> [!info] **2025-05-20**: Update > All the rest of this post still stands, but i've discovered a very useful feature of the AI package: Transcription. This is such a no-brainer it has been disappointing not to see this sooner, and it's further disappointing to see the UX presented as "meeting notes", but transcription (aka dictation) is now possible in Notion. Just speak and you get excellent speech-to-text. Authoring long-form prose on mobile is now possible. I decided to give Notion AI a try and found it underwhelming, surprisingly so. My surprise stems from expectations of AI products. I thought it should do X, but it either didn't or did a sub-par job. Let's get into concrete details. ## The ever-present AI ![[D52FC874-6A45-4CB3-A2E0-61099685ED74.png]] In Notion, even if you aren't on the AI plan, there is a button in the corner of the screen to start an AI chat. When you click it you get a chat box. This chat box can do RAG on your Notion database, and supposedly on other data sources as well[^1]. However, it seems this AI chat _cannot modify the current page_ and also doesn't know the current page. The tooltip (see image above) clearly implies that it can edit pages, but that was not my experience. Perhaps I was in an unlucky A/B test... Regardless, I was looking at a list of companies I may apply to during my upcoming job search, and wanted some AI suggestions of other companies I might not have thought of. Having already asked ChatGPT to suggest some companies i wanted to get the same list into notion. I pasted it in to the chatbox and said: > Expand the existing longlist with these entries. be sure to dedupe them so that there are no duplicates in the full list. Notion AI told me about the list, indicating that it could read the existing contents but could not modify the page. OK, fine. There's another Notion AI feature that _can_ edit the page. You invoke it with `/` (i.e. using slash command). The desired command is called "Write anything...", but unfortunately is burried in a sub menu of the slash commands. ![[CleanShot 2025-05-15 at 13.06.01.png]] ![[CleanShot 2025-05-15 at 13.06.14.png]] Note that this command cannot be invoked by searching for it, you _must_ first enter the sub menu: ![[CleanShot 2025-05-15 at 13.09.46.png]] I stress this point because it really goes against what I expect from AI. Namely, to be able to steer its response with some input, rather than hitting a button and hoping for the best. Furthermore, Notion is known for its pleasant UI. Why doesn't the search box search over everything? Yes, it's a minor point, but it feels wrong in a product that seemingly takes such care with its user experience. Anyway, moving on, this feature _does_ allow the AI to modify the page. I re-input my prompt, waited, and eventually got the list I wanted. However, _the list contained duplicates_. This was explicitly something I asked the AI to avoid, and yet it printed duplicates. Sonnet 3.7 is fully capable of deduplicating a list of text items, so I have to assume that something in Notions prompting is causing this problem. It likely goes without saying that _I would have saved time by NOT asking the AI for help._ At this point I had some 40-ish list items that were all expanded. I wanted to collapse them to fit more on the page. Rather than click 40 times, why not ask the AI to do it? _Because it can't_, unfortunately. I asked the AI to "collapse these toggles" and it started rewriting content. Very disappointing. # Satisfaction = Reality - Expectations I'm not arguing that these features provide no value to anyone, but I expected much more going in so I was dissatisfied with the outcome. Other tools in the ecosystem invariably shape user expectations. For my part I use Cursor quite a bit. When I use an AI augmented tool like Notion AI I expect: - A chat box that can read _and write_ content. - A chat box that understands and can manipulate the system. - For example, collapsing bullet points in Notion The implied notion pitch is: - What if AI could search your Notion docs? What if it could modify text (but not UI state) on a page? I generally find the built in search feature to be quite capable without AI, so Notion AI falls flat in my eyes. ## Verdict: Notion AI is not for personal use I have no visibility into Notion's revenue, but I would wager most of it comes from B2B sales, rather than individuals upgrading to the pro plan. As such, I'm fairly certain I'm not Notions target user and I suspect individual users in general are not Notions target demographic. They are a b2b company with a product optimized for teams. If you're working on _a team_, it might be very useful to ask for a summary of some onboarding documentation, or to ask specific questions about how your company operates. That sounds quite useful. However, when ever single word in the database was written _by you_ the value prop of summarization is less clear. I would go so far as to say that having my own past writing translated through an AI layer would diminish the experience. The exact phrasing, and the location of words on the page, often jogs my memory of something. It's like reliving the writing process, to some extent. An AI summary will totally remove that benefit. **What about more general AI chat?** This too seems dubious in terms of individual user value. ChatGPT and Claude both present much more sophisticated chat products than what what is currently available in Notion. For example, they both offer web search, while Notion AI does not. If you want web search you can use ChatGPT and if you want Notion search you can use Notion AI... but why use two tools? in both cases you're looking for information. Wouldn't it be better if ChatGPT could search Notion, or if Notion could search the web? I certainly think so, but it may not be the same for everyone. My point is that if someone builds a NotionGPT on top of ChatGPT it might be just as good as Notion Ai or even better because it can cross reference with online sources. Or how about the simple economics of it. If Notion AI could search the web, or if ChatGPT could search Notion, would you pay for both? Add to that the fact that ChatGPT offers more advanced models than Notion AI and the value seems very dubious. [^1]: Although i have yet to try this feature because after enabling new data connectors Notion reports that it might be _days_ before the data is accessible.