Top 10 AI Tools You Must Try in 2024
We've been waiting for years to have computers that will obey our every command and make life easy for us. Even though it isn't there yet, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting close enough to make people talk about it more seriously, and these 10 bots are definitely worth looking at in 2024.
1. Brave Leo
Produced by Brave Browser, Brave Leo has 3 awesome features that will win your heart if you're after privacy/anonymity, speed, and independence from the big tech companies.
Read our recent blogs about Brave Browser and Brave Leo to understand what to expect.
What does Brave Leo do?
- Generates new content based on your instructions. This includes writing poetry, essays, and other written material.
- Provides answers to your questions.
- Generate summaries of websites or videos in real-time.
- Simplify topics, helping you understand complex information.
- Translates information into another language.
- Have a conversation with you.
Pricing
Brave Leo has a free version that anyone using Brave Browser can access without opening an account with Brave. There's also a paid version of $15 per month that gives you more options.
2. Google Bard
Google Bard is the opposite of Leo in many respects, as it is owned and operated by one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Bard is a Google experimental chatbot that helps you learn about almost anything, as it uses Google search tools, Google Maps, and YouTube, along with your Google space (including documents and Gmail) in real-time.
A selection of your conversations with Google Bard is used by human reviewers to train Bard so that it works even more efficiently in the future. So, it's not privacy-focused.
An extra feature that could be useful is that Google Bard has a speech-to-text and text-to-speech feature, enabling voice to be used instead of typing.
What does Google Bard do?
- Accesses the internet in real-time.
- Explores and generates original creative content. Should Bard copy a significant amount of information from a website, it will cite the link.
- Translates information into more than 40 languages.
- Simplifies topics, helping you understand complex information.
- Helps to write or debug code.
Pricing
Google Bard is free to use with a personal Google Account or a Google Workspace Account enabled by the administrator to access it.
3. ChatGPT 4.0
ChatGPT set the world talking about AI because it was the first chatbot that made the concept of a robot doing your bidding seem genuinely possible. Ask ChatGPT to write a rhyming poem about a cat; you'll have one in 10 seconds flat. Want coding checked? Ask ChatGPT. Copied your friend's essay and need it re-written? Ask ChatGPT. Don't you understand what a reverse proxy server is?
ChatGPT 4.0 is the next step up from the free ChatGPT 3.5 chatbot. An account with OpenAI is required to access either version of ChatGPT.
What does ChatGPT 4.0 do?
- Accesses live internet in real-time. Plus upload docs or images for it to check.
- Explores and generates original creative content, including poetry, emails, images and articles.
- Translates information into other languages.
- Simplifies topics, helping you understand complex information.
- Helps to write or debug code.
- Allow you to access hundreds of plug-ins that help you shop, play games, travel, eat out, generate images, compose, and play your own music… or create your own.
Pricing
The Open AI company offers a tiered service, depending on the access you would like. Anyone with an Open AI account can use the free version of ChatGPT 3. ChatGPT 4's subscription costs $20 per month.
4. Copilot
Microsoft created Copilot as a 'companion' for customers to help in their work and play. It integrates with Microsoft Windows 10 and 11 operating systems and Office platforms like:
- Outlook
- PowerPoint
- Teams
- Bing
Copilot excels with its tight integration into the Microsoft Office ecosystem. It can also create images. Open Microsoft Edge and sign in to see what Copilot can make for you.
What does Copilot do?
- Accesses live internet in real-time.
- Answer your questions (providing citation links if applicable).
- Explores and generates original creative content, including poetry, emails, and articles.
- Translates information into other languages.
- Simplifies topics, helping you understand complicated information.
- Creates images.
- Helps you design PowerPoint presentations, create great graphs in Excel and be a whizz at Teams.
Pricing
The Copilot version within Bing is free and will do the basics of generating content and images or answering questions. However, to get the bells and whistles that make life easier within Microsoft platforms, pricing starts at $30 per user per month and climbs to almost $100 for the top tier of usability.
5. YouChat
Search engine You.com first released its AI chatbot YouChat in December 2022 and has since upgraded to a newer version. While not as user-friendly as ChatGPT, YouChat lets you have human-like conversations with your search engine. It can incorporate the You.com apps for sites like Reddit and YouTube into responses to your questions.
What does YouChat do?
- Accesses the internet in real-time.
- Answer your questions and provide citation links to double-check.
- Generates content of all kinds.
- Helps you translate information into other languages. Alternatively, YouChat tries to find a website with the data already translated into your language.
- Simplifies topics, helping you understand complex information.
- Note: the basic version of YouChat is text only, with the paid version capable of generating images.
Pricing
YouChat is free to use without creating an account. It also offers plans offering more features. Prices start at $9.99 per month, with discounts for students and teachers.
6. OpenAI Playground
OpenAI Playground was created by the developers of ChatGPT. Still, unlike the chatbot discussed above, the primary purpose of OpenAI Playground is for developers or researchers to experiment with OpenAI's range of AI technology.
It helps you build AI assistants within your own applications that your clients can use with their queries.
What does Open AI Playground do?
- The OpenAI Playground is a web interface perfect for testing different language models for code Interpretation, retrieval, and function calling so that the correct information is provided to clients.
- You can train and fine-tune the available AI models using their datasets.
- It helps to get you started on your AI development adventure because it's loaded with tutorials and guides.
Pricing
OpenAI Playground starts out free to use. As a new sign-up, you get $5 worth of tokens that expire after 3 months, allowing around 750 requests. It then shifts to a pay-as-you-go token system.
Token Purchase
- You buy tokens in 1000 allotments
- 1000 tokens is around 750 words
Language Models
Prices differ based on model capability and usage. You can try the new GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI's most advanced model offered at a lower cost than GPT-4:
- $0.01 per 1000 input tokens
- $0.03 per 1000 output tokens
Pricing adjusts dynamically based on usage levels and specific language models accessed within the playground.
7. Stable Diffusion
If you've just written your own book and want to illustrate it your way, then Stable Diffusion could be your tool. Stable Diffusion can create images based on your text instructions or prompts.
As well as following prompts for new images, 'inpainting' and 'outpainting' are possible with Stable Diffusion. Inpainting means changing existing images or placing something different in parts of images. Outpainting means extending the edges of the picture with generated images.
Generating images takes more power and longer than text generation, so don't expect a detailed photo in a few seconds. Be patient and refine your prompts to get the image the way you're happy with.
What does Stable Diffusion do?
- Uses the everyday language prompts you provide along with digital art techniques to generate options for the picture you've painted in words.
- Use your uploaded image and change it according to the prompts you type.
- Inpainting and outpainting of images.
Pricing
Stable Diffusion offers a credit system. For example, you spend $10 to buy 1000 credits, providing you with "enough credits for roughly 5,000 SDXL 1.0 images."
8. Midjourney
Midjourney makes creating eye-catching digital art simple and entertaining. This AI image generator turned heads by producing a fake photo of Pope Francis sporting a puffer jacket - seemingly evidence of its potential and perils. When deciding if an image is fake, check for minor details, such as hands.
Midjourney is an online site used through the Discord server. It is owned by Anthropic, a self-funded research startup, not Big Tech.
Once you've registered, type 'imagine' and then your description of the image you want. Keep tweaking it until you get the picture you prefer. There are many prompts to get the perfect photo with striking photorealism.
What does Midjourney do?
- Uses the everyday language prompts you provide along with digital art techniques to generate options for the picture you've painted in words.
- Use your uploaded image and change it according to the prompts you type.
- Inpainting and outpainting of images.
Pricing
Midjourney has 4 tiers of payment between the Basic and Mega plan:
1. Basic: Ideal for casual users.
- Usage: 3.3 hours of fast GPU/month (approx. 200 images).
- Cost: $10/month.
2. Mega: Designed for heavy or professional users.
- Usage: 60 hours Fast generations/month. 12 concurrent fast jobs.
- Cost: $120/month.
There's a 20% discount for those signing up for a year.
9. DALL-E 2
DALL-E 2 is an image generator created by OpenAI. Provide DALL-E 2 with your prompts, and it will make the image of your imagination. Have the image painted like Dali, Picasso, or Monet. Create realistic photos or messy, muddy images. The scope is only limited to your ability to explain what you want.
What does DALL-E 2 do?
- Uses the everyday language prompts you provide along with digital art techniques to generate options for the picture you've painted in words.
- Uses your uploaded image and changes it according to the prompts you type.
- Inpainting and outpainting of images.
Pricing
DALL·E 2 charges per image with pricing starting at $0.0016 for images that are 256x256 resolution. DALL·E 3 the highest quality model goes up to $0.080 for HD. DALL·E 3 is also included in a Chat GPT subscription.
10. Character.AI
Character.AI is a make-believe website that warns at the start that everything is fake. This is important to remember as the AI character you create, and the ones already made by the company, are designed to be your friend or helpmate. You also create your own persona to interact with your character.
While it is fun to make up a persona for yourself and attributes for a character who can be visible to the world or to you only, the primary concerns are:
- Privacy concerns: Unless you provide permission, the default is your conversations are private, but the characters are very good at communicating, and some individuals may inadvertently provide personal information to an AI. Hacking is a threat to any site.
- Identity fraud or impersonation through the created characters.
- Spread of misinformation.
What does Character.AI do?
- Primarily designed for entertainment, Chacter.AI provides fun and exciting written conversations.
- Character.AI can accept voice-to-text, so you can use your microphone instead of typing. Created characters will write back to you.
Pricing
Character.AI is free for anyone to use, with a $9.99 monthly subscription available to improve the speed of response and community access.
Artificial intelligence can be fun and helpful, but it's important to remember:
- Avoid sharing personal details, as privacy isn't guaranteed.
- Verify information from chatbots, as they can err or misinterpret.
- Recognize that AI, despite seeming natural, isn't human.
- Be mindful of your wording in interactions; AI lacks human conversational nuances and may misinterpret. Avoid relying on AI for critical decisions.
Robert is a Taiwan-based writer and digital marketer at iamrobert design. He has a passion for helping people simplify their lives through tech.
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