Artificial intelligence (AI) is having its moment. Whether it's the massive-name products like ChatGPT or Dall-E 2 blowing up the internet, or something more subtle, like the AI systems powering big-name companies from Duolingo to Instagram, the use of AI has never been more clear.
But equally, it has never been easier for people to use AI to leverage their own lives. With a huge list of tools available online, AI can aid you in making presentations, sorting your finances, and even building an entire website from scratch.
But part of this massive boom is a major flooding of the market. There are hundreds, if not thousands of AI tools out there, all promising to fix your life in some way. We've done the hard work and picked out the best AI tools, listing them below.
ChatGPT - Answers at your fingertips
When it comes to AI tools, there is no bigger name than ChatGPT. The chatbot made by OpenAI does a bit of everything.
Need to build a website? It can provide the code. Want a fully-fledged short story about dinosaurs running local government, it’s there. Need a stand-up comedy routine… okay, it doesn’t understand comedy whatsoever, but it will try its best.
ChatGPT can best be described as having a know-it-all friend that’s willing to answer any question and strangely keen to do all of your work for you.
SlidesGo - Best for presentations
If building the perfect presentation isn’t in your wheelhouse or, quite frankly, is something you just really don’t want to do, Slidesgo is aimed at you.
Its AI presentation maker is a completely free tool. All you need to do is tell it the topic, the preferred style and tone, and set it on its way. Then, you can jump in and make any desired changes that are needed. Like all AI tools, it can be hit or miss so be prepared to rework your notes when it has completely misunderstood the level of ‘playful’ you’re after.
Sanebox - Getting a grip on your email
Getting through daily emails is a surprisingly mammoth task.
Why is a random café emailing you about your birthday? When did you sign up for all of these newsletters and promotional daily emails? No one knows, but they don’t stop coming, and that’s where Sanebox is trying to help.
The AI-powered email assistant declutters your emails, pulling the important stuff to the front, and organises everything else into neat folders.
Over time, it learns what you want to see, prioritising emails from certain people, and hiding the stuff you never open. Nothing is deleted, just moved to the virtual backrooms.
Cleo - Sorting your finances
Cleo is a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to AI tools. It has the ability to sort your finances, make budget plans, and save you money where you didn't know you could before... but it will do all of this while talking to you like a dad who has just learned the definition of a meme.
Littered with misunderstood references and phrases that feel like someone read a book titled 'What are the kids saying these days', Cleo can feel a little heavy-handed. However, once you get used to all of that, Cleo is a goldmine of budgeting tips.
It can help you build your credit, get you out of an overdraft, or simply get better at budgeting your money. This can be through examinations of your spending, plans for paying off loans or simply 'roasting' you with insults when you're overspending (like we said, it is best not to question it).
SurferSEO - Mastering the world of SEO
The methods of search engine optimisation (SEO) have come a long way. Gone are the ‘throw it at the wall and see if it sticks’ attitudes, SEO is now a complicated art of metrics, updates, and hard work.
Luckily, for those just starting out, there are AI tools that do a lot of the work. SurferSEO is one of the best known, generating SEO-ready content, running website checks, and generally handling most of the nitty-gritty SEO work for you.
It can get pretty granular with its adjustments, while always explaining what it is doing.
Wix ADI - Building a website
Building a website has never been easier. In fact, with the help of AI, you don’t really have to do much.
Of course, the coding is taken out of your hands, but now companies like Wix utilise AI to sort the website’s copy, design, functionality, and pretty much every single other part.
Simply fill in a few questions and provide the core information and viola! You have a complete website where you can make the small changes needed to perfectly fit your vision.
Soundraw - Sourcing a soundtrack
Music made by artificial intelligence has come a long way.
Not too long ago, the best results possible were a mess of sounds that made experimental jazz seem coordinated. Now, you can choose genres, speeds, and even the feel of a song while still getting something that sounds like a real song!
While there are a few companies in this field, Soundraw is leading the way. All of the music is copyright-free, and the model is trained entirely on music produced by the team so there are no concerns over stolen content.
Jasper - Developing the perfect marketing campaign
Jasper is the Jack of all trades, master of none of the AI tools world. It's loaded to the brim with tools for generating marketing campaigns, writing copy, making images and logos, and even deciding the overall tone of your adverts.
By doing so much, Jasper can essentially act as a whole marketing department for your company. However, like most AI tools, it is as eager as it is sometimes a bit misguided.
It can create an entire marketing campaign in seconds, but an extra pair of eyes is needed to make it less… well, like it was written by a robot that doesn’t understand humans.
Genei - Supercharge your research
Research for a big project gets messy.
A litter of browser tabs, lists of researchers' papers to remember, and a highlighting system that you’re sure made sense when you started.
Genei is a tool that attempts to tidy up a lot of these problems. It can summarise background reading and offer overviews and highlights from long papers.
These documents can then be stored in projects and folders, all of which can be searched for specific quotes and phrases. You can even ask Genei specific questions about a paper if it is only a niche idea you need from it.
Grammarly - perfect your writing
We all make mistakes at work, in our emails, in newsletters and just about anywhere we might be writing. Like an overbearing teacher who won’t leave your side, Grammarly just wants the best for you.
It shows grammatical mistakes, punctuation corrections, and even just ways to sound more articulate in your writing.
The AI-powered tool might occasionally misunderstand your tone, trying to make you sound oddly passive-aggressive to a colleague or somewhat stuffy in a fun piece of writing, but for the most part, it’s just saving you from a spelling faux pas.
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