Ultimate guide to the best AI tools to make your life and work easier

Generative AI tools have been popping up everywhere and becoming second nature to use. That’s thanks in part, to a familiar user experience. “If you’re using a generative AI model, you enter a prompt describing the output you’d like, and the program gives it to you,” explained Danica Lo, “whether it’s in the form of text, code, images, or—increasingly—sound and video.”

The most popular is ChatGPT, said Lo, a contributing editor at Fast Company, but there has also been a rise in text-to-image tools and AI avatars popping up around various social media.

Along with that comes some anxiety about whether the technology will get so advanced, humans will become obsolete. Lo explained that generative AI doesn’t have the capacity to take over our jobs but it can make our lives (and even the search for a job) a little bit easier. “To avoid going the way of door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen or Yellow Pages publishers, adapting to an AI-driven workplace will mean learning to leverage technology as a tool,” Lo wrote, “similar to how using the internet or specialist software can create enormous opportunities for scaling entire industries.”

As such, Fast Company tech reporter Jared Newman and Lo have compiled long lists of AI tools to help you with different needs. Here’s a curated guide of all the AI tools you’ll need to make your life and work easier.

AI tools to level up search

ChatGPT: Rather than fret about ChatGPT, think about how the chat-based bot can help you quickly look up things, generate ideas, write for you, tell stories, and much more.

“It offsets the tedium, leaving you to focus on getting your features to market faster. It can generate support and config code, create entire functions, write unit tests, and even synthesize documentation,” explained Marcus Merrell in a report for Fast Company. “It will be well-formatted, and you can copy it directly from the web interface into your codebase. This could be a great way to bootstrap a new project or give you a starting point from ground zero. This saves time, but it also saves brain power.”

ChatGPT can even be used to plan trips (kind of). Fast Company tech writer Jessica Bursztynsky tested out a ChatGPT-planned weekend trip to Bolinas, a small coastal town about an hour north of San Francisco.

Although ChatGPT recommended restaurants that were closed or no longer existed due to the data cut-off of 2021, it still planned a somewhat doable weekend itinerary.

Bursztynsky’s best advice for using this platform for travel planning is to input specific details such as what activities you like doing. But with the continuous growth of AI, in time chatbots could become a great aide in travel planning.

The new Bing: This software, similar to ChatGPT, is conversation-based and lives inside of Bing search.

Perplexity.ai: Ask this software questions and follow-ups and it will provide direct responses along with citations. It’s free to use and has the option to upgrade to Pro.

YouChat: This chatbot is also similar to ChatGPT in that you can ask it questions and follow-ups. It’s free but will require you to sign in, unlike ChatGPT.

Poe: This conversation-based AI is from the social Q&A platform Quora. It also requires you to sign-in, but is free to use.

AI tools to write better

PicsArt AI Writer: This free tool will generate quick descriptions and can be used for Instagram captions, slogans, LinkedIn headlines, etc.

NotionAI: This can be used to create text inside of Notion documents. There are a limited number of complimentary responses before you have to dole out $8 to $10 per month for the add-on subscription.

AISEO.ai: For content you’ve already written such as a blog post, AISEO’s content repurposed will rewrite it and turn it into an email or a Twitter campaign. AISEO also offers a tool called the Paraphraser. It uses generative AI to edit your writing. It can shorten, extend, and even change the tone.

Grammarly: This is a great tool for writers. As the name suggests, its core application is a grammar checker. But it also helps check spelling, tone, readability, and engagement.

Jasper.ai: Jasper is a software that uses AI to inspire things such as Instagram captions, essays you are stuck on, or responding to a birthday invite you don’t want to attend. All you have to do is put in a few prompts and it will give you options to choose from.

AI tools to help you summarize content

Eightify: This will create text summaries of YouTube videos and provide highlights you can click on to jump to the summarized video section. Users get up to three free summaries per week (on videos less than 30 minutes). For unlimited summaries, a subscription costs $4.95 per month, or $3.95 per month if you pay annually.

SkimIt.ai: When you email an article link to [email protected], it will provide you with a summary in about 10 minutes.

Wordtune Read: This provides summaries of articles and PDFs. It gives you five free summaries per month, then you pay $9.99 per month.

Sonoteller.ai: You can paste a link to a song on YouTube, and it will provide an analysis of its lyrical content, instrumentation, genres, and moods. It’s free to use.

AI tools for speech-to-text transcriptions

Whisper: Transcribes audio files online using language models from OpenAI.

Otter.ai: Use it to transcribe audio or video to text. You’ll get three free recordings and then have to pay for a subscription of $240 a year or a monthly subscription of $30 a month.

AI tools for images and videos

“You don’t need any video editing skill or experience. Nor do you need to shoot your own video. All you need is a link, some text, or an idea to use as a starting point,” said WonderTools creator Jeremy Caplan. He’s talking about Hypernatural which offers a free trial of watermarked clips before you have to pay for monthly credits on a sliding scale. Some others include:

Runway: This is a photo and video editor. It has a variety of AI tools, including green screen, image expansion, and 3D texture creation.

Genmo: This software will take still images and turn it into animations through the use of text prompts.

Nova AI: Nova AI will automatically caption, categorize, and tag videos uploaded. It unfortunately doesn’t work with music.

Make-A-Video: Meta’s new Make-A-Video tool will create a video of almost anything you want via text description.

Synthesia.io: This software creates pitch videos from text in just a few minutes using a computer-generated avatar.

Lensa: This is an app for image editing. Available for iOS and Android.

Nightcafe: This online AI image generator lets users use several AI image generators, including Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and others.

Image.AI: This software takes an image and keeps recreating it until the user is happy with it.

Photoleap: Ever wonder what your house might look like in the 3030? Photoleap can show you. This iOS-only app uses generative AI to take an image and turn it into a scene from many different genres including fantasy, cartoon, etc.

AI tools for audio

AIVA: Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist allows you to create custom music tracks without any prior knowledge of music.

“You can generate tracks based on emotion, and genre, or generate your own profiles consisting of tempo range, time signature, harmonies, and a bunch of other options,” explained Newman. “There’s even a fully-featured editor that lets you finesse your tracks note by note until they’re perfect.”

There is a free version that allows three downloads a month and paid plans start at about $15 per month.

ElevenLabs: Generate natural sounding speech from text. It is free for up to 10,000 characters of text per month. With a $5-per-month subscription the app lets users clone an existing voice.

Riffusion: Used to create music from text descriptions using Stable Diffusion.

Boomy: Used to generate music tracks by specifying the genre, instruments, and production values.

Beatoven: Use this AI tool to create music just by specifying a genre and mood.

Soundraw: This tool can create incidental music very quickly. Just tell it a mood, a genre, and a theme and it will create 15 different short music clips to choose from.

Murf: Murf is an AI app that creates voiceovers. There are 120 voices and 20 languages you can choose from to create a realistic sounding AI voiceover.

NaturalReader: This app reads to you anything and everything you want, whether that be an e-book or a screenshot of a long text. It also offers an array of voices you can choose from to read to you.

Cleanvoice.ai: Have you ever recorded yourself speaking only to find out the background noise is taking away from your recording? This software cuts out the excess of noise, allowing your voice to be heard clearly.

AI tools to make presentations

Presentations can be a bear to create, not to mention deliver to a not-so-captive audience. That’s probably why Wonder Tools creator Jeremy Caplan leans on Napkin.AI. He said the capabilities include several key elements for presentations:

• Add visuals to your presentation.
• Replace dry text bullet points with a visual metaphor to make a slide more engaging.
• Clarify a point in a meeting or workshop/class.
• Explain a complex course concept more memorably with a flowchart or mindmap.
• Add an explanatory visual to your newsletter or blog post.

For the latter, he said, “Rather than adding a generic image from Unsplash, or a random-ish AI-generated image, use a data graphic that directly relates to your material.” Napkin.AI is currently in beta and free to use on a desktop.

Tome: This AI app can help users make a presentation. Users can do everything they can do when normally making a presentation such as adding text and images. “As content is typed or inserted into each page’s canvas, it automatically reflows and stretches to look, well, presentable, without the need to scale and crop material to fit the confines of a traditional rectangular side,” Steven Melendez wrote in a previous Fast Company article.

AI assistance for meetings

AI also has tools that can help during meetings.

OtterPilot: This software transcribes and summarizes video calls. It’s free for up to 30 minutes per call and 300 transcription minutes per month. There is also a Pro account for $10 per month to increase those limits.

The fear or perhaps excitement that comes along with AI and its use in meetings is whether there will be more meetings or will allow for a lessening of business meetings. Matt Martin, a freelancer for Fast Company, explained that it won’t eliminate meetings but with the proper balance, it will help them be better.

“AI has the potential to streamline workflows and reduce the need for certain types of meetings, particularly those focused on information sharing and status updates,” explained Martin. “However, as AI prompts new ways of working and introduces unforeseen challenges, it may also create the need for different meetings focused on strategy, ethics, and human-AI collaboration.”

The goal is for AI to help to take care of some of the busywork that comes with meetings, allowing for workers to prioritize human interaction. Now instead of being on a call diligently taking notes, colleagues can take the time to be present and engaged in the meetings and with each other, especially as video meetings remain ubiquitous.

AI tools for finding a job

Job searching can be tedious. But thanks to AI, there are tools like the one recently debuted on LinkedIn to help you hunt. This feature is accessible with a LinkedIn premium subscription.

“The AI will analyze a job listing and tell the candidate how qualified they are, and how competitive they may be. It will give suggestions for educational resources candidates can use to fill gaps in their skill set,” said Mark Sullivan, a tech reporter for Fast Company. “The platform might also suggest people in the candidate’s network who might provide valuable information or contacts, and the AI will help the candidate draft a query letter to those people.”

There are also AI tools that can help you make your résumé and even better they are free. These tools, curated by tech reporter Doug Aamoth for Fast Company, can help you make your résumé or fix up your résumé.

NovoResume: This tool lets you create a one-page résumé fairly easily. All you have to do is pick a template, change the layout if you like, enter your information, and AI will take it from there.

Teal: This online résumé maker will use AI to generate summaries, achievements, and cover letters. All you have to do is import an existing résumé or your LinkedIn profile, highlight a few keywords from the job description, and it will create a customized résumé for each job you’re applying to.

CareerAI: This tool is great for creating a résumé from scratch.

Rezi: This tool only allows the creation of one free résumé. It also has a cool feature that tells you how likely your résumé is to stand out and tells you the likelihood of it passing through automated résumé-filtering systems.

AI could cause you stress, but you can also embrace it and use it as the personal assistant you’ve always wanted and could never afford. Taking advantage of all these different AI tools will allow you to save time and focus more on things you value.

That said, should you feel a little squeamish about the ethics of AI, there’s a tool to address that, too. Fast Company‘s Steven Melendez reported that a new data visualization tool “lets people in creative fields explore their ethical considerations around AI.” The tool, which guides users through a four-minute survey dubbed the Creative AI Magnifier, was developed by the design studio MANY, with funding from The New School’s Parsons School of Design. “It’s designed to be more than just a poll,” wrote Melendez, prompting [those] who use it to begin to sort out their own feelings about AI’s place in creative fields and their own work.”