When ChatGPT went offline for more than 10 hours in early June 2025, the degree to which companies have come to rely on generative AI became painfully obvious. Media reports that emerged in the wake of the outage revealed that many workers felt adrift without the resource, unable to tap into content generation tools and other AI-driven resources they’d come to rely on. Before service was restored, users launched more than 500,000 Google searches on the topic, many of them desperately looking for updates and alternatives.
The ChatGPT outage revealed two things every business owner should take seriously: First, if you are not leveraging AI, you will likely struggle to keep up with competitors who are. Recent statistics show that 78 percent of companies around the world are utilizing AI in some capacity to support their operations.
Second, choose your tools wisely. If you are building systems on something that doesn’t prove to be reliable, you could find that your investment doesn’t get you any farther ahead.
AI can help with content creation — but it’s not you
Social media content creation is an area where AI can be used to boost a company’s efficiency and impact. AI tools excel at automating labor-intensive tasks like video editing, captioning, and even idea generation. If you’re experiencing bottlenecks in those places that are frustrating your production schedule, AI can probably help.
But don’t expect AI to replace your social media content creation team. Today’s tools can’t stand in and replace your voice as an expert and the personality behind your business. Some products promise that, claiming their tools perfectly replicate your voice, but I’ve yet to see one that consistently delivers on that promise. AI still sounds like AI, and your audience knows when it’s being over-utilized. And a human touch is definitely still needed for important tasks like setting up your studio properly, which is a huge factor to success on social media.
Leaning too heavily on AI for pre-production components, such as ideation and scripting, causes your content to lose its human touch. Content generated exclusively by AI is easy to spot because it tends to be robotic and impersonal. Settling for that will rob you or your company of its uniqueness, which is key to driving real engagement and revenue.
If you are using AI for your content, you’ll still need to personalize it by tweaking the script or the messaging to make it sound like you. Overall, AI on its own will struggle to provide authentic content that your audience can connect with on an emotional level.
Tapping into the right tool makes all the difference
New AI tools are popping up in the market all the time, making big promises to save you time and money, but investing in the wrong tool can have you wasting time developing and training your team on workflows that fail to produce the kind of content that actually gets results.
Here are the top five content tools that companies wanting to cut down on the time it takes to make content should consider:
- · ChatGPT – It’s a free resource that can do the heavy-lifting on the creative process, like idea generation and scripting well as provide an “in-house expert” on file and asset management. If you’re looking for help with content ideation, give it a try. And if it is down, jump onto Gemini, Claude, or another platform.
- · Canva – This platform, which offers a free single-user account with pretty powerful tools, uses AI to help businesses boost the quality of their social media and other content. Its AI-driven chatbot acts as a design partner and is especially helpful with text or design-based reels, carousels, or other graphics-heavy content. If you are a larger organization looking for a version to use with your teams, it will cost you $100 per year per person.
- · OpusClip – This tool is an automated, AI-driven video editor designed for business owners who want to share content on social media. It repurposes long videos into short, shareable clips using AI and provides a workspace for editing existing short-form content in minutes. It can also add captions and a b-roll, and it can even schedule posts on your channels for you. Its $15 to $25 monthly subscription fee allows companies to dramatically improve their video content without hiring a professional editor.
- · Descript – This tool makes editing a video incredibly simple. It uses AI-powered voice generation to provide users with a script they can edit to improve the message and flow. As edits are made to the script, Descript automatically applies them to the video. It also gives users tools for adding a professional touch to the final product. It has a variety of plan options, with $24 per month providing unlimited basic and advanced AI-powered effects.
- · NotionAI – Managing files and video assets can quickly become complex and overwhelming, which makes a tool that streamlines database and file management invaluable. NotionAI provides these capabilities, with AI-powered tables and tools that can be integrated into many different tools and software. The top-tier plan is $20 per month.
The right AI investment can definitely pay off
While most of these tools have free options you can leverage if you’re on a tight budget, sticking strictly to free plans won’t give you the capacity or flexibility you need to put out high-quality content.
Paying for these tools to unlock their full potential usually has a much higher ROI than simply utilizing the more restrictive free version. Paying for top-tier access that will get the job done and give all of the members of your team access and support will probably involve spending $5,000 per year. If you are on a tight budget, you might be able to get away with spending under $1,000 a year using one affordable tool or a combination of free and paid tools.
But before you balk at the price, consider that $66,000 is the median U.S. salary for a full-time employee. And a person with the type of skills these AI-driven content creation and management platforms provide will likely cost you much more.
Creating the type of social media content that attracts attention and increases profitability still requires a human touch, but AI-driven tools can help you do it faster, at lower costs, and with greater professionalism. Tapping into the tools listed above can take your content to the next level, all while requiring less effort from you and your team.
Daniel Iles is the Founder of Viral Coach, a leading short-form content agency helping businesses scale visibility, leads, and revenue through social media. With a combined following of over 2 million and an average reach of 100 million monthly views across platforms, Iles has spent the last several years reverse-engineering what makes content go viral — and turning that knowledge into a scalable system for business growth. In 2023, he launched Viral Coach as a performance-based content agency designed to help companies doing $1M to $50M in annual revenue replace bloated marketing funnels with lean, effective short-form video strategies. The company reached $1M/month in revenue in under a year.
