AI-assisted Help authoring tools

We’re seeing Help authoring tools, wikis and word processors integrate AI technology such as ChatGPT into their apps for the purpose of assisting people as they write. Many make calls to the ChatGPT API to carry out these tasks, so they are enabling you to use ChatGPT without having to leave your usual authoring application.

MadBot

MadBot is an AI-based plugin for MadCap Flare that helps improve the clarity, simplicity, and readability of your technical documentation.

You can create and save your own prompts to its ribbon bar. This provides a practical way to tailor the bot for your specific needs.

It uses ChatGPT 3.5 to analyse your content and suggest improvements.

See:

https://www.improvementsoft.com/Content/Plugins/plugins-madbot.htm

GPT for Sheets and Docs

GPT for Sheets and Docs is a Chrome extension that works as an AI writer plugin for Google Sheets and Google Docs.

Website: https://gptforwork.com 

Oxygen AI Positron Assistant Add-on

The Oxygen AI Positron Assistant is an add-on for the OxygenXML authoring tool.

The Oxygen Positron Service uses the OpenAI ChatGPT GPT-3.5 model to provide document generation, change suggestions, and translation capabilities.

It helps writers while they edit or review the technical documentation. It gives hints about what to write next, improve readability of content, or re-structure the content in various ways.

It can be used to generate content:

·     You can start typing a phrase and use the “Continue writing action” to get a suggestion for continuing the phrase.

·     You can write instructions for content that you want to be generated and use the “Follow instructions” action to add the generated content in the document.

A group of translation actions will try to preserve the XML markup structure while translating the content to French, German, Japanese, or English.

To obtain overview information, you can use an action to summarise the selected content or to get readability suggestions.

https://blog.oxygenxml.com/topics/ai_positron.html

https://blog.oxygenxml.com/topics/using_chatgpt_in_a_dita_xml_project.html

Its “DITA Topic Tools” actions allow you to perform DITA-aware tasks, such as:

·     Automatically create the short description for a topic, summarising its content.

·     Generate index terms in the prolog section of a topic by analysing the topic content and extracting relevant terms.

·     Turn a phrase that enumerates some options into a list with the Itemize action.

·     Flatten a list into content that enumerates the options from the list with the Join Items action.

·     Generate a new DITA topic from a title or a short description by expanding the content.

·     Replace content with a version that improves its readability.

Document360

Document360 is a technical authoring tool for creating self-service Knowledge Bases. It has similar AI features.

These include:

A SEO meta description generator

https://docs.document360.com/v3/docs/seo-description-generator

A tag recommender

https://docs.document360.com/docs/ai-tag-recommender

An article title recommender

https://docs.document360.com/v3/docs/ai-title-recommender-for-articles

Notion AI

The Notion wiki now has AI built in to help improve the clarity, simplicity, and readability of your technical documentation.

https://www.notion.so/product/ai

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an artificial intelligence assistant feature for Microsoft 365 applications and services, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.

It uses on OpenAI’s GPT-4 Large Language Models and Microsoft Graph to convert user text input into content.

Copilot 365 can be used to generate and edit text in Word documents based on user prompts. Users can also ask Copilot to push rewrite suggestions that strengthen the arguments of highlighted texts.

Google Duet AI for Google Workspace

Google's Duet AI provides generative AI features in the paid version of Gmail, Google Docs, Meet, Slides, and Sheets.

Not only can Duet AI help you write the content, it can also include variable placeholder text in the document. Or what it calls smart chips. Smart chips can be used for information you want to customize like the product name of the product you're documenting. 

Google says this helps you go from concept to completion faster without ever leaving your document.

It also has a new proofread suggestion pane that offers suggestions for writing concisely, avoiding repetition, and using a more formal or active voice.

Writing developer docs

Mintlify

Mintlify generates documentation, by using content in your codebase.

https://writer.mintlify.com/

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