For some people, the chime of a Slack or Teams notification is just a noise. For others, it's a Pavlovian trigger for everything we hate about the working world. Ping! It's a nastygram from someone completely in the wrong. Boop! It's an invite for a meeting that should have been an email.

These modern elements of work should be a source of ease and enjoyment, not a digital leash we keep on our corporately issued gear. Emails should be easy on the eyes. Commuting should feel hopeful. Presentations and meetings should be joyfully informative. 

Maybe it's an overly optimistic POV, but Gen Z might be on to something with this whole romanticizing trend, and you can use AI tools to help test it out. 

Custom emotes

Why respond to a meeting invite or status update with a boring thumbs up when you could use AI tools like Google Gemini and ChatGPT to create your own custom emoji?

I used Gemini to create a bunch of emoji curated for work at CNET, based on my favorite video games, to spice up chat and email correspondence. Here's how they turned out:

Once you get an AI tool to help you generate custom emojis, you can upload them into your work's communications platform of choice, whether it's Slack, Google Chat or Microsoft Teams.

De-escalating downsides

Sometimes, dealing with coworkers can be the biggest buzzkill at a job. They're asking you to do things like "pitch in" and "do your job so they can do theirs" and "stop cooking fish in the air fryer on your desk."

Before you fire off a comeback that might land you in the unemployment office, consider letting an AI tool take the wheel to help you with your response. Even the pettiest of slights can turn into a years-long feud at the office or in the retail aisles, and AI tools can craft satisfying, fun correspondence to help you deal with the frustration. 

I asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude AI to generate a set of extremely cheesy one-liners tailored to a specific workplace, designed to break the ice in awkward or tense moments.

Gemini's jokes were a little long-winded and specific:

Claude AI really honed in on the specific bureaucracy of academia:

ChatGPT had the best one-liners and hit the closest to homeroom. These would be great for redirecting complaints or neutralizing gossip:

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Make the best of your breaks

Maxing out the potential of even a half-hour-long lunch break or a 15-minute step outside to inhale some fresh air is an art form seldom mastered. It's also too easy to fall into the trap of eating lunch while knocking out emails or simply retreating to your car for a sad little private sandwich consumption.

I asked Claude AI to give me some ideas for alternative activities to do during a 15-minute, half-hour and hour-long  break with the goal of returning to the work day refreshed from a super fun respite. 

Claude generated a map of the area and recommended mostly free ways to recharge. Its ideas ranged from coffee shop stops to stretching or doing yoga "in a quiet corner or stairwell," as well as journaling, meditating, walking, shopping and reading.

For the longer breaks, it suggested going on a scenic drive, having a fancy lunch at a restaurant and exploring a nearby town.

Whatever you decide to do to make your work-life balance better in the fun column, keep in mind that AI tools don't have deadlines, bosses armed with performance reviews, or bills to pay, so take their advice about how to behave at work with due caution.