AI is built into Brightidea wherever it saves people time: drafting and polishing ideas, brainstorming on a Whiteboard, creating images, researching companies, and surfacing the ideas worth your attention. This article explains each AI feature, what it's best used for, and how admins turn it on.
Read more about how Brightidea handles AI in our AI policy.
In this article
- AI features at a glance
- Idea submissions
- Memo
- Whiteboard
- Images
- Scout app
- Research in Project Room
- User Home recommendations and Top Ideas
- Connect your own AI tools
- Turn AI on or off
- FAQ
AI features at a glance
| Feature | Best for | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Idea submissions | Turning a rough thought into a clear idea description | Anyone submitting an idea |
| Memo | Drafting and expanding written documents | Anyone writing in Memo |
| Whiteboard | Jump-starting a brainstorm and organizing the results | Teams collaborating on a Whiteboard |
| Images | Creating visuals for ideas and site pages | Submitters and admins |
| Scout | Finding and researching outside companies | Scouting team admins |
| Project Room research | Background research on ideas that become projects | Project teams |
| Recommendations and Top Ideas | Showing people relevant ideas and surfacing the best ones | All users and admins |
Idea submissions
Great ideas often start as a sentence or two. AI in the submission form helps people turn that starting point into a description reviewers can act on, which means fewer vague submissions and less back and forth. It's especially helpful for first-time submitters and for people writing in a second language.
In the description field, the submitter enters a short prompt and selects Generate. AI writes a draft description.
Generating a description from a prompt.
From there, they can highlight any text and ask AI to reword, lengthen, shorten or check the grammar. The submitter always reviews and edits the text before submitting.
Options for improving highlighted text.
Memo
AI in Memo helps when you're stuck on the next line or need more material for a document, such as a business case, project brief or meeting summary. Ask it to draft, expand or rework text right in your Memo. Learn more about AI in Memo.
AI writing tools in Memo.
Whiteboard
A blank canvas can slow a workshop down. AI in Whiteboard gets teams moving by generating ideas, organizing content and shaping early concepts right on the canvas. Use it to seed a brainstorm, group sticky notes into themes, or turn a session's output into a document. Learn more about AI in Whiteboard.
AI tools on a Whiteboard.
Images
A strong image makes an idea easier to notice and remember. Describe the image you want, and AI creates it. You can then save it to your computer or use it on the site. Image generation is available in:
- Initiative home page headers
- Idea submission
- View Idea 3
- Whiteboard
- Memo
Creating an image from a prompt.
Scout app
Scout AI helps scouting teams find emerging technology companies. Describe a technology, trend or business need, and Scout AI searches the web for matching companies, researches each one against your submission form, and gives you sourced company profiles to review before you import them into your pipeline.
- Go to any screen that uses Quick Add.
- From the dropdown, select Generate with AI.
- Describe the type of companies you're looking for.
- Review the results, then select Import to add the companies to your pipeline.
Generating companies with Scout AI.
To learn what Scout AI researches, how it checks its work and what it's best for, see Scout: Track New Technologies.
Research in Project Room
When an idea becomes a project, the team usually needs background research before it can plan. With AI research agents, Brightidea runs that research when a Project Room is created, covering competitive context, IP considerations and how the idea fits your existing roadmap. The results are added to the idea's Project Room.
[Placeholder: confirm availability and how to request it, and link to a Project Room research article if one exists.]
User Home recommendations and Top Ideas
Some AI works quietly in the background to put the right ideas in front of the right people.
- User Home recommendations: each person's User Home shows their submissions, activity, projects and metrics, plus innovations relevant to them. Learn more about User Home.
- Top Ideas Meritology®: the Top Ideas view helps admins find the best ideas at a glance by evaluation scores, popularity, activity or merit. Meritology® is a proprietary formula that surfaces ideas with strong engagement and evaluation scores. Learn more about Top Ideas.
Connect your own AI tools
If your organization already has AI tools and policies in place, Brightidea can work with them. Each option below must be enabled by your Customer Success Manager.
- Bring Your Own Model (BYOM): run Brightidea's AI features on your own AI provider, such as Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, OpenAI or Anthropic, so your data stays within your existing governance. Learn more about BYOM.
- Brightidea MCP Server: work with Brightidea from AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. Search ideas, summarize campaigns and check pipeline status by asking in plain language. Learn more about the Brightidea MCP.
- AI-powered widgets: use an AI tool to generate custom HTML widgets, such as a leaderboard or a department tracker, and add them to your site.
Turn AI on or off
AI features are controlled at two levels, so you can turn AI on for your whole system and still choose which initiatives use it.
- System level: a System Administrator goes to System Setup > Site > General Settings and turns on the features they want under AI Assist: Memo AI Assist, Submission Form AI Assist, Image Generation and Whiteboard AI Assist.
- Initiative level: once a feature is on for the system, each initiative can turn submission and image features on or off in Site Setup > Ideas > Integrations.
The AI Assist settings in System Setup.
If your system uses Bring Your Own Model, the switch at the top of System Setup > Site > AI Models turns every AI feature on or off at once.
FAQ
Is our data used to train AI models? [Placeholder: answer from the AI policy, or link to the relevant section of Brightidea + AI Policies.]
Can we use AI in some initiatives but not others? Yes. Turn the feature on at the system level, then turn it off in Site Setup > Ideas > Integrations for any initiative that shouldn't use it.
I don't see an AI option that's described here. Check that it's turned on at both the system and initiative levels. Some features, such as BYOM and the MCP server, must be enabled by your Customer Success Manager first.
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