you want to see it in action.

Use Case 2: Hire AI As Your Copywriter

If you’re creating content or presenting your corporate identity, you probably have your particular way to do that. Are you using lots of emojis 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 or do you prefer a minimalistic style? Try creating a style guide and include details about typical vocabulary, tone of voice, complexity, etc. If you call this page “Brand Guidelines”, you can refer to @Brand Guidelines in your Notion AI prompts and let any text be adjusted accordingly in Notion. Which other use cases can you think of?

🌐 Jump to my tutorial on using Notion AI as my personal copywriter.

Use Case 3: Use Notion AI For Knowledge Management

Notion AI properties allow you to access the power of AI right inside your database. You might already use Notion for Personal Knowledge Management, Organisational Knowledge Management or Meeting Notes. With the help of AI, these rich databases got a lot easier to overview. If you add a new property to your database and look for AI autofill, you will be able to

• create a summary of the a page body content (e.g. to sum up what a meeting was about)
• ask to extract the list of ingredients from the inside of a page and let it appear as a property
• use AI translation inside of properties
• make entries more organised with AI-generated keywords/tags

A particularly great use case if you use Readwise to sync your Kindle Highlights into Notion. That way, you always see at a glance what an article was about.

🌐 I’ve recorded a tutorial on how to supercharge your knowledge management with Notion AI incase you want to see it in action.

Use Case 4: Use Notion AI to Generate Sample Data

You’re nearly done with that big project at work. Time to prepare a presentation to walk the rest of your team through it. The only problem? You’ve got no sample data to show it. So you make up some weird name, add some lorem ipsum and call it a day.

Thanks to Notion AI, that’s a thing of the past. LLMs are really good at quickly creating all kind of sample data that you need for testing, mockups or previews.

You can adapt the below prompt if you need customer reviews:

Prompt: Please give me 10 customer reviews for my product “Notion Mug”. “Notion Mug” is just a plain mug with a Notion Sticker on it. 5 of the reviews should be excited and positive. 2 should be neutral. 3 should be really negative. Each review should be 1 – 2 paragraphs long.

🌐 I’ve recorded an exemplary case of Notion AI generated sample data incase you want to see it in action.

Use Case 5: Let Notion AI Organise Data

Sometimes you don’t need your data in a table, but it would still be nice to have it ordered in a certain way. Again, no more manual copypasting of values: Notion AI to the rescue.

Prompt: Take this list and organise it by release date in descending order (newest first).

Use Case 6: Use Notion AI to Analyse Data and Extract Action Items

If you’re a knowledge worker, chances are that you spend a lot of time reading documents to find certain information. Well guess who is really good at processing text? Yep, a large language model like Notion AI.

The specific use cases are sheer endless, but to give just two examples:

Use Notion AI to quickly extract individual attributes from longer lists of features.

Prompt: List only the product name and the price for the product.

Prompt: Extract all the work-related action items and list them as checkboxes below. Ignore all non-work related tasks.

Custom AI database properties can also be used to make personalisation easier. As any sales team can tell you, personalisation is key when you do any sort of outreach to cold leads.

Use Case 7: Use Notion AI to Digitalise Your Hand-Written Notes

Prompt: Make sense of my hand-written notes and create a structured digital copy.

Use Case 8: Personalised Message in CRM

And while AI still has some way to go until you can just copypaste what it comes up with, it’s already a great help so you don’t have to start from an empty page.

One super useful thing about the Notion AI custom properties? You can not just access the page content, but also other properties in the database. Which means that you can easily use a prompt like the one below to write a first draft for a personalised pitch:

Prompt: You are an expert sales person. Based on the “Preferred Solution” Property, write a short pitch for our product, a simple mug with a Notion Sticker on it.

Use Case 9: Programatic SEO / Product Descriptions

Whether you’re building a programmatic SEO page or have an e-commerce with various products – there are a lot of situations where you need A LOT of customised descriptions.

Again, Notion AI and Custom AI Autofill properties to the rescue. Here’s an example prompt to generate quick descriptions for different cities of a restaurant review blog with programmatic SEO:

Prompt: You are my culinary expert who knows where to get the best food in the US. Write a short 1-2 sentence presentation about the food scene in the City, highlighting what it’s most famous for.

Use Case 10: Your Personal Red Team

One of my favourite use cases for AI in general? Helping you discover your blindspots to make better decisions.

Whether you’re on your own or with a team, chances are that whenever you think about a new project, you mainly collect arguments in favour of it.

But in order to make a balanced decision, it’s key to also look at counterarguments and potential risks. Here are two prompts that you can use to turn Notion AI into your personal Red Team.

Prompt: You are the internal red team, tasked with going through the project plan and playing Advocatus Diaboli. List out 3 or more arguments against this project.

Prompt: You are the internal red team, tasked with going through the project plan and playing Advocatus Diaboli. What are the 3 biggest potential risks why this project might fail?

Use Case 11: Simplify Data Management

Going back to knowledge management, properly categorising and tagging resources is often a recurring issue. So in order to speed up the process, use this simple prompt to have Notion AI suggest the best tags for the docs in your Wiki or the articles in your Second Brain:

Prompt: You are an expert in knowledge management. Your job is to go through the article and identify up to three tags to categorise it. Answer only with the tags, don’t include any preface or “Tags:” intro.

As of now, this will only give you a text field, so you’d need to still manually apply the actual tags if you use Global Tags in Notion or a Multi-Select property.

🌐 Or check out this fully automated tagging system that leverages OpenAI, Siri and Notion.

Use Case 12: Information Triage – What’s Worth Reading?

Here’s another favourite use case of mine: leverage Notion AI to cut through the noise.

There’s a sheer infinite amount of content out there and sometimes it can be hard to judge whether an article is worth reading or not. And nothing worse than getting baited by a great title just to realise that the body just repeats the same tropes you hear everywhere.

Well, no more. Just use a custom autofill AI property and ask Notion AI to evaluate the quality of the writing. Here’s a sample prompt to get you started:

Prompt: You are an expert personal assistant. Your job is it to read through the article and evaluate whether it offers something truly insightful and is worth reading or only repeats very commonly known things.

Use Case 13: Customer Sentiment Analysis

A key part of product management is to listen to your customers. But what do you do if they have a lot to say and you only have limited time? You guessed it, you ask Notion AI for help.

Sentiment Analysis is a strong skill of most LLMs and adjacent to the information extraction use case I shared earlier.

It’s also an area where you can let your creativity run free and adapt the prompt depending on your use case. You could, for example, only filter out feedback that is relevant to a specific department. To get started, use the below prompt for a simple qualification of how they feel:

Prompt: Analyse how the customer feels about our Notion Mug based on the customer review in the property “Review”. Answer with only one word. Answer either with “positive”, “neutral” or “negative”.

Use Case 14: Build Your Thought Leadership

Regardless of whether you’re a creator or work a more traditional job: establishing thought leadership and building your personal brand is a crucial skill to stand out of the crowd.

And while you can’t outsource thinking to AI (after all, it’s about your unique set of skills and expertise), you can definitely rely on Notion AI to help you get started.

Simply write out your bio and then use the below prompt to get some topic suggestions on what to post this week on LinkedIn (and connect with me while you’re at it)

Prompt: You are a thought leadership coach who helps young professionals who are early in their career develop a personal brand to accelerate their career. Based on this bio, suggest a list of 10 topics to discuss on LinkedIn that the person can use to build a renown presence among his or her colleagues his or her clients with a strong focus on the area of practice.

Use Case 15: Using Notion AI to Write Docs for Your Team

Everyone knows that SOPs are a crucial component to run a successful company – but very few enjoy writing them.

Simply start by asking Notion AI to write a step-by-step guide on the desired process:

Prompt: Write a tutorial on how to convert a video file to an audio file using FFMEG on MacOS. Assume the user does not have FFMPEG or Homebrew installed, and is a beginner with regards to using Terminal commands for navigating file structure.

Naturally, Notion AI will probably not create your dream SOP on the first go. But you can easily finetune your results by highlighting sections and asking it to redo it:

Prompt: Rewrite this so that the audio file is 128kbps. Underneath the command’s code block, explain each part of the command as a bullet list.

The icing on the cake? Once your SOP is ready, use the Extract Information workflow or Summarise workflow I shared earlier to create a short summary on top of your SOP and a checkbox list with the individual steps.

No more excuses, time to start writing these SOPs!

Use Case 16: Supercharge Your Templates with Notion AI Custom Blocks

Templates are a true Notion Powerhouse, so it’s a great idea to combine them with Notion AI for some really cool workflows.

Custom AI blocks allow you to “save” a prompt for later. By embedding these custom blocks in your database templates, you can easily kick off actions based on individual database properties. Some examples include:

• Writing a job description based on the role that you’re hiring in your Recruiting Database
• Drafting Social Media posts when you launch a new product
• Drafting a cold email to reach out to your leads

Pro Tip: Use different Custom AI blocks on different templates to fine tune your results.

Get My Notion AI Cheatsheet

🌐 Duplicate the template from here: Notion AI Cheatsheet.

Limitless Possibilities With AI Automations

Last but not least, AI in Notion isn’t just limited to Notion AI. Thanks to the Notion API, you can easily connect Notion to other AIs

To get you started, here are a few in-depth tutorials showcasing the combined power or Notion and OpenAI:

• Never take any meeting notes ever again with AI-powered meeting summaries
• Get your emails into Notion (and an AI summary on top)
• Turn Notion into an AI Image Generator

Who Is Notion AI For? / Should You Get Notion AI?

Notion AI shines brightest when matched with the right use case and user profile. It isn’t necessarily the right investment for everyone. So, let’s explore who is most likely to benefit from this tool and whether this is a good investment for your company.

Enterprise & Large Organisations

Knowledge management works much better with Notion AI. Teams can build and maintain organisational knowledge and handle large amounts of content without needing lots of people to manage it.

Document processing becomes faster and easier when AI helps read through, summarise, and find important information in documents. This is especially helpful for organisations that have a good documentation already. Also, if you’re in the business or enterprise plan, the new Page Verification feature makes this even more convenient.

Team collaboration gets better because Notion AI helps you write meeting notes, pull out action items, and keep track of project details. This saves a lot of time for companies that spend many hours in meetings.

Security considerations are well-addressed for enterprises, but governance requirements may need to be checked in each case individually.

Small & Medium Businesses

Cost-effective solutions matter a lot for growing businesses. Notion AI gives you powerful AI features at a much lower price than specialised AI tools or hiring more people. If you’re already using Notion, the extra cost is usually worth it given how much time it saves.

Growth scalability means you can easily add more AI use cases as your business grows, since everything stays in Notion.

Resource use is optimised because employees can hand over basic writing and organising work to AI, letting them focus on bigger tasks and creative thinking.

Individual Power Users

Personal knowledge management reaches new heights with Notion AI’s ability to help organise thoughts, summarise research, and create structured content from scattered ideas. Power users building comprehensive personal systems can now supercharge their setup with a 24/7 personal assistant.

Content creation gets faster for bloggers, writers, and creators who can use Notion AI to draft, edit, and refine their work. The AI makes a solid writing assistant and idea generator.

Project management becomes more streamlined when individuals can quickly generate project plans, track progress, and document outcomes with AI assistance, reducing administrative overhead.

Learning & development benefits from Notion AI’s ability to summarise complex information and create study notes—useful for students, researchers, and lifelong learners.

Who Should Skip Notion AI?

Occasional Notion users who only use the platform for basic note-taking every now and then. If that’s you, you will likely not extract enough value to make the additional subscription cost worth it. The AI really comes in handy with regular, consistent use.

Teams without Knowledge Management will have a hard time fully utilising Notion AI since it’s only as good as the information you have in Notion. However, this would also be a good opportunity to finally make the jump and implement a Single Source of Truth for your company (let’s talk if you need help with that!)

Budget-conscious users with limited writing or documentation needs may find the additional cost difficult to justify if they’re not regularly creating content or processing information.

Users needing real-time internet search capabilities should keep in mind that Notion AI doesn’t currently connect to the live internet for research purposes. This is not the right tool to get up-to-date information on current events or recent developments.

Non-Notion users would need to get accustomed to the Notion ecosystem first and fill it up with data before they can benefit from Notion AI. If you’re looking to roll out Notion at your company, consider working with a certified Notion consultant to speed up the process and avoid typical implementation mistakes.

Making the Decision: Is Notion AI Worth It?

The value proposition of Notion AI becomes strongest when:

1. You’re already embedded in the Notion ecosystem.
2. Writing, summarising, or organising information consumes much time in your workflow.
3. You regularly create content, documentation, or knowledge bases.
4. You value having AI assistance integrated directly into your workspace rather than switching between multiple tools.

Notion AI in itself is nothing special – but if you combine it with your own knowledge and information, it becomes kind of magical.

So, if you only need basic features or have special requirements, spending extra money on the AI might not be worth it.

But, combined with your company data or your personal second brain, this is a game-changer. If you already use Notion a lot, Notion AI can help you save time and get more done.

Options to save money

The break-down of the costs made one thing very clear: adding Notion AI to your shared workspace can cause a scary sum to your monthly receipt. So, be mindful when integrating this in your workspace.

One way to cut costs, is to make only one or a few people members of the workspace and invite all others as guests to a page. Members will have access to Notion AI features like the chatbot. But AI integrations in databases will be available to guests as well. The biggest disadvantage is that you probably have multiple pages where you have to invite each guest individually. This makes workspace management quite inconvenient.

To be clear, this is not a practical solution and by no means will be a suitable and scalable solution for teams that use Notion excessively. If you’re unsure which pricing model is best for you, I’ll be happy to assist you. Just book a call with me!

Getting Started With Notion AI At Your Company

If you plan to roll out Notion in your company, there are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you’re getting the most out of it.

Here are the best practices that me and my team recommend to our Notion Consulting Clients.

Match Notion AI to your Notion Setup

Getting started with Notion AI can be a bit overwhelming since it’s not entirely obvious what you should use it for.

That’s why we recommend to match it to your existing Notion Setup and giving your team clear instructions on the specific workflows they should leverage it for.

For example, if you’re using Notion as your Single Source of Truth (aka for Knowledge Management), then Q&A would be the most powerful workflow to start with.

With Q&A, your team no longer has to search for a specific document. Instead, they can simply ask Notion AI a question and it will find the corresponding documents, cite them and answer.

Or let’s say you use Notion to create the content for a multi-lingual website. Encourage your team to use AI translation properties on databases to bulk-translate expressions for your help articles or custom AI blocks within your pages to translate whole sections in one go.

Coordinate with your Notion Champions

If you use Notion in your company, you should probably have one or several dedicated Notion Champions who are internally responsible for keeping things running.

In my experience working with dozens of clients across all industries, this is an essential success factor, particularly as your company and Notion Use scales.

Which means that a rollout of Notion AI should involve your internal Champion to see how they would use Notion AI – and how they would approach onboarding the team.

Have An AI Hypothesis

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when adopting not just Notion AI but any kind of AI tool?

The “spray and pray” approach.

The new tool gets added, the bill for the tech stack increases significantly and then we cross our fingers and hope that someone will figure out how to make the AI tool worth the money we spent on it.

This is usually a recipe for disaster, because most people don’t know yet how to use AI tools effectively.

To combat this, make sure that you have a clear idea on how AI can help you and your team in their daily work.

You don’t need to have all the details ready, but based on your Notion Setup and how you currently spend your time, you should have an idea of how Notion AI fits into this.

You can use this “fill in the blanks” template to create your statement:

Currently, our team uses Notion to ______. The most time-consuming activities that are not really creative tasks are:

Using Notion AI, we could eliminate _____ by having Notion AI _____ which means our team no longer has to ______.

Host Activation Workshops & Challenges

To help your team get familiar with Notion AI, consider hosting activation workshops and challenges.

Depending on the size of your company, this could be an all-hands meeting or department-specific sessions where your Notion Champion briefly introduces Notion AI and the core features and then explains your AI Hypothesis.

From there, have everyone solve a few challenges that combine actual day-to-day tasks with your hypothesis so that your team can experience first hand how to use AI and how it can make their lives easier.

Get Professional Help Where Necessary

As always, you don’t need to do this alone. Notion Consultants like me and my team can help you figure out whether Notion AI is worth it, what core use cases to consider and even provide hands-on support for the rollout and onboarding of your team.

If you’re looking for examples, here’s how Kustom, a Swedish fintech startup, leveraged our support to build an AI powered Single Source of Truth for more than 80 employees.

Notion AI Connectors Explained

Notion AI can connect to other tools like Slack, Google Drive and GitHub. This lets Notion AI look through your files and messages in those apps when you ask it questions, which makes it much more helpful!

Available at no additional cost to Notion AI users, setting up connectors is simple: Open Notion AI, access the three dots menu, select Connect [application name] complete the authorisation process, and allow 36-72 hours for synchronisation. You can also manage connections through Settings → Connections → Workspace.

Key Connectors and Their Benefits

Slack Connector: Searches through public conversations in your Slack workspace. Instead of scrolling through months of messages, simply ask “Which Notion Updates did the team report this month in Slack?” and receive a concise summary with message citations.

Google Drive Connector: Accesses your Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. When planning new features, ask “What are the common user pain points in our product research documents?” to get insights from your files without hours of manual review.

GitHub Connector: Provides access to repositories, pull requests, issues, and documentation. Developers can ask “Why did we implement the authentication system this way?” to understand the context behind technical decisions.

Security and Limitations: Notion keeps things simple and secure. It only shows you information you already have access to, keeps your data safe in secure databases, and doesn’t use your information to train their AI. When you disconnect a service, your data gets deleted within a day. Just be aware of a few limitations: Slack connections only work with public channels, Google Drive access depends on what files you’re already shared on, GitHub requires organisation membership for repositories, and both Slack and GitHub connections only go back one year.

How To Make The Most Of Notion AI

Notion AI can be used in tons of different workflows, but there are a few general principles that will make you a much better AI User. These tips are quintessential for all AI Tools, so feel free to use them to level up your skills with ChatGPT & Co. as well.

It’s all about the prompt

Whenever you use Notion AI (or any LLM), you need to write a prompt.

Your prompt are the instructions to the model. LLMs can’t read your mind and they cannot (yet?) pick up on unspoken clues like a real person could. Which means you need to be really, really precise and explain exactly what you expect the model to do.

The best way to think of an AI app? Assume that you just hired a really smart, but absolutely clueless intern. He or she has no idea what your business is about. It’s their first day at work. Oh and it’s a remote position and the microphone and camera broke, so you can only instruct them via email. They’ll execute flawlessly, but only if you describe exactly what you need them to do.

So when building your prompts, make sure to follow these tips:

1. Clearly define what you want to achieve with your prompt. The more specific you are, the better the results will be.
2. Use simple, clear language to ensure that the LLM can understand your prompt.
3. Avoid using overly complex sentences or questions, as these can confuse the LLM and lead to inaccurate results.
4. A/B test prompts with minor variations to see how certain variables affect the output.
5. Found a prompt structure that works? Save it as a template for future use to get more reliable results.

Verify the results

LLMs in general tend to answer with great certainty and Notion AI is no exception. But just because it sounds convincing, doesn’t mean it’s true.

Whenever you rely on AI for any step of your workflow, always always always double-check the output. Particularly if you ask it for facts. You can try to adapt your prompt to reduce hallucination, but you can never be 100% sure that it’s correct without verifying information yourself.

In that way, AI is exactly like the internet. We’ve all learned to not take for granted what’s on some random website. Let’s relearn this again when it comes to AI.

Here’s a quick checklist for you:

1. Context is king. If you want to reduce hallucinations, provide the necessary knowledge in the prompt and ask the LLM to work only with the provided material.
2. Check the results of the LLM carefully before using them. Always verify the information to ensure it is accurate.
3. Ask for sources in your prompt and go through the effort of checking them afterwards. LLMs love to make up quotes and you don’t want to be the lawyer who cited a bunch of ficticious cases because he didn’t follow this advice.

Finetune your process

When using AI, you’ll rarely get it right the first time. In particular for more complex tasks and workflows. But don’t get discouraged or frustrated. Instead, analyse your prompt and the result to see where things went sideways.

Pro Tip: For beginners, it’s often easier to start with the simplest version of a prompt and add onto it instead of writing four paragraph long instructions.

Swap out individual pieces of your prompt, make sure you follow the general best practices and see how the result changes. Here are some more tips to troubleshoot your AI results:

• Getting only generic answers and platitudes? Make sure your prompt has enough context to stand out. Remember: generic inputs = generic outputs.
• The AI keeps getting facts wrong? Provide them as context in your prompt.
• Don’t like the way the result is given? Show the AI examples of good responses and specify exactly how it should respond. Adding constraints is a great way to improve the reliability.
• Notion AI or any other “Layer 2” doesn’t work and you can’t figure out why? Go back to the source and try ChatGPT or even the OpenAI API to see whether the prompt structure of your tool is getting in the way.

The Future of Notion AI

I collected feedback from our community about what features they’d like to see improved in Notion AI. Here’s what people want the Notion team to work on!

• Hallucination: Since LLM try to predict what answer is expected and don’t really have any knowledge of their own, they can sometimes make up facts. This is called hallucinating. Whenever you use Notion AI (or any AI tool), make sure to fact-check the response and don’t trust it blindly.
• Knowledge Cut-Off: AI tools like Notion AI can only answer questions about things they learned during training. It doesn’t know about recent events and works best with general topics that don’t change much over time. At this moment (March 2025), Notion AI only knows about things that happened before late 2023.
• Web-searching: Unlike Apps like Perplexity or ChatGPT, Notion AI cannot actively search the internet for information. Having web search means AI can look up new facts online, check if its answers are correct, and give you up-to-date information with links to trustworthy websites. Without web search, AI can only use what it learnt during training, which may be out of date.
• Citation displays: Using Notion AI for research is not trustworthy. A solution could be displaying the sources.
• Collections: Other AI wrappers typically have folders to organise related information. In Notion, you still have to scroll through a long list of threads if you want to find a particular thread from the past.
• More AI connectors: The strength of Notion AI shows when you no longer have to search through multiple apps because you can ask Notion AI to do it for you.
• Read embedded files: Currently, Notion AI can only access file content by adding it directly to the context window of Notion AI. It can’t access PDFs in pages for example, but I’m sure this changes as we go along!

Security

Here’s how Notion keeps your data safe.

Your content stays private – no one else can use it. Specifically, so called “subprocessors” are strictly prohibited from using your content for model training purposes, ensuring your data remains private and exclusively used for your intended purposes.

Notion follows important privacy laws to protect your data. This includes full compliance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), backed by ISO 27001 certification which demonstrates commitment to international security standards.

Your data is encrypted using the same high-security standards that banks rely on. This means every time you use AI features, your data is scrambled using advanced encryption to keep it safe during transfer and use.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Notion AI browse the internet?

No, Notion AI does not have access to the internet. It can only use the data it has been trained on, the context you provide in your prompt and the page content where you run the Notion AI command.

How to turn off Notion AI?

To disable Notion AI, click Shift + Space.

Can I train Notion AI on my own data?

When it comes to “training” Notion AI or any other LLM on your own data, you need to distinguish between to scenarios:

Fine-tuning a model: to actually train AI on data or a specific task, you would need to fine tune it. You basically take the current training level of a model and add additional information on top. This process is fairly technical and resource intensive. You can fine-tune your own version of OpenAI’s models, but you cannot fine-tune Notion AI.

Context Injection: instead of creating a new version of a model, you can simply provide the current model with a lot more context. For example, if Notion AI doesn’t know your business, you can write a short summary of all relevant points and preface your prompt with it. Or, you can simply let Notion AI browse through your entire workspace or a dedicated teamspace for the business to get an understanding of the context.With Notion AI, the only way to use your own data is through context injection. This is possible when you use the Chatbot (widget) since it can browse through your entire workspace or selected pages. If you’re operating on one page, certain AI Actions in Notion will actually automatically use your data as context, for example when you ask Notion to summarise a page.

Can I use Notion AI in the background of other applications?

Yes, you can call Notion AI from anywhere (just like Spotlight or Alfred) and get instant answers. With the new global shortcut (⌘ + Shift + J for Mac, Ctrl + Shift + J for Windows), you can quickly access Notion AI to retrieve any data from your Notion workspace. You’ll need the Notion desktop app installed for this to work. And while you’re at it, don’t forget ⌘ + Shift + K for Mac, Ctrl + Shift + K for Windows to launch Notion’s global search.

I have yearly billing activated and I reduced the number of members. Can I get the refund?

Unfortunately, when you opt for yearly billing in Notion, you no longer get seats refunded if they’re empty. Make sure to contact the support within three days for monthly billing, or within 30 days of signing up for annual billing.

Can Notion AI create pages?

Unfortunately, Notion AI cannot create pages or records yet other than directly writing on the page or via the database builder.