Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important developments of the last decade. AI tools have gone from basic to incredibly powerful, capable of doing complex, multistep tasks.
A few years ago, it was impressive that your camera roll could automatically detect the difference between a cat and a dog in a photo; now you can ask an AI to build an adoption form for your animal shelter and it will be ready to accept answers in just a few seconds.
What is an AI tool?
AI tools are apps and platforms that use artificial intelligence. For example, large language models allow them to understand your requests and respond in a human-like manner — while other tools use techniques like computer vision to interpret images, or generative AI to create written or visual content.
How I selected the tools in this list
There are dozens of AI chatbots, image generators, social media management services, and more on the market. Countless existing apps have added AI features and new platforms are launching every day. But with so many to choose from, it can be hard to know what the top AI tools are — and which just have good marketing. Luckily, I’m here to help you make the right decision.
As I said, I’ve been using these sorts of tools for as long as they’ve been available, so I have a specific list of search criteria I’m always looking to fulfill:
- Effectiveness: Whether it’s an AI search engine or AI project management app, it has to work well. A search engine that gives worse results than Google just isn’t worth using — even if it uses a flashy AI model.
- User-friendly experience: Some apps have confusing user interfaces, awkward workflows, and are otherwise just not great to use. But great apps are easy to navigate, have a bit of personality, and are nice to use overall. If I didn’t like an app when I tested it, there was no way it was making my list.
- Fair pricing: We all love a good deal — so every AI tool on this list is worth the subscription fee (and some are even free).
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Best AI chatbots
AI chatbots, also called AI assistants, are some of the most exciting new AI tools. They can help you find information from the web, answer questions, solve problems, write code, draft emails, and so much more. Their flexibility is a huge part of their appeal — all you have to do is enter a written prompt and the chatbot will do the rest.
- I use an AI chatbot almost every day to quickly summarize lots of complex information or perform some basic data analysis. Here are the best AI tools I’ve worked with.
1. ChatGPT
ChatGPT arguably kickstarted the current AI boom so it’s no surprise that it’s still one of the best AI chatbots on the market. It’s powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1 models, which are some of the most advanced currently available.
Beyond typical text-based content generation, the AI tool also features an advanced voice mode that allows you to have an actual conversation with the model, or even ask it to identify what’s happening in a video in real-time. Depending on which version you are using, it can also search the web for answers or use large documents to provide additional context to its response.
ChatGPT is available on the web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. If you want to be on the cutting edge, it’s the chatbot to use.
2. Claude
Claude is one of the best ChatGPT competitors. Its three models — Claude 3.5 Haiku, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus — are designed to be safe, accurate, and secure. This focus on trustworthiness and reliability makes Claude a popular choice for businesses, plus its AI model has a more personable, human-like tone of voice.
For all that, Claude is still packed with features, like Artifacts — this allows you to ask Claude to create a small web app with a single prompt that runs in a popup window. If you need a quick tool to solve a math problem or reformat a string of text in a specific way, it’s great.
3. DeepSeek
DeepSeek is a new AI chatbot competitor on the market. While it’s not as polished as ChatGPT or Claude, its AI models are just as powerful — and thanks to some incredible research advancements, it’s far cheaper to run. This means that DeepSeek gives you access to its most powerful models for free.
DeepSeek is available on the web and through iOS and Android apps. While it doesn’t have as many features as ChatGPT, the DeepSeek R1 model is incredibly impressive and can work through really complex problems.
Best AI writing tools
While every AI chatbot can be used to help write or edit, dedicated AI writing tools take things further. They make it easier to generate long, cohesive documents from a prompt, document, website, or other resources, or to edit your writing.
If you want a consistent brand voice across all your communications, press releases generated automatically, blog posts created in a few seconds, or just a super-powered spelling and grammar checker, these are the tools for you.
1. Jasper
Jasper is an AI writing tool for marketers. Originally called Jarvis, it was one of the first major AI writing tools. You can train Jasper in your brand’s tone and style preferences as well as provide all the additional context it needs to know about your company and its products. The AI can then take your written prompt or rough draft and generate perfect copy.
While it can generate any kind of writing you need, it excels at creating press releases, blog posts, social media captions, product descriptions, and other sorts of marketing copy with a consistent brand voice.
2. Microsoft Copilot Pro
Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant built directly into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, Word, and Excel. This integration is what makes it one of the best AI writing tools. If you use Word, you have a handy AI at your fingertips ready to help out. If you need a template to work from, a first draft, or your work entirely rewritten, it can do it for you.
On top of that, Copilot works as a chatbot that can answer questions about any document, help you figure out how to phrase something, and generally make your life easier. You can even use it on the web or your smartphone, so your AI assistant isn’t just locked into Word.