Sam Rinko, Author at eWEEK https://www.eweek.com/author/sam-rinko/ Technology News, Tech Product Reviews, Research and Enterprise Analysis Wed, 19 Jun 2024 22:51:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.3 11 Best AI Meeting Assistant (2024): Top Tools for Seamless Meetings https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/best-ai-meeting-assistants/ Wed, 19 Jun 2024 14:00:46 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=223280 Curious about the best AI meeting assistant to streamline your 2024 meetings? Explore our top 11 picks and find the perfect tool for efficiency!

The post 11 Best AI Meeting Assistant (2024): Top Tools for Seamless Meetings appeared first on eWEEK.

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AI meeting assistant tools can provide a major productivity boost during meetings by transcribing, captioning, and summarizing discussions, identifying speakers, and tracking action items, allowing you to concentrate on your conversations without distraction. We evaluated the best AI meeting assistant tools to see how they compare on features, pricing, pros and cons, and use cases to help you determine the best virtual assistant for your business.

Here are our picks for the best AI meeting assistants of 2024:

  • Fireflies.ai: Best for Advanced Features
  • Fathom: Best Free AI Meeting Assistant
  • Avoma: Best for Conversation Analysis and Insights
  • Sembly: Best for Comprehensive Meeting Summaries
  • Otter: Best for Transcription
  • Krisp: Best for High-Quality Meeting Audio
  • tl;dv: Best for UX and Product Teams
  • MeetJamie: Best for Quick Meeting Summaries
  • Airgram: Best for Team Collaboration
  • MeetGreek: Best for Meeting Highlights and Keyword Detection
  • Gong: Best for Sales Coaching

Best AI Meeting Assistants

The following table shows how the best AI meeting assistants compare at a glance, followed by detailed writeups of each of our picks.

Best For Supported Meeting Platforms Keyword Search Alerts Starting Price
Fireflies.ai Advanced features Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex No $10 per user per month, billed annually
Fathom Free AI meeting assistant Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet Yes $15 per user, per month
Avoma Conversation analysis and insights Bluejeans, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, Highfive,  Lifesize, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, UberConference Yes $19 per user, per month, billed annually
Sembly Creating comprehensive meeting summaries Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams No $10 per user, per month, billed annually
Otter Transcription Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams No $10 per user, per month, billed annually
Krisp High-quality meeting audio Zoom, Google Meet, Bluejeans, Skype, Microsoft Teams, 8×8 No $8 per user, per month, billed annually
tl;dv UX and product teams Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams No $18 per user, per month, billed annually
MeetJamie Quick meeting summaries Webex, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams No $25 per user, per month
Airgram Team collaboration Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom No $18 per user, per month
MeetGreek Highlights and keyword detection Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom No $15 per user, per month, billed annually
Gong Sales coaching Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams Yes Contact for quote

Fireflies.ai icon.

Fireflies.ai

Best For Advanced Features

The Fireflies.ai AI-powered meeting assistant helps you to transcribe, summarize, record, filter, and analyze your virtual meetings and conversations. Like a fly on the wall, Fireflies joins your virtual meeting and captures video and audio recordings along with AI-powered notes so you can read, listen to, or share them.

This has a wide range of use cases, from recruiters reviewing hiring interviews to managers checking action items from their meetings to salespeople analyzing their recent sales calls to learn what went wrong.

With its advanced recording search and filtering feature, you can also find and listen to key points of the call. The conversation intelligence tool lets you track speaker time, sentiment, objections, competitors, and other custom data points you want to monitor and analyze.

In setting up Fireflies.ai, I liked how it prompted me to set rules for when it attends meetings and how it sends recaps that let me automate who receives the notes to ensure they don’t go to clients unless I specify.

Fireflies.ai screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Unlimited storage for business users Priority support limited to Enterprise plan
Can record using the Chrome extension Free plan doesn’t allow download

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 800 minutes of storage per seat
  • Pro: $10 per user, per month billed annually; month-to-month plan costs $18 per user
  • Business: $19 per user, per month billed annually; month-to-month plan costs $29 per user
  • Enterprise: Custom quote

Features

  • Integrates with more than 40 third-party tools across 10 categories
  • Variable meeting audio playback speed
  • Video screen capture capability
  • Conversational intelligence
  • Collaboration capabilities

Fathom icon.

Fathom

Best Free AI Meeting Assistant

Fathom is a free AI meeting note-taking tool that can record, transcribe, highlight, and summarize your meetings with no usage limitations. It works with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet and integrates with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zapier to enable the automatic transfer of meeting notes to these systems.

Although the free plan should suffice for most users, the company does offer a Fathom Premium plan and Team additions that offer advanced AI summaries and AI-triggered actions. You can try Fathom Premium for free for 30 days.

After exploring the demo, I noticed that the user interface is clean, and the meeting summaries are accurate and concise. The one thing that surprised me most about Fathom’s AI meeting minute-taking capabilities was how quickly it generated a summary with time stamps from the video call. In the demo, the summary outline was ready in less than 30 seconds. Action items are also automatically captured and saved on the sidebar, making it hard to forget them.

Fathom screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Generous free plan with no usage limits Zoom integration could be improved
Meeting summaries within 30 seconds Bot can be finicky

Pricing

  • Free edition: Ideal for personal use
  • Premium: $15 per user, per month
  • Team Standard: $19 per user, per month
  • Team Pro: $29 per user, per month

Features

  • CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce, and Close)
  • Okta SSO/SCIM integration
  • Searchable repository for calls
  • Unified view of all conversations with customers
  • Keyword alerts

Avoma icon.

Avoma

Best for Conversation Analysis and Insights

Avoma is an end-to-end AI meeting assistant, conversation intelligence, and revenue intelligence tool that allows individuals and teams to capture, transcribe, analyze, and take automatic notes on meetings and sales calls.

Its powerful conversational intelligence feature sets it apart by helping business leaders and sales professionals glean critical insights from conversations about what is and isn’t working. For example, you can see which topics the most successful reps are discussing on their calls with prospects or create scorecards to objectively score conversations based on your chosen criteria, whether that’s the number of questions asked or time spent on a specific topic.

As I see it, the main benefit here goes to the sales leaders looking to develop more data-driven sales training plans. Yet it can also be useful for managers who want to teach their direct reports how to succeed in internal meetings.

Avoma screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
AI scorecards and autoscoring Rapid playback speed sometimes misses words
Keyword search alerts Business and Enterprise plans lack monthly pricing

Pricing

  • Basic: Free for up to five meetings per month
  • Starter: $19 per user, per month for up to 20 meetings, billed annually; $24 per user, per month for up to 20 meetings, billed monthly
  • Plus: $49 per user, per month for unlimited meetings, billed annually; $59 per user, per month for unlimited meetings, billed monthly
  • Business: $79 per user, per month, billed annually
  • Enterprise: $149 per user, per month, billed annually

Features

  • Scheduling capabilities, from access scheduling to group scheduling
  • Meeting recording
  • Tool to upload pre-recorded audio or video files
  • Transcription and AI notes
  • Conversational AI and automatic scorecard
  • Integrations with CRM, video conferencing, and dialer tools

Sembly icon.

Sembly

Best for Creating Comprehensive Meeting Summaries and Minutes

Sembly is an end-to-end meeting assistant that transcribes, takes notes, and generates insights for your professional meetings. The solution also helps with scheduling. By syncing Sembly with your Outlook or Google calendar, you can permit it to automatically join all of your calls without downloading or installing any software. I found this automatic record feature of Sembly to be very helpful, as it saves time for users.

Best of all in my view, Sembly’s AI identifies key items in the discussion—such as actions, decisions, issues, risks, events, and requirements—and summarizes it all for you into a neat paragraph at the top of the notes. This feature enables you to get the gist of what was said and decided without reading through the entire text.

Sembly screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Offers meeting notes with AI summary Professional plan limited to one member
Supports over 40 languages Some recordings available only to Team and Enterprise plans

Pricing

  • Personal: Free for a four-hour record limit and one-hour monthly upload, limited to one member
  • Professional: $10 per month for one user, billed annually; $15 per month for one user, billed monthly
  • Team: $20 per user, per month, billed annually, or $29 per user, per month, billed monthly; limited to 40 members
  • Enterprise: Custom quotes

Features

  • Integrates with task management tools such as HubSpot and Zapier
  • Works with Zoom and other meeting apps
  • Record and transcribe capabilities
  • In-depth meeting notes
  • Voice identification capability

Read our guide to the Best Artificial Intelligence Software to learn about the larger landscape of leading AI software.

Otter.ai icon.

OtterPilot

Best for Transcription

OtterPilot is an AI-powered meeting assistant that provides transcription and collaboration features, and when you connect it to your Google or Outlook calendars, it will automatically join your Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet meetings.

The service is capable of transcribing both in-person and virtual meetings. It can be used for various purposes, including transcribing interviews, meetings, lectures, and podcasts, and works for audio and video files as well as YouTube. To save you time, the tool will also provide AI-powered summaries of the transcription, condensing as much as an hour of conversation into a 30-second brief.

In exploring the free version, I found the in-app AI chatbot helpful. It could summarize calls from last week, tell me the status of a deal, and even help me prepare for a meeting. I also found the user interface to be self-explanatory and the platform easy to navigate.

OtterPilot screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Exportable audio, text, and captions Sales tool only available to enterprise users
Supports mp3, txt, pdf, docx, srt, and bulk export Limited language support

Pricing

  • Basic: Up to 300 monthly transcription minutes
  • Pro: $10 per user, per month, billed annually; $16.99 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Business: $20 per user, per month, billed annually; $30 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Enterprise: Quote available upon request

Features

  • Automatic transcription
  • Automatic sync of audio/video files from Dropbox
  • Recording and playback capabilities
  • AES-256 encryption for real-time content
  • Search and keyword analysis
  • Auto-sends meeting summaries to attendees

Krisp icon.

Krisp

Best for High-Quality Meeting Audio

Krisp is an AI-powered voice clarity and meeting assistant tool. It removes the background voices of other people talking in the same room and keeps only your voice on the call. If there’s a lot of noise at your home or corporate office—landscapers, kids playing, fellow salespeople—Krisp may be the perfect meeting assistant for you.

Its AI voice clarity technology offers background voice cancellation, noise cancellation, echo cancellation, and accent localization so clients, partners, colleagues, and peers won’t be distracted by other noises.

Krisp’s other meeting assistant capabilities include AI-powered meeting transcription and meeting notes, but in my view, the focus on audio quality is what helps Krisp stand out in a business environment increasingly prone to distraction.

Krisp screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
High-quality audio for meetings and calls Free plan lacks 24/7 support
Unlimited meeting transcription on free plan Only two meeting summaries daily on the free plan

Pricing

  • Free: 60 minutes per day of noise, background voice, and echo cancellation; unlimited transcriptions
  • Pro: $8 per user, per month, billed annually; $12 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Enterprise: Custom quotes

Features

  • Automatic summarization
  • Outbound and inbound noise cancellation
  • Real-time meeting transcriptions
  • Echo and background voice cancellation
  • User management option

tl;dv icon.

Tl;dv

Best for UX and Product Teams

tl;dv is an AI meeting assistant that automatically summarizes and takes notes on your meetings. Most notably in my view, it includes a full range of features that can help UX and product teams build better products more quickly. For example, it can automatically capture customer feedback and feature requests from sales meetings and send them to the product team.

It also makes collaborating on product development easier by allowing you to share snippets of product conversations and customer research calls with your other team members. Its AI keyword and topic identification tool helps you analyze all your customer calls to gain insight into their specific desires, letting you create feedback-driven products.

Tl;dv screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
More than 30 languages supported No free trial for Pro plan
Generous free plan Limited features compared to other tools

Pricing

  • Free forever: No cost for small teams and individuals
  • Pro: $18 per user, per month
  • Business: $59 per user, per month
  • Enterprise: Custom quotes

Features

  • Transcribe and summarize in more than 20 languages
  • Spot trends in customer conversations
  • Capture customer feedback and feature requests
  • Combine clips into reels
  • Embed recordings and clips to WordPress and Notion
  • Automatic speaker recognition

MeetJamie icon.

MeetJamie

Best for Automatic Meeting Summary

MeetJamie is an AI notetaker for meetings that works across 15 languages and most popular meeting tools, including Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet. MeetJamie is also capable of extracting tasks and detecting decisions in a meeting so that nothing falls through the cracks in your business meetings.

What I found most notable about the app was that, unlike the many artificial intelligence meeting assistant tools that automatically sync with your calendar and join your call when it’s meeting time, MeetJamie doesn’t send a bot to your meeting—instead, it records your meeting audio and generates transcripts and summaries. This is preferable for people who don’t want a bot hanging around in their virtual meetings and calls because they find it awkward or intrusive.

MeetJamie screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Supports over 30 languages Requires installation
Automatic speaker recognition No video recording

Pricing

  • Free: Five monthly meeting credits for meetings up to 30 minutes
  • Standard plan: $25 per user, per month
  • Pro plan: $49 per user, per month
  • Executive plan: $105 per user, per month

Features

  • Automatic generation of summary and action items
  • Custom note templates
  • Meeting highlight
  • Meeting recordings

Read our guide to the Top 20 Generative AI Tools and Apps to learn more about the leading artificial intelligence tools being used by enterprise companies.

Airgram icon.

Airgram

Best for Team Collaboration

Airgram is an AI meeting assistant that helps you record, transcribe, and share your meetings and conversations. It automatically turns speech into searchable, editable text that you can easily export to popular tools like Notion or Slack. This is great for looping in team members who were absent or not invited to the meeting but would still get value out of the key insights in the conversation.

Once transcribed, multiple people can comment on and edit the transcript of meeting notes, making it easy to collaborate with team members and clarify action items post-meeting.

Unlike other tools, Airgram also offers several meeting agenda templates and options, making it easy to set up meetings with a predefined structure. I found the tool’s templates to streamline the process of agenda-setting to be useful and user-friendly.

Airgram screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Integration with task management apps Speaker differentiation feature can be buggy
Can create video snippets Free plan integration is limited

Pricing

  • Free: 30 minutes maximum call duration
  • Plus: $18 per user, per month

Features

  • Share meeting snippets and links with internal and external contacts
  • Transcribe imported audio and video files
  • Associate notes from recurring meetings
  • Works with Zoom and Google Meet

MeetGeek icon.

MeetGeek

Best for Highlights and Keyword Detection

MeetGeek integrates with your video conferencing tools to record, transcribe, and distribute meeting highlights to meeting participants. I found the distribution feature to be especially useful, and the tool’s keyword detection abilities mean many teams—including sales, HR, and marketing, for example—can benefit.

The sales team can use it to automatically capture notes and insights from customer calls, thereby pushing tasks and highlights into their CRM tools such as HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce. Meanwhile, HR teams can automatically sync meeting notes and recordings with their applicant tracking systems (ATS) to create rich candidate profiles that can be analyzed later.

Additionally, marketing teams can use it to make a repository of customers’ insights, allowing them to turn feedback into case studies.

MeetGeek screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Integrates with project management tools Lacks instant meeting capability
Team collaboration features Limited support for low-tier plans

Pricing

  • Basic: Free plan
  • Pro: $15 per user, per month, billed annually; $19 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Business: $29 per user, per month, billed annually; $39 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Enterprise: Starts at $59 per month

Features

  • User management capability
  • Integrations with third-party services, including HubSpot and Slack
  • Automatic sharing for participants
  • Highlight-capture and keyword-detection
  • Exports transcripts to Google Docs, Word, and XLS

Gong icon.

Gong

Best for Sales Coaching

Gong is an AI conversation intelligence platform designed to help sales reps and coaches record and analyze sales calls to identify best practices and mistakes. The coaching capability is what truly distinguishes Gong—coaches can drill into an individual rep’s or entire team’s sales call to identify talk ratio, question rate, topic duration, and other data points. With analytics, they can also quickly figure out which tactics work best and use these insights to develop sales training programs.

When a coach isn’t around, reps can also access a library of call recordings to self-teach themselves. They can watch and listen to what top performers are doing. Gong can also automate coaching with the AI insights which identify teachable moments in calls and offer reps data-driven recommendations.

Gong screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Data-driven sales call performance insights Must call for quote
Bundled with revenue intelligence features Expensive for those seeking a basic meeting assistant

Pricing

  • Call for quote
  • Pricing depends on license and number of users

Features

  • Conversational intelligence
  • Keyword tracking
  • Topic duration analysis
  • Sales call best practice identification
  • Automatic call recordings and call library

Key Features of AI Meeting Assistant Software

While AI meeting assistant solutions vary from vendor to vendor on how they implement various features, the key features across most tools include meeting notes, action item tracking, integration with third-party services, and intelligent meeting search.

Meeting Notes and Transcript

Meeting notes are a critical component of AI meeting assistant software, as they help you remember the important details from your meeting and any action items that you or other team members need to complete before the next meeting. The transcription capability helps you capture every word spoken and creates a searchable record to refer to later.

Action Item Tracking

AI meeting assistants can track action items assigned during meetings and remind participants to complete them. Some software may even integrate with project management tools or task trackers to streamline this process. For example, Sembly and MeetGeek integrate with task and project management tools.

Integration with Third-Party Services

Another important feature to consider is integration with third-party apps. Syncing your AI meeting assistant tool with Calender apps like Google and Outlook and video conferencing software like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams will allow it to join your meetings and take notes for you automatically. Just be aware that not all AI meeting assistants integrate with all video conferencing tools. You need to verify that your selected tool can connect with your company’s existing software and tools.

​​Intelligent Meeting Search

AI-powered intelligent meeting tools allow you to use keywords to search through your AI meeting assistant’s past meeting notes, documents, and recordings to retrieve relevant information, eliminating the need for manual searching and saving time.

How to Choose the Right AI Meeting Assistant Tool for Your Business

The best AI meeting assistant for your business depends on your needs and preference—there is no one-size fits all AI meeting app. To choose the right AI meeting assistant for your business, consider the following:

  • Company Needs: Specific pain points and challenges you hope to address with an AI meeting assistant. Do you need mainly transcription, or are you looking for an array of advanced tools?
  • Organization Size: The size of your organization and the number of employees using the AI meeting assistant. You may select the enterprise plan, which typically offers a number of advantages.
  • Budget: Some meeting assistant tools may be more affordable than others, while some may offer more advanced features but come at a higher cost.
  • Integration with Existing Tools: Can it connect with your current tech stack?
  • Features: Look for features that are beneficial to your organization and worth the cost that the AI meeting tool charges. What upgrades is the vendor planning?

How we Evaluated these Tools

We analyzed more than 30 AI meeting assistant tools and scored them based on five key data points: core features, customer service and support, cost, integrations, and ease of use. We assigned a score to each AI meeting assistant tool based on these factors to determine their overall ranking.

We selected the top 10 AI meeting assistant tools based on their scores and further evaluated them by conducting in-depth research including reading customer reviews, analyzing case studies and testimonials, and studying website and product documentation. We signed up for a free trial or free plan where possible to gain hands-on experience.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What Is the Best AI Meeting Note Taker?

The best meeting note taker depends on your team’s current budget priorities. If you need a free AI meeting assistant with basic note-taking abilities, for instance, you can’t go wrong with Fathom.

Is There an AI to Take Notes on Team Meetings?

AI meeting assistants like Sembly can take notes on team meetings, record them, transcribe them, and even provide AI summaries and outlines of the conversation.

Can AI Transcribe a Meeting?

AI meeting assistants and note-taking apps like Avoma can connect with your meeting app and transcribe your voice and video meetings into text that is searchable and exportable to a variety of platforms.

Is There a Free AI to Take Notes During Meetings?

Fathom offers a generous free AI note-taking assistant that will take notes for you during your meetings. Most other AI meeting assistants also offer free plans with basic note-taking abilities.

What are the Different Types of AI Meeting Assistants?

The majority of AI meeting assistants are primarily note-taking apps that automatically transcribe and summarize meetings, but there are also AI meeting assistants that are more conversational intelligence tools, which not only transcribe but also analyze the conversations to identify trends, issues, and best practices.

What Is an AI Meeting Assistant?

An AI meeting assistant is an app or platform that automatically takes notes on your meetings, captures key decisions and action items, and records it in audio and/or video for review in a searchable, filterable database.

Why Do AI Meeting Assistants Matter?

AI meeting assistants automate meeting note-taking so that you can focus on engaging completely in your conversations with peers and clients instead of jotting down notes. These tools also make it easy to transcribe, record, and share aspects of your conversations, so you can easily review meetings and collaborate.

Bottom Line: The Best AI Meeting Assistants Greatly Enhance Productivity

The best AI meeting assistant tools enhance productivity and efficiency in meetings. However, be aware that AI meeting assistant software varies considerably from app to app. Though it may look like they offer the same value proposition and capabilities on the surface, accuracy can vary greatly between different providers. All the tools we reviewed offer free plans, which is a good starting point—sign up for a free plan and use it to get a feel for whether the tool will meet your needs.

Read our guide to AI Sales Tools and Software for a deeper understanding of today’s AI software for sales.

The post 11 Best AI Meeting Assistant (2024): Top Tools for Seamless Meetings appeared first on eWEEK.

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21 Best Generative AI Chatbots in 2024 https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/best-ai-chatbots/ Fri, 14 Jun 2024 15:00:41 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=222976 AI chatbots are becoming increasingly popular for businesses. Discover the 21 best AI chatbots and how they can help you.

The post 21 Best Generative AI Chatbots in 2024 appeared first on eWEEK.

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The best generative AI chatbots represent a major step forward in conversational AI, using large language models (LLMs) to create human-quality text, translate languages, and provide informative answers to user questions. An ever-growing number of generative AI chatbots are now entering the market, but not all chatbots are created equal.

We evaluated the best generative AI chatbots on the market to see how they compare on cost, feature set, ease of use, quality of output, and support to help you determine the best bot for your business. Here are our picks for the top 21 generative AI chatbots for 2024.

Top Generative AI Chatbot Software

The following chart shows at a glance how the top generative AI chatbot software we evaluated compares on features, query limit, language model, and price—as well as whether the vendor provides a Chrome extension to improve ease of use—to help you determine the best option for your needs.

Best For Use Case Query Limit Language Model(s) Vendor Chrome Extension Starting Price
Freshchat Automating self-service 500 Freshbots sessions Freddy AI, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service No $23 per agent, per month
Crisp Chatbot Lead nurturing Unlimited Proprietary LLM model No $25 per month, per workspace
ChatGPT Versatility and advanced generative AI chat features 50 messages every three hours for GPT-4 model GPT-3.5, GPT-4 No $20 per month
Kommunicate e-Commerce businesses N/A GPT-4 No $100 per month
Claude Long conversation memory 45 messages every five hours Claude 3 No Free
ChatSpot HubSpot customers N/A GPT-3, GPT-4 No Free
Intercom Handling support queries Unlimited; charges per resolution GPT-4 No $39 per seat, per month
Google Gemini Brainstorming ideas Unlimited exchanges per conversation Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2) No Free
Jasper Marketing and sales teams Word limit depends on the plan GPT-3.5, GPT-4 Yes $49 per month
Tidio Small and medium businesses Word limit depends on the plan Claude (Anthropic AI) No $25 per user, per month
Perplexity AI Finding information on the internet Five copilot searches every four hours for free users GPT-3.5, Claude 2, GPT-4, Yes $20 per month
LivePerson Conversation analytics N/A Unknown No Available upon request
Chatsonic Individuals in creative fields Word limit depends on the plan GPT-3.5, GPT-4 Yes $20 per month
Poe Testing multiple AI chatbots 2,000 requests per hour GPT-4, Gemini, Claude 3, Llama 2 No Free
Drift Businesses that rely on B2B sales and marketing Unlimited GPT No $2,500 per month, billed annually
Ada Customer service automation N/A Unknown No Available upon request
YouChat Students and researchers Unlimited GPT-3, GPT-4 Yes $6.99 per month
HuggingChat Developers Unlimited Llama 2 No $9 per month
Replika Personal use 500 messages per month or about 17 per day GPT-3, GPT-4 No $19.99 per month
Bing Chat Enterprise Organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem 30 responses per conversation GPT-4 No $5 per month
OpenAI Playground Customizability 200 requests per day for free users GPT-3.5, GPT-4 No $0.0015 per 1K tokens

Freshchat icon.

Freshchat

Best for Automating Self-Service

Overall Rating: 4.6

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 2.5

Freshchat enables businesses to automate customer interactions through chatbots and also offers live chat capabilities for real-time customer support. It allows companies to manage and streamline customer conversations across various channels and an array of integrated apps.

Freshchat provides features like customizable chat widgets, agent collaboration, customer context, and analytics to track chat performance and customer satisfaction. What distinguishes Freshchat is that it enables sales and marketing—and even support teams—to not only reach customers but to scale those interactions so that the expertise of each live company staffer can be used to converse with many customers.

It does this using its unified agent workspace—which holds a full menu of past conversations—as well as responses from sales, marketing, and support, which an agent can quickly and easily share with an interested customer.

What I found most interesting was that the app has a “Freddy Insights” tool that provides key trends and insights that can be fed into a conversation at opportune moments to prompt a faster decision.

Freshchat screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Load balanced auto-assignment based on team member skill Some users report occasional bugs
Team performance and agent availability report The notification system could be improved

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 10 agents
  • Growth: $23 per agent, per month, or $228 per agent billed annually
  • Pro: $59 per agent, per month, or $588 per agent billed annually
  • Enterprise: $95 per agent, per month, or $948 billed annually

Features

  • Chatbot analytics
  • Canned responses
  • Customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey and report
  • Analytics and reporting
  • Multi-channel communication

Crisp icon.

Crisp Chatbot

Best for Lead Nurturing

Overall Rating: 4.6

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 3.5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 5

Crisp Chatbot uses artificial intelligence to understand user queries and provide relevant responses. It can handle basic inquiries, provide product information, schedule appointments, and collect customer feedback.

In a growing trend across the AI chatbot sector, the Crisp Chatbot can be customized to match a business’s branding and tone. This is increasingly important in crowded markets where a number of companies are seeking to create a distinct brand to cut through the clutter.

In my conversations with Crispchat, I found the bot extremely helpful at answering my questions. When I asked whether it was good for small businesses, it answered in the affirmative and gave me two salient reasons why—24/7 support and ease-of-use—while also explaining the positive impact these would have on my company’s customer experience.

Crisp Chatbot screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Responsive customer service team Free plan lacks integration with email, Slack, and Messenger
Website chat widget Basic and Pro plans offer limited chatbot capabilities

Pricing

  • Free: 14-day trial
  • Basic: Free forever for two seats
  • Pro: $25 per month, per workspace for up to four seats
  • Unlimited: $95 per month, per workspace for up to 20 seats
  • Enterprise: Contact for custom quote

Features

  • Integrations with social apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, and Instagram
  • Conversation routing capability
  • Capable of sending multilingual messages
  • MagicReply feature provides suggested AI-powered chatbot answers on multiple channels, in several languages

ChatGPT icon.

ChatGPT

Best Chatbot for Versatility and Advanced Generative AI Chat Features

Overall Rating: 4.5

  • Cost: 4.2
  • Feature Set: 4.4
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 3.8
  • Support: 5

Developed by OpenAI as part of the GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) series of models, ChatGPT is more than just another natural language processing (NLP) tool designed to engage in human-quality conversations with users. The fact that it was developed by OpenAI means this generative AI app benefits from the pioneering work done by this leading AI company. ChatGPT was the first generative AI app to come to market, launching in November of 2022.

The OpenAI platform can perform NLP tasks such as answering questions, providing recommendations, summarizing text, and translating languages. Aside from content generation, developers can also use ChatGPT to assist with coding tasks, including code generation, debugging help, and programming-related question responses.

I have used ChatGPT for various tasks, from summarizing long articles for research purposes to brainstorming business plans and customer pain points. The output is almost always satisfactory, in-depth, and surprisingly nuanced.

OpenAI has received significant funding from Microsoft and will likely be a leader in the years ahead, both in terms of advanced functionality (depth and versatility of toolset) and its ability to offer technology that’s ahead of the curve.

ChatGPT screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Data encryption at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+) Free plan is limited to GPT-3.5
Can assist in completing sentences or paragraphs for users Platform knowledge is limited to less than current information

Pricing

  • Free: Access to limited features
  • ChatGPT Plus: $20 per month
  • Enterprise: Contact OpenAI for a custom quote

Features

  • Analytics dashboard for enterprise users
  • Can understand and generate text in multiple languages
  • Offers contextual understanding of extended conversation

Kommunicate icon.

Kommunicate

Best for e-Commerce Businesses

Overall Rating: 4.5

  • Cost: 3.3
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 4

Kommunicate is a generative AI-powered chatbot designed to help businesses optimize customer support and improve the customer experience. One of its chief goals is assisting and completing sales for e-commerce vendors, though it also handles support and the full range of customer queries.

The app provides automated conversational capabilities through chatbots, live chat, and omnichannel customer support. Kommunicate can be integrated into websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms, allowing businesses to engage with customers in real time and provide instant assistance regarding any issue that involves a sale or service.

To assist with this, it offers a FAQ bot to lessen the load of simple, repetitive customer queries. The app’s feature set is far more robust due to a long list of integrations, including OpenAI, IBM Watson, Zapier, and Shopify. It enables easy, seamless hand-off from chatbot to a human operator for those interactions that call for it.

Kommunicate screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Omnichannel Users report inconsistent integrations
Multilingual bots Lite plan lacks advanced analytics and reporting features

Pricing

  • Free: 30-day trial
  • Lite: $100 month-to-month, or $1,000 billed annually, for up to two teammates; $20 per month for each additional teammate
  • Advanced: $200 month-to-month, or $2,000 billed annually, for up to five teammates; $30 per month for each additional teammate
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Features

  • Omnichannel—web, mobile, and social media
  • CSAT rating
  • Integrations with third-party services
  • Can manage customer conversations through bots, live chat, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Line

Anthropic icon.

Claude

Best Chatbot for Long Conversational Memory

Overall Rating: 4.4

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 3.5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 4

Claude is Anthropic’s free AI chatbot. It runs Claude 3, a powerful LLM known for its large context window of 200,000 tokens per prompt, or around 150,000 words. This gives it one of the best conversational memories around.

To put that in perspective, you can be at the tail end of a conversation the size of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Claude will still remember everything that was said, taking your previous questions, file uploads, and responses into account when it responds to your newest prompts.

Its ability to analyze and summarize long documents is excellent, and its answers tend to be more straightforward than those of Chat-GPT. When trying Claude, I was constantly surprised at how concise its answers were to my questions. It felt like I was messaging a true human expert rather than someone going out and finding the answers and regurgitating them back to me. All of this makes Claude a valuable research assistant and creative collaborator

Claude screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Extremely large context window Can’t generate new images
Feels like talking to a human Has trouble with numerical questions

Pricing

  • Free: Unlimited access to Claude.ai chat
  • Claude Pro: $20 per month

Features

  • 200,000 token context window (around 500 pages)
  • Document summarization and analysis
  • Straightforward, clear responses
  • Integrates with 600 apps through Zapier

ChatSpot icon.

ChatSpot

Best for HubSpot Customers

Overall Rating: 4.4

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set:5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 1

ChatSpot combines the capabilities of ChatGPT and HubSpot CRM into one solution. With this tool, you can draft blog posts and tweets and also create AI-generated images, or you can feed it a prompt to enable you to get specific data from your HubSpot CRM.

ChatSpot allows you to perform many functions, including adding contacts and creating tasks and notes. You can also ask it to summarize your CRM data or generate a bar chart of results to understand your company’s performance.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, this chatbot app can be a useful choice, given that Hubspot offers so many ways to connect with third party tools—literally hundreds of business apps. And HubSpot, as its users are well aware, is a platform that offers great functionality for sales reps. This chatbot will likely remain a top candidate for sales and marketing professionals who need improved functionality for customer sales and service.

ChatSpot screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Easy to use Limited scope
SEO expertise Support could be improved

Pricing

  • ChatSpot is free

Features

  • Uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4
  • Integration with ChatGPT, HubSpot, DALL-E, and Google Docs
  • Prompt templates and library

Intercom icon.

Intercom

Best for Handling Support Queries

Overall Rating: 4.3

  • Cost: 2.3
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 4.5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 5

Intercom AI’s chatbot, Fin, powered by large language models from OpenAI, aims to improve customer experience, automate support processes, and enhance user engagement. The fact that OpenAI (with all of its deep funding and vast expertise) provides Intercom’s underlying engine is clearly a plus.

Intercom can engage in realistic conversations with customers, helping to resolve common issues, answer questions, and initiate actions. It’s an app aimed clearly at the lucrative call center sector. In trying Intercom while acting as a customer seeking assistance, I found that its answers to my questions were helpful and quick. It also felt like there was a human on the other end of the chatbox.

So, what distinguishes it? It has gained wide adoption in the industry and is used by companies ranging from Amazon to Microsoft to Meta. It also offers a “plug and play” chatbot architecture to make setup relatively easy. And Intercom’s “Composer AI” feature enables a call center rep to rephrase a message with one click, turning a single phrase into longer, more detailed response. It can easily summarize entire conversations with one click.

Intercom screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Omnichannel: email, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger Advanced features cost extra
Instant answers from multiple sources May be pricey for small businesses

Pricing

  • Free: 14-day trial
  • Fin AI Chatbot: Usage measured in resolutions; $0.99 per resolution.
  • Essential: ​​$39 per seat, per month
  • Advanced: $99 per seat, per month
  • Expert: $139 per seat, per month

Features

  • Supports up to 43 languages
  • Integrates with Facebook and Instagram
  • Answers customer questions based on support content
  • Makes article suggestions

Google Gemini icon.

Google Gemini

Best Chatbot for Brainstorming Ideas

Overall Rating: 4.3

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 4.5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 1

Formerly known as Bard, Google Gemini is an AI-powered LLM chatbot built on the PaLM2 (Pathways Language Model, version 2) AI model. You can export your Google Gemini conversation to Google Docs or Draft in Gmail, and the platform allows you to create a shareable public link you can send to a third party, making it useful in collaborative workflows for professional work environments.

It’s a major plus for this app that it’s developed and supported by Google. Admittedly, this app had some difficulties when it was first rolled out. Apparently scrambling to keep up with the phenomenal success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google didn’t iron out all the bugs first. However, Gemini is being actively developed and will benefit greatly from Google’s deep resources and legions of top AI developers.

An important benefit of using Google Gemini is that its supporting knowledge base is as large as any chatbot’s—it’s created and updated by Google. So if your team is looking to brainstorm ideas or check an existing plan against a huge database, the Gemini app can be very useful due to its deep and constantly updated reservoir of data.

Gemini screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Vast knowledgebase Users report slow response to complex questions
Cites sources of information. Can sometimes give inaccurate or incomplete information

Pricing

  • Free to use

Features

  • Can export conversations
  • “Google it” function directs you to search engine to provide more information
  • Can generate code in 20 programming languages

For an in-depth comparison of two leading chatbots, read our guide: ChatGPT vs. Google Bard: Generative AI Comparison

Jasper icon.

Jasper

Best Chatbot for Marketing and Sales Teams

Overall Rating: 4.2

  • Cost: 2.7
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 3

The Jasper generative AI chatbot can be trained on your brand voice to interact with your customers in a personalized manner. Jasper partners with OpenAI and uses GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 language models and their proprietary AI engine. The company also sources from other models such as Neo X, T5, and Bloom.

Jasper’s strongest upside is its brand voice functionality, which allows teams and organizations to create highly specific, on-brand content. This capability is invaluable for marketing and sales teams that need to ensure that all chatbot communications are created with an accurate brand identity.

Out of the box, Jasper offers more than 50 templates—you won’t need to create a chatbot persona from scratch. The wide array of models that Jasper accesses and its focus on customizing for brand identity means this is a choice that marketing teams should at least audition before they make any final selections for an AI chatbot.

Jasper screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Provides up-to-date information and cites sources Can be expensive
More than 50 built-in templates Focus mode can generate incomplete sentences

Pricing

  • Creator: $49 per month billed monthly, or $468 billed annually
  • Pro: $69 per month billed monthly, or $708 billed annually
  • Business: Custom quotes

Features

  • Browser extension available
  • Supports up to 30 languages.
  • Integrates with Zapier, Webflow, Make, Google Sheets, and other tools
  • Collaboration capability

For a full portrait of today’s generative AI leaders, see our guide: Generative AI Companies: Top 12 Leaders

Tidio icon.

Tidio

Best for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

Overall Rating: 4.2

  • Cost: 4.1
  • Feature Set: 3.5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 4

SMBs looking for an easy-to-use AI chatbot to scale their support capacity may find Tidio to be a suitable solution. Tidio Lyro lets businesses automate customer support processes, reduce response times, and handle tasks such as answering frequently asked questions. You can also use Tidio Lyro to answer customer inquiries, provide automated responses, and assist with basic analytics, allowing you to manage customer support efficiently.

Tidio fits the SMB market because it offers solid functionality at a reasonable price. SMBs are under pressure to offer basic customer service at a low cost; to address this, Tidio allows the creation of a wide array of prewritten responses for simple questions that customers ask again and again. Tidio also offers add-ons at no extra cost, including sales templates to save time with setup.

Additionally, the quality of Tidio’s output was ranked highly in our research, so even as the AI chatbot focuses on affordability, it offers a quality toolset.

Tidio screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
AI Reply Assistant to speed up your response time Add-ons cost extra
FAQ and sales chatbot templates Analytics limited to Communicator and Tidio+ plans

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 50 live chat conversations
  • Lyro AI: Starts at $39 per month for up to 200 conversations
  • Tidio+: Starts at $499 per month

Features

  • Live chat capability
  • Integration with Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and email services
  • Multi-language support
  • Canned responses

Perplexity icon.

Perplexity AI

Best Chatbot for Finding Information on the Internet

Overall Rating: 4.2

  • Cost: 4.2
  • Feature Set: 4.4
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 2

Perplexity AI is a generative AI chatbot, search, and answer engine that allows users to express queries in natural language​​ and provides answers based on information gathered from various sources on the web. When you ask a question of Perplexity AI, it does more than provide the answer to your query—it also suggests related follow-up questions. In response, you can either select from the suggested related questions or type your own in the text field.

Perplexity AI’s Copilot feature can guide users through the search process with interactive multiple searches and summarized results. This capability is helpful when exploring complex topics. However, it’s limited to five searches every four hours for free plan users and up to 300 searches for paid users.

Perplexity AI’s strength in searching the internet means this tool is ideal for advanced researchers, from academic to small business to large enterprise, including companies that want to explore how they’re viewed on the web. Because AI enables it to understand your search query at a multi-dimensional level, the app can guide you in directions you might not have thought of, making it “serious researcher’s best friend.”

Perplexity screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Cites information sources File upload limited to three per day for free users
iOS and Android mobile app Customer support could be improved

Pricing

  • Free: Limited features
  • Pro: $20 per month, or $200 per year

Features

  • Supports Claude 3, Llama 3, and GPT-4
  • Supports 30 languages, including English, Bengali, and Danish
  • Text and PDF file upload capability

LivePerson icon.

LivePerson

Best for Conversation Analytics

Overall Rating: 4.1

  • Cost: 0.6
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 5

The LivePerson AI chatbot can simulate human conversation and interact with users in a natural, conversational manner. Its goal is to discover customer intent—the core of most successful sales interactions—using analytics. To this end, LivePerson offers what it calls a “meaningful automated conversation score,” a metric that attempts to quantify whether a given bot-human interaction was successful in terms of company branding and service.

Additionally, the platform enables you to convert webpages, PDFs, and FAQs into interactive AI chatbot experiences that use natural human language to showcase your brand’s expertise. The bot’s entire strategy is based on making as much content as possible available in a conversational format.

LivePerson can be deployed on various digital channels, such as websites and messaging apps, to automate customer interactions, provide instant responses to inquiries, assist with transactions, and offer personalized recommendations. Significantly, LivePerson is also geared to be embedded in social media platforms, so it certainly aims to reach a large consumer base.

LivePerson screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Bot analytics Does not publish pricing info
Meaningful automated conversation scores (MACS) Conversational cloud plan lacks generative AI capability

Pricing

  • Conversational Cloud: Pay-as–you-go, per resolution
  • Generative AI: Pay-as-you-go, per resolution

Features

  • Conversation builder and orchestrator
  • Administrative function includes the ability to create and manage users and skills
  • Supports 19 messaging channels, including Facebook, Instagram, X  and WhatsApp.
  • Reporting and analytics

Writesonic icon.

Chatsonic

Best Chatbot for Individuals in the Creative Industries

Overall Rating: 4

  • Cost: 4.6
  • Feature Set: 4.4
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 2.5
  • Support: 2

Trained and powered by Google Search to converse with users based on current events, Chatsonic positions itself as a ChatGPT alternative. The AI chatbot is a product of Writesonic, an AI platform geared for content creation. Chatsonic lets you toggle on the “Include latest Google data” button while using the chatbot to add real-time trending information.

The benefit of this “latest data” approach is that it helps individuals in creative fields like advertising and marketing stay up to date on current trends. In contrast, some of the more advanced chatbots use large language models that are updated infrequently, so those looking for this week’s information won’t find what they need.

This current events approach makes the Chatsonic app very useful for a company that wants to consistently monitor any comments or concerns about its products based on current news coverage. Some companies will use this app in combination with other AI chatbot apps with the Chatsonic chatbot reserved specifically to perform a broad and deep brand response monitoring function.

ChatSonic screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Support for 25 languages Priority support limited to business and enterprise plan users
Landing page generator capability Free plan lacks email support

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 10,000 words per month
  • Unlimited: $20 per month billed monthly, or $192 billed annually for one user
  • Business: $19 per month billed monthly, or $152 billed annually for one user; up to 200,000 words for GPT 3.5 or 33,333 words for GPT 4.0; add words and users for additional cost
  • Enterprise: Custom quote

Features

  • Google Docs-like Sonic Editor
  • Integration with third-party apps
  • More than 100 AI templates

Poe icon.

Poe

Best Chatbot for Testing Multiple AI Chatbots

Overall Rating: 3.9

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 2.8
  • Ease of Use: 4.5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 3.9

Poe is a chatbot tool that allows you to try out different AI models—including GPT-4, Gemini, Playground, and others listed in this article—in a single interface. This is helpful for people who want to pit them against each other to decide which tool to purchase. It’s also great for those who plan to use multiple LLM models and unlock their various strengths for a low price of $16.67 per month when paid annually.

For example, if you plan to use Claude 3 for conversational chat and GPT 4 for content generation—their respective specialties—you can get both by subscribing to Poe rather than paying for each separately, which would cost $40 per month. Developers can also use Poe to build their own chatbots using one of the popular models as the foundation, streamlining the process.

Poe screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Access to multiple advanced LLMs for a low monthly price Higher cost for access to newer chatbots like GPT-4 and Claude-3-Opus
Can easily test various chatbots against each other Doesn’t actually have its own chatbot

Pricing

  • Free: Limited access
  • Poe Subscription: Starts at $16.67 per month; includes unlimited daily messages and access to exclusive bots like GPT 4 and Claude-3-Opus

Features

  • Test and compare multiple popular AI chatbots
  • Access multiple AI chatbots like GPT-4 and Claude-3-Opus for low price
  • Free version available
  • Streamlines building your own AI chatbot using a top LLM as your model

Drift icon.

Drift

Best for Businesses that Rely on B2B Sales and Marketing

Overall Rating: 3.8

  • Cost: 1.8
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 4.5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 2

Drift’s AI is trained on more than 100 million B2B sales and marketing conversations, enabling it to understand and respond to B2B customer inquiries in the conversational manner that’s expected in this market sector—including multi-language support.

The Drift AI chatbot is designed to handle different types of conversations, including lead nurturing, customer support, and sales assistance. It can engage with website visitors and provide relevant information or route inquiries to the appropriate human representative.

Drift can be custom-trained for your B2B business in fine detail, allowing it to learn your brand’s voice and respond in a manner similar to your in-house reps. The B2B market is a specific use case for AI chatbots, and Drift’s focus on this market means that a B2B company can set up a highly functional chatbot that will evolve with the B2B market over time with less work.

Drift screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Multi-language support Expensive
Prospector and AI engagement score Premium plan lacks advanced routing

Pricing

  • Premium: $30,000 billed annually
  • Advanced: Available upon request
  • Enterprise: Custom quote

Features

  • User administration with role-based access control
  • Live chat, custom chatbots, and AI-powered chatbots
  • Meeting scheduler with Google, Office 365, and Teams integration
  • Conversation and conversion reporting capability

Ada icon.

Ada

Best for Customer Service Automation

Overall Rating: 3.8

  • Cost: 0.6
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 2.5

Ada is an AI-powered customer service automation platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to automate customer service tasks. It is designed to help resolve customer issues, allowing businesses to streamline customer service operations and enhance the customer experience.

There are two ways to use Ada. You can either connect it to your knowledgebase and use generative AI to answer questions grounded in your existing content, or build a hard-coded chatbot using Ada’s natural language understanding and its drag-and-drop platform for a pre-scripted easy and fast setup.

In either case, Ada enables you to monitor and measure your bot KPI metrics across digital and voice channels—for example, automated resolution rate, average handle time, containment rate, CSAT, and handoff rate. It also offers predictive suggestions for answers, allowing the app to stay ahead of customer interactions. Ada’s user interface is intuitive and easy to use, which creates a faster onboarding process for customer service reps.

Ada screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Customize chatbot personas Lacks transparent pricing
Support for more than 50 languages No free plan

Pricing

  • Generative: Contact Ada’s sales team for quote
  • Scripted: Contact Ada’s sales team for quote

Features

  • Integrations with third-party apps like Shopify, Marketo, and Clearbit
  • Automated resolution measurement
  • Advanced branding including additional customizations

You.com icon.

YouChat

Best Chatbot for Students

Overall Rating: 3.6

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 2.9
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 3.8
  • Support: 1

Designed by You.com, YouChat is an AI-powered generative chatbot that can summarize text, write code, suggest ideas, compose emails, and answer general questions based on information available on the web.

It also cites its information source, making it easy to fact-check the chatbot’s answers to your queries. YouChat combines various elements in search results, including images, videos, news, maps, social, code, and search engine results on the subject.

In essence, YouChat is a lighter weight tool with an affordable price plan that performs a wide array of tasks—particularly those needed by students. YouChat offers an easy user interface that will appeal to a busy user base that wants to jump right in without undergoing a lot of technical training.

The upside of this kind of easy-to-use app is that, as generative AI advances, today’s fairly lightweight tools will likely offer an enormous level of functionality. So any student or SMB user who starts with it now will probably reap greater benefits in the months and years ahead.

YouChat screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Available Chrome extension Contextual understanding could be improved
Interactive search results with various elements Sometimes displays outdated links or information

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 10 AI writing generations
  • YouPro: $14.99 per month
  • YouPro for Education: $6.99 per month

Features

  • Code generator
  • Multimodal search capability
  • Support for social media profiles

Hugging Face icon.

HuggingChat

Best Chatbot for Developers

Overall Rating: 3.3

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 2.9
  • Ease of Use: 4.8
  • Quality of Output: 1.3
  • Support: 1

Developed by Hugging Face, HuggingChat is a chatbot based on the Open Assistant Conversational AI Model. It uses NLP and ML algorithms to interact with users and can generate answers to questions, write essays, write code, translate text, and construct emails. The platform has been trained on a large dataset of diverse conversations and can learn from new interactions.

Hugging Face has a large and enthusiastic following among developers—it’s something of a favorite in the development community. Its platform is set up as an ideal environment to mix and match chatbot elements, including datasets ranging from Berkeley’s Nectar to Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and the AI models available range from Anthropic to Playground AI.

Many of these resources may not mean much to the SMB owner or enterprise manager, but they mean a great deal to developers with the expertise to use a deep resource base to customize an AI chatbot. Given that HuggingChat offers such a rich developer-centric platform, users can expect it to grow rapidly as AI chatbots are still gaining more adoption.

HuggingChat screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Easy to use Knowledgebase not up to date
Highly customizable; lets developers create custom intents, entities, and actions Sometimes provides an incomplete answer

Pricing

  • Free: Limited access
  • Pro: $9 per month; gives early access to new features
  • Enterprise Hub: $20 per user, per month

Features

  • Web search functionality complements response with web content
  • Multilingual support
  • Can debug and write code and create Excel formulas

Replika icon.

Replika

Best for Personal Use

Overall Rating: 3.2

  • Cost: 5
  • Feature Set: 0.6
  • Ease of Use: 5
  • Quality of Output: 5
  • Support: 1.5

Replika is an artificial intelligence chatbot designed to have meaningful and empathetic-seeming conversations with users. It’s focused more on entertaining and engaging personal interaction rather than straightforward business purposes.

To support its goal, Replika uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to text-based conversations. Replika aims to be a virtual friend or companion that learns from and adapts to your personality and preferences.

To better engage, the platform learns your texting style and mimics it. Of course, this means that the longer you interface with the app, the more accurately Replika can mimic your style.

Its motto is “My AI Friend,” and the vendor claims that it can offer dialogue geared for emotional support. To that end, it can engage in a wide variety of topics or even help you learn new things.

Replika screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
iOS and Android mobile apps available Limited free plan
Offers emotional support User interface could be improved
Availability and convenience.

Pricing

  • Free: Limited access
  • Month-to-Month: $19.99
  • Annual: $69.96.
  • Lifetime: $299.99

Features

  • Role-playing activities
  • Communication through text, pictures, voice calls, and video calls
  • Can engage in conversations about a wide range of topics, from personal interests to general knowledge
  • Guides users through specific conversation topics such as mindfulness, stress management, or self-care

Microsoft icon.

Bing Chat Enterprise

Best Chatbot for Organizations in the Microsoft Ecosystem

Overall Rating: 3.1

  • Cost: 4
  • Feature Set: 3.5
  • Ease of Use: 1.8
  • Quality of Output: 2.5
  • Support: 4

Microsoft generative AI tool Bing Chat Enterprise uses GPT-4, which includes a top large language model, to generate natural language responses to user queries. Bing Chat Enterprise has three conversation styles: creative, balanced, and precise. These styles help you set the tone for the expected response to your query.

Bing Chat Enterprise is available in 160 regions. Users can also access it via the Windows Copilot Sidebar, making this app easily accessible. Microsoft is incorporating AI across its product portfolio, so this chat app will likely show up in a number of applications. If your company uses Microsoft, this chat app is a good choice.

The greatest strong point for the Bing Chat tool is that it’s produced by Microsoft, arguably the leader in AI today. The company’s deep resources and dominant technical expertise in AI software should support this chat app very well in the years ahead.

Microsoft is also skilled at serving both the consumer and the business market, so this chat app can be configured for a variety of levels of performance. It has the depth of features needed to serve the SMB market and large enterprise.

Bing Chat Enterprise screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Bing’s citations can help you continue research on your own Limited usage in browsers other than Microsoft Edge
User interface is visually appealing and easy to navigate Limited to 30 responses per conversation

Pricing

  • Free: Available to customers licensed for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, Business Premium, or A3 or A5 for faculty
  • Standalone: $5 per user, per month

Features

  • Versatile mix of conversation styles for different enterprise AI use cases
  • Citation capability lets you fact-check output
  • Lets users upload images or can generate images

OpenAI icon.

OpenAI Playground

Best Chatbot for Customizability

Overall rating: 3.0

  • Cost: 4.15
  • Feature Set: 5
  • Ease of Use: 0.55
  • Quality of Output: 2.5
  • Support: 2

OpenAI Playground was designed by the same generative AI company that created ChatGPT (see above). As such, it is well funded and is continuously improved by some of the best developers in the AI industry. Expect it to stay ahead of the curve in terms of feature set.

The platform is a web-based environment allowing users to experiment with different OpenAI models, including GPT-4, GPT-3.5 Turbo, and others. OpenAI Playground is suitable for advanced users looking for a customizable generative AI chatbot model that they can fine-tune to suit their business needs. This advanced platform enables a vast level of choices and approaches in an AI chatbot.

OpenAI Playground’s focus on customizability means that it is ideal for companies that need a very specific focus to their chatbot. For instance, a sophisticated branding effort or an approach that requires a very proprietary large language model, like finance or healthcare. Given that this app needs true developer expertise to be fully customizable, it is not the best choice for small businesses or companies on a tight budget.

ChatGPT screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Access via Web or Android and iOS app. Limited creativity
Highly customizable Privacy concerns

Pricing

Priced per 1,000 tokens, about 750 words; varies by model choice. New users get $5 in free credit to use for their first three months.

  • GPT-4 Models: Input costs $0.03, output costs $0.06 for 8,000 context; input costs $0.06, output costs $0.12 for 32,000 context
  • GPT-3.5 Turbo: Input costs $0.0015, output costs $0.002 for 4,000 context; input costs $0.003, output costs $0.004 for 16,000 context

Features

  • Text and completion summarization
  • Multiple options for model selection
  • Language translation
  • Sentiment analysis

Key Features of Generative AI Chatbots

Generative AI chatbots require a number of advanced features to accomplish their many tasks, ranging from context understanding to personalization.

Natural Language Processing

Natural language processing is a critical feature of a generative AI chatbot. NLP enables the AI chatbot to understand and interpret casual conversational input from users, allowing you to have more human-like conversations. With NLP capabilities, generative AI chatbots can recognize context, intent, and entities within the conversation.

Context Understanding

Context understanding is a chatbot’s ability to comprehend and retain context during conversations—this enables a more seamless and human-like conversation flow. A high-quality artificial intelligence chatbot can maintain context and remember previous interactions, providing more personalized and relevant responses based on the conversation history. This enables chatbots to provide more coherent and relevant replies.

Personalization

When shopping for generative AI chatbot software, customization and personalization capabilities are important factors to consider as they enable the tool to tailor responses based on user preferences and history. ChatGPT, for instance, allows businesses to train and fine-tune chatbots to align with their brand, industry-specific terminology, and user preferences.

Multilingual Support

An AI chatbot’s ability to communicate in multiple languages makes it appealing to global audiences. This functionality also allows the chatbot to translate text from one language to another.

How to Choose the Best Generative AI Chatbot For Your Business

The best generative AI chatbot for your company serves your business’s needs and balances quality service with moderately expensive or lower cost pricing based on what works with your budget. Additionally, you’ll need to ensure it has all the necessary AI features you need for your operations, and that these features will be supported going forward.

Organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem may find Bing Chat Enterprise beneficial, as it works better on the Edge browser. ChatGPT does not cite its data sources, but it is one of the most versatile and creative AI chatbots. Google Bard cites data sources and provides up-to-date information, but its response time is sometimes slow. Chatsonic can generate AI images as part of the answer to your query.

What appear to be positives to you may be negatives to another user, and vice versa. The best tool for your business is unique to you—conduct your own research to fully understand the chatbot market, identify your overall AI goals, and shop for a chatbot tool that offers features and capabilities that meet your requirements.

How We Evaluated the Best Generative AI Chatbots

We evaluated today’s leading AI chatbots with a rubric that balanced factors like cost, feature set, quality of output, and support.

Feature Set | 30 percent

Features carry the most weight in our evaluation process. We evaluated various capabilities offered by each generative AI software, including multi-language support, the ability to accept spoken word input, the programmability of the solution, the kind of users it is built for, and customization options.

Ease of Use | 25 percent

We assessed each generative AI software’s user interface and overall user experience. This included evaluating the ease of installation, setup process, and navigation within the platform. A well-designed and intuitive interface with clear documentation, support materials, and the AI chatbot response time contributed to a higher score in this category.

Cost | 20 percent

We reviewed each AI chatbot pricing model and available plans, plus the availability of a free trial to test out the platform. Our research found that some platforms are completely free, while some offer both free and paid plans—a tool like Google Bard gives you access to all its features for free, ChatGPT has a free plan with access to GPT 3.5 capabilities, while GPT 4 requires a monthly subscription. On the other hand, Jasper is a paid chatbot offering a seven-day free trial.

Support | 15 percent

Our analysis also considered the level of support provided by the AI software provider. We assessed the availability and responsiveness of customer support, including customer service hours, email support, live chat support and knowledge base.

Quality of Output | 10 percent

To determine the output quality generated by the AI chatbot software, we analyzed the accuracy of responses, coherence in conversation flow, and ability to understand and respond appropriately to user inputs. We selected our top solutions based on their ability to produce high-quality and contextually relevant responses consistently.

AI Chatbots: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Below, we provide answers to the most commonly asked questions about AI chatbots.

What Features Should Businesses Look for in AI Chatbots?

Key features to look for in AI chatbots include NLP capabilities, contextual understanding, multi-language support, pre-trained knowledge and conversation flow management. It is also important to look for a tool with a high accuracy rating, even if the questions asked are complex or open-ended.

Why are AI Chatbots Important for Businesses?

AI chatbots are important to businesses because they enhance customer experience and provide various operational benefits, such as improved customer experience, personalized experiences, cost reduction, and increased productivity. Most important: they provide customer service at a far lower cost.

How Can AI Chatbots Enhance Customer Support and Engagement?

AI chatbots can boost customer support by providing 24/7 support, answering common questions, and personalizing interaction based on customer preferences. (For instance, multilingual AI chatbots can communicate in multiple languages, enabling businesses to assist customers from different regions).

What are Traditional Chatbot Builders?

Traditional chatbot builders are tools that help you build conventional rule-based chatbots that stick to a prewritten script. Compared to AI chatbots, they lack natural language processing abilities and feel far less human-like.

Bottom Line: Today’s Top AI Chatbots Take Highly Varied Approaches

Determining the “best” generative AI chatbot software can be subjective, as it largely depends on a business’s specific needs and objectives. Chatbot software is enormously varied and continuously evolving,  and new chatbot entrants may offer innovative features and improvements over existing solutions. The best chatbot for your business will vary based on factors such as industry, use case, budget, desired features, and your own experience with AI. There is no “one size fits all” chatbot solution.

For a full portrait of today’s top AI companies, read our guide: 150+ Top AI Companies

The post 21 Best Generative AI Chatbots in 2024 appeared first on eWEEK.

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10 Best AI Writing Tools (2024): Enhance Your Writing with AI Magic https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-writing-tools/ Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:00:34 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=223127 What are the best AI writing tools? Check out our 2024 guide to the top 10 tools and boost your writing instantly!

The post 10 Best AI Writing Tools (2024): Enhance Your Writing with AI Magic appeared first on eWEEK.

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Artificial intelligence writing tools allow users to generate volumes of high-quality content in a fraction of the time it would take to write manually. To accomplish this, AI writing tools use a combination of AI algorithms, natural language processing, and machine learning techniques, all of which work together to generate text that reads as if it was written by a human.

We tested the top AI writing software to see how it compares on features, pricing, and relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see how well it meets a variety of common use cases. Here are our picks for the best AI writing tools in 2024:

Comparing the Top AI Writing Tools

The following chart shows at-a-glance how each of the AI writing tools compare on key features, pricing, and availability of a free version.

Vendor Best For Built-In Plagiarism Checker Grammar Checker Free Plan Starting Price
Copy.ai Beating writer’s block No No Yes $49 per month or $432 per year
Rytr Copywriters Yes No Yes $9 per month or $90 per year
Quillbot Paraphrasing text Yes Yes Yes $8.33 per month
Frase.io SEO teams and content managers No Yes No $15 per user, per month, or $144 per user, per year
Anyword Blog writing Yes Yes No $49 per user, per month, or $468 per user, per year
Grammarly Grammatical and punctuation error detection Yes Yes Yes $30 per month, or $144 per year
Hemingway Editor Content readability measurement No Yes Yes Free
Writesonic Blog content writing No No Yes $948 per year
AI Writer High-output bloggers No No No $29 per user, per month
ContentScale.ai Creating long form articles No No No $250 per month

Copy.ai icon.

Copy.ai

Best for Beating Writer’s Block

Copy.ai is an artificial intelligence writing tool designed to help marketers, business owners, and copywriters create various forms of content, including website copy, sales landing pages, email, and social media and blog posts. A boon to content marketers, Copy.ai can automatically conduct SEO research and produce content briefs for writers, streamlining the production process and giving writers guidance.

Another distinctive feature is the thought leadership tool, which automatically turns raw transcripts from interviews with experts into a variety of content assets, including blog posts, social media posts, and newsletters. This dramatically reduces the time it takes to manage content repurposing. The AI writing tool also lets you easily generate copy that aligns with your organization’s persona.

Copy.ai’s in-platform AI chatbot acts as a writing assistant to help beat writer’s block by aiding with brainstorming. For example, I asked it to give me 10 Instagram post ideas for fashion week—it delivered 10 useable ideas I could use as the basis for my social posts. These features enable your team to create and distribute more high-quality content at a lower cost than before.

Copy.ai’s templates page.
Copy.ai’s templates page gives a range of options for different content types.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Content matches brand tone and voice Can sometimes get detected as AI content
Low learning curve and easy to use Lacks full-length article writing feature

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 2,000 words per month
  • Starter: $49 per month or $36 per month billed annually for one seat, unlimited words
  • Advanced: $249 per month or $186 per month billed annually for up to five seats
  • Enterprise: Call for quote

Key Features

  • More than 90 copywriting tools included
  • Allows you to save and reuse key information via its Infobase feature
  • Streamlines SEO content research and brief creation
  • Automates content repurposing
  • Chat feature enables sales and marketing teams to interact more naturally with AI
  • Easy content brainstorming
  • Automated sales email writing
  • Supports 25 languages

For an in-depth guide to the best AI detection tools, read our guide: AI Detector Tools

Rytr icon.

Rytr

Best for Copywriters

Rytr is an AI-powered writing tool capable of producing copywriting content on various topics. It’s one of the best AI writing tools for commercial copywriting jobs, where copywriters can use it to automate the creation of post and caption ideas, paragraph content, SEO meta titles, emails, call to actions, replies, and other less complex copywriting assets.

The platform also supports more than 40 other use cases, including generating blog ideas and creating job descriptions. In addition, paid users can create their own use cases by training Rytr for their specific needs.

I tested Rytr out for copywriting and asked it to write me a call-to-action for “A knee pad that protects middle-aged gardeners from hurting themselves.” In response to my prompt, it provided the following two variants:

  • “Safeguard your knees, garden with ease.”
  • “Safeguard your knees, garden in comfort.”

When I changed the tone from “convincing” to “humorous,” it generated two more options that were not useable out-of-the-box but were still useful for ideation:

  • “Kneel with confidence, gardenlords!”
  • “Unleash your inner knee-jerk green thumb!”

Overall, Rytr its a useful AI writing tool for copywriters who want to streamline their writing process and come up with more ideas for a variety of content types.

Rytr copy generator environment.
Rytr’s copy generator environment lets you set the variables for how it acts on your prompts.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Built-in plagiarism checker Limited support for low-tier plans
20 writing tones to choose from Can sometimes generate cliches and nonsense text

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 10,000 characters per month
  • Saver: $9 per month, or $90 per year; up to 100,000 characters per month
  • Unlimited: $29 per month, or $290 per year

Key Features

  • Content outline and brief generator
  • Chrome extension for improving your writing
  • Business idea generator
  • Supports copywriting frameworks like AIDA (Attention–Interest–Desire–Action) and PAS (Problem–Agitation–Solution)
  • Serves as keyword extractor and generator
  • Creates SEO meta descriptions
  • Writes calls-to-action

To see top AI software in several categories, see our guide: Best Artificial Intelligence Software

Quillbot icon.

QuillBot

Best for Paraphrasing

QuillBot is an AI-powered writing assistant that, unlike most AI writing tools, focuses on helping you paraphrase and summarize texts. This makes it great for content marketers who often have to write repetitive copy with slight variations across their different content assets or even within the same blog post. For example, instead of writing “automate your administrative accounting tasks” five times, they could use QuillBot to spin that into five different variations.

It also functions as a citation generation tool, making it somewhat useful for academics—but it may not be the best tool for writing essays and research papers, as its output doesn’t consistently pass AI detection tools.

One of QuillBot’s standout features is the ability to choose from nine modes of paraphrased output. You can select from natural, academic, simple, creative, shortened, expanded, and more. As an example, when I prompted it with “The shift to agriculture took thousands of years” in academic mode, the output read, “The transition to an agrarian society spanned several millennia.”

Overall, I found the tool helpful for the outwardly simple but cognitively-taxing task of coming up with new ways to express your ideas in writing.

QuillBot paraphrasing environment.
QuillBot’s paraphrasing environment lets you choose from nine styles of writing you’d like it use.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Supports up to 23 languages Only two modes and 125 words input on the free plan
Can create custom modes Manual intervention is often needed

Pricing

  • Free: Limited capability
  • Premium: $19.95 per month, $13.33 per month billed semi-annually, and $8.33 per month billed annually
  • Team: Varies depending on the number of users

Key Features

  • Offers Chrome and Word extensions for grammar checking
  • Can create source citations in various styles, including APA, MLA, and Chicago
  • Nine paraphrasing modes
  • Language translator capability

See the very best of today’s generative AI tools: Top Generative AI Apps and Tools

Frase icon.

Frase.io

Best for SEO Teams and Content Managers

Frase.io is an AI writing tool designed to help you generate content, provide suggestions for better writing, and optimize articles for SEO. SEO teams and content managers use its templates and outline builder to automatically produce article structures that align with the intent of the searcher, and as a result, increase the chances that the article will rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Frase’s keyword optimization feature will identify important keywords while you write, make suggestions about how frequently to use them, and track how often they are used in the copy. In addition to keyword tips, it also tells you the ideal number of headings, words, links, and images your articles should have to outrank the competition.

Many of the SEO managers I’ve worked with have used Frase, and I’ve found it especially helpful for optimizing articles for SEO. Watching the SEO “topic score” go up as I make edits is motivating and lets me know I’m on the right track.

Frase user interface.
The Frase user interface provides detailed information keyword use while you write.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Topic research and SERP analysis capability Lacks a free plan
Optimize existing content to improve rankings A bit too much emphasis on keywords (which have grown less important)

Pricing

  • Trial: $1 for five days
  • Solo: $15 per user, per month, or $144 billed annually
  • Basic: $45 per user, per month, or $456 billed annually
  • Team: $115 per month, or $97 billed annually, for three users; $25 per month for each additional seat

Frase also offers a Pro Add-On that allows unlimited AI content for $35 per month, but does not offer a free plan.

Key Features

  • Automated content briefs and outlines
  • Content SEO topic scoring capability
  • AI written SEO-optimized copy
  • Suggestions on keyword optimization
  • Google Search Console (GSC) integration

For a detailed look at a leading AI tool, see our guide: ChatGPT: Understanding the ChatGPT ChatBot

Anyword icon.

Anyword

Best for Copywriting Performance Analysis

Anyword is an AI writing tool that uses machine learning algorithms to generate content and analyze the performance of your copy across various channels. What distinguishes the tool is its Copy Intelligence functionality, which analyzes all of your previously published content to determine which messaging works best on your website, ads, socials, and email channels while clueing you into opportunities to improve your copy.

Its Target Audience feature lets copywriters and marketers define their ideal readers down to their key problems and desires. The AI writing tool will then take this into account when creating and analyzing content.

I found Anyword’s templates extremely helpful for prompting the AI writer to create content that fit my needs. In addition, its self-guided wizards walked me through the information I needed to provide the tool for it to write a blog post or ad campaign for my needs.

Anyword various templates view.
Anyword’s templates view lets you choose the type of content you want it to create.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Copy intelligence capabilities Word limits
User-friendly interface with lots of templates Costly for individuals on a budget

Pricing

  • Starter: $49 per user, per month, or $468 billed annually
  • Data Driven: $99 per month, or $948 billed annually for three users
  • Business: $499 per month, or $5,988 billed annually for three users
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Key Features

  • Supports up to 30 languages
  • Google Chrome extension available
  • More than 100 performance-driven templates
  • Integrates with Grammarly
  • Analyzes copy performance
  • Identifies ways to enhance your content
  • Adheres to your brand guidelines and target audience data

Grammarly icon.

Grammarly

Best for Grammatical and Punctuation Error Detection

Grammarly is a popular AI writing app that helps you improve your writing by checking for grammatical and spelling mistakes and offering suggestions for enhancing clarity, tone, conciseness, and style. It can be used in a wide range of contexts, including writing emails, reports, essays, or social media posts.

Grammarly can be used as a browser extension, a desktop application, or a mobile app. It’s free to use with limited features, or is available with additional functionalities as a premium subscription.

I’ve found Grammarly’s free version to be extremely useful as an AI editing tool. When I use it to run a final grammar and spelling check on a finished article, it inevitably catches mistakes and offers solutions to fix them. I also use it when writing emails to get the tone right. For example, when emailing a new client, I like to make sure the tone is confident and upbeat—Grammarly’s tone detector helps me achieve that goal.

Grammarly grammar checker.
Grammarly grammar checker is easy to use and effective for a wide range of applications.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Helps improve writing style Some suggestions misalign with your desired voice or style
Free version is sufficient for most writers and editors Free plan doesn’t have advanced clarity features

Pricing

  • Free: Free version lacks some high-end features
  • Premium: $30 per month, or $144 billed annually
  • Business: $25 per month, or $300 billed annually

Key Features

  • Real-time grammar correction
  • Generative AI assistance
  • Plagiarism checker
  • Advanced clarity suggestions
  • Writing tone detector
  • Checks grammar, spelling, and punctuation

Hemmingway Editor icon.

Hemingway Editor

Best for Content Readability Measurement

Named after a writer known for his concise and simple prose, Hemingway Editor is a writing tool that helps you enhance the clarity, grammar, and readability of your written work. It analyzes text and provides various readability suggestions while highlighting lengthy, complex sentences, excessive adverbs, passive voice, and hard-to-read phrases.

It also assigns a readability score based on the grade level required to understand the text. If the score is too high, content writers can tweak the highlighted sentences to lower the grade level. It is available both as a web-based application and as a desktop app.

I’ve used Hemingway in various capacities and I find that it does its main job of measuring content readability extremely well. Its passive voice detector is my favorite part of the tool.

That said, one of the risks of using an AI editing tool like Hemingway is that, if you follow its suggestions without thinking, you may edit all the rhythm, flow, and personality out of your writing, leaving you with text that’s plain, lifeless, and stilted and suited for a grade level well below your target. Overall, though, I’ve found it a useful tool for making sure blog content is clear and easy to understand while streamlining the editing process.

Hemingway’s Editor interface.
Hemingway’s Editor interface offers a wide range of improvements to suit your target audience.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Helpful color coded suggestions May not align with your writing style
Simplifies editing process Can lead to overly simplistic prose

Pricing

The platform is free to use.

Key Features

  • Improves writing clarity and conciseness
  • Provides a readability score
  • Offers alternative word suggestions
  • Detects passive voice and excessive adverbs
  • Highlights hard-to-read sentences

To see a comparison between two leading AI tools, read our guide: ChatGPT vs. Google Bard

Writesonic icon.

Writesonic

Best for Blog Content Writing

Writesonic uses artificial intelligence technology, specifically natural language processing (NLP), to provide content generation services. It’s one of the best AI writing tools for creating full blog posts.

Writesonic’s AI can generate text based on prompts and user input. In the case of creating a blog post, the wizard will ask you to input information such as article length, keywords, number of headings, topic, and references. Once you’ve approved of the outline, it’ll generate a blog post following these instructions as well as SEO optimization best practices.

While it can be a helpful resource for automated content creation, the quality of generated content may vary, and human editing is often required to ensure accuracy and coherence.

Writesonic’s Library dashboard view.
Writesonic’s Library dashboard view is easy to use and provides detailed information at a glance.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
One-click WordPress export Lacks advanced editing features
Supports up to 30 languages Not great for tech articles

Pricing

  • Free: 25 generations per month
  • Standard: $948 billed annually
  • Professional: $2,388 billed annually
  • Advanced: $4,788 billed annually

Key Features

  • Supports GPT 3.5 and GPT 4
  • AI article and blog writer
  • Article rewriter
  • Sentence expander
  • Text summarizer
  • Story generator
  • Landing page generator

AI Writer icon.

AI Writer

Best for High-Output Bloggers

AI Writer is designed to generate full-length articles in minutes, making it great for high-output bloggers, affiliate marketers, and other people who need articles fast. The platform lets you tailor the AI’s writing to your specific needs by selecting from a long list of recommended keywords for your topic or by manually inputting your chosen keywords. It also suggests sub-topics for your article and helps you structure your content with headings. The tool even cites its sources, displaying journalistic responsibility.

Significantly, it helps you choose topics about which to write. While exploring the platform, I found its topic generator helpful for coming up with article topics using a seed keyword—after prompting with “cold calling,” for example, I received a long list of article keywords and their associated traffic. I then selected Research and Write, a one-click article feature for Cold Calling Leads, and within minutes, I had a basis for a new 600-word article on the topic.

Compared to other AI writing tools, AI Writer’s blog content creation was incredibly quick. However, a note on quality—although AI Writer’s articles are typically well-written, SEO-friendly, and factually correct, they could benefit from a writer’s touch. When I took another pass to add personality, anecdotes, actionable insights, and personal experiences to the copy, it became more appealing to readers and search engines.

AI Writer Research & Write dashboard.
AI Writer Research & Write dashboard lets you enter a topic to generate article ideas.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Provides a list of citations for information verification Requires extensive editing of the generated content
SEO-friendly content generation Generated text can be cliche and plain

Pricing

  • Basic: $29 per user, per month
  • Standard: $49 per month for three users
  • Power: $375 per month for 10 users

Key Features

  • AI text generator
  • SEO editor
  • One-click article writer
  • Topic generator based on seed keywords (with traffic estimate)
  • Can publish to WordPress
  • Email composer
  • Text rewording capability

Content at Scale icon.

ContentatScale.ai

Best for Creating Long-Form Articles

Those looking for an AI writing tool to automatically create long-form articles (over 2,000 words) may find ContentatScale features suitable. After plugging in your topic and further context, it will automatically generate body text, headers, subheaders, a title, bulleted lists, a call to action, and other content elements necessary for effective long-form SEO articles. Not only will it write the blog post—it will also help you come up with ideas, outlines, and relevant keywords in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it manually.

The platform claims to pass AI detection tests, indicating that its generated content mimics human writing and is not easily distinguishable from human-written content. ContentatScale also offers an AI detector solution that ranks as one of best reviewed AI detector tools. Overall, it can be helpful for streamlining the long-form content writing process.

ContentatScale’s project dashboard.
ContentatScale’s project dashboard keeps track of your content generation projects in a single place.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Provides content optimization tools Users report bugginess and lots of edits required
Specializes in long-form content Expensive compared to the other best AI writing tools

Pricing

  • Trial: Seven days; $39.99
  • Solo: $250 monthly for eight posts
  • Starter: $500 per month for 20 posts
  • Scaling: $1,000 per month for 50 posts, or $1,500 per month for 100 posts

Key Features

  • Keyword, YouTube, podcast, file, blog outputs
  • Unique Voice AI Training options
  • AI detection capability
  • Natural language processing analysis

How to Choose the Best AI Writing Software for Your Business

Choosing the best AI writing tool for your business depends on your AI writing needs and your budget. Our “best-for” use cases are a good starting point to help you decide. In addition, here’s a little more information to help you narrow down your choice:

  • Copy.ai and Rytr are best for copywriters and social media managers looking to create short-form content and marketing copy.
  • AI Writer, Anyword, and Writersonic are solid options for those looking to create blog posts at scale.
  • Frase can help you optimize your content for SEO.
  • Grammarly and Hemingway are great options for checking grammar, spelling, and style in your AI-generated content.
  • QuillBot and Writesonic may be the best for paraphrasing.

Other factors to consider when choosing the best AI writing tools for your business include features, content quality, user interface, and customization options. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be an either-or choice—these tools can be used together for better quality content. For example, you can use QuillBot to paraphrase Anyword’s AI-generated text, Grammarly to correct spelling and punctuation errors, and the Hemmingway App to improve readability.

How We Evaluated the Best AI Writing Tools

We weighed the best tools across five categories. Each category has subcategories that helped us evaluate and compare the AI writing tools.

Feature Set | 30 percent

We assessed the writing capabilities of each tool, including its grammar and spelling correction, sentence rephrasing, and content generation capabilities. We looked for tools that provided accurate and high-quality writing suggestions.

Quality of Output | 25 percent

We evaluated the accuracy and coherence of the generated content produced by each AI writing tool. Tools that could generate clear, well-structured, and error-free content received higher scores.

Cost | 20 percent

We examined the different pricing plans offered by each AI writing tool. This included evaluating the cost of the tool on a monthly or annual basis, as well as any additional fees or hidden costs. We compared each tool’s cost to its value, looking for tools that offer a high level of functionality for a reasonable price.

Support | 15 percent

We assessed the availability and responsiveness of customer support channels, such as email, live chat, or phone support. Prompt and helpful customer support is essential for users who may encounter issues or need assistance with the tool. We also considered the availability of resources and documentation, such as user guides, tutorials, or knowledge bases.

Ease of Use | 10 percent

We looked for tools that have an intuitive and user-friendly interface, allowing users to navigate and utilize the tool’s features easily.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Is there a free AI writing tool?

There are plenty of free AI writing tools for content creation, editing, and paraphrasing, including some of those reviewed in this guide. While many of the AI writing tools’ advanced features are restricted to paid users, some writers will find the feature sets in the free plans sufficient for their needs.

How can companies benefit from AI writing tools?

Companies can benefit from AI writing tools by using them to streamline the content creation and editing process across various marketing channels, from social media to SEO blog content. These tools can automatically generate content, help with brainstorming, and suggest edits to improve your copy. Overall, AI writing tools help businesses improve efficiency and increase content marketing output and quality.

Will the content created by AI writing tools seem robotic?

The output of AI writing tools will not have the compelling quality of writing created by human writers. After all, AI writing tools are merely generating text—they’re not thinking, considering personal anecdotes, or making unique connections between ideas. Ultimately, the output of AI writing tools need a human touch to create quality writing.

Bottom Line: Top AI Writing Tools Improve Efficiency

This guide highlights our recommendations for the best AI writing tools to help with your writing needs, but they may not fit every use case perfectly. AI is a tool that can help with idea and content generation and quality improvement, but the best results still require a skilled human touch. When used properly, these tools can boost efficiency and are likely to continue driving changes in any market sector that relies on written content.

Read next: for more assistance with your projects, read our analysis of the best AI chatbots and the top conversational AI tools.

The post 10 Best AI Writing Tools (2024): Enhance Your Writing with AI Magic appeared first on eWEEK.

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20 Best AI Apps for Android & iOS In 2024 https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/best-ai-apps/ Thu, 30 May 2024 14:00:12 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=223088 Discover the X best AI apps for Android and iOS in 2023. From voice assistants to photo editing, these AI apps will help you get the most out of your device.

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With the growing user enthusiasm for AI apps that support personal and business use, artificial intelligence applications are being launched for a wide array of uses, from education to health to entertainment.

The everyday consumer is now using AI apps to simplify everything from crafting an email to editing a photo to improving their fitness with the support of AI assistants and mobile AI apps.

In this guide, we’ll cover some of the top AI apps for Android and iOS users today and how these apps are transforming everyday life.

Conversational AI Apps

These conversational AI apps use natural processing language to create text and otherwise interface with users using life-life speech.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT icon.

The mobile app version of ChatGPT, the popular large language model AI chatbot from OpenAI, is available for both Android and iOS users.

With ChatGPT on mobile, users can sync up their ChatGPT data with all other devices that they use. They can also benefit from the Whisper integration, which enables them to use voice inputs while engaging with the ChatGPT app.

Though more advanced features are available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, the basic mobile app is free to use and gives users the ability to generate various types of content in response to their inputs, including written text, images, and even code.

ChatGPT screenshot.

Pros Cons
Sophisticated and human-like text, image, and code generation. Responses can be long and at times off the mark.
Free to access. Must pay for Chat-GPT 4, the newest model.

Pi

Pi icon.

Inflection’s Pi generated buzz before anyone had even heard the name of the app due to the pedigree of the company’s founders. The app has proven itself a worthy competitor of ChatGPT, giving users the ability to have human-like conversations, seek advice, and get other interesting responses from the Pi chatbot.

The artificial intelligence assistant can automate various processes, including that of learning new things, making plans, keeping a journal, and even venting. The app will also remember your conversational history, making it feel like an assistant who actually knows your situation and needs.

Pi is currently only available to iOS users, though there are plans to eventually release the app in the Google Play store.

Below, I’ve asked it to plan a 5-day trip to Australia:

Pi screenshot.

Pros Cons
Excellent planning and advice-giving capabilities. Less in-depth responses than Chat-GPT
Feels like a humorous, helpful assistant helping you with admin work. Some users report slow response times.

Replika

Replika icon.

Replika is a conversational AI app that allows users to interact with a virtual friend in a way that feels like speaking with a real human.

Depending on the user’s needs, Replika can be set up to feel like a friend, a personal or professional mentor, or even a romantic interest. You could also make it play a hiring manager who is interviewing you for a new role, allowing you to run through some practice before the big day.

Users also have the option to virtually share moments with their Replika through augmented reality. Replika is available to iOS, Android, and Oculus device users.

Below you’ll find an example of its shy librarian avatar doing her best to entertain a rather snobby end-user:

Replika screenshot.

Pros Cons
Visual avatar might make the chat experience feel more realistic. Not the most original or creative responses.
Able to pick your chatbot’s personality to match your needs. Must pay for many of the best conversational features.

Otter.ai

Otter.ai icon.

Otter.ai is an assistive AI app that primarily helps with audio transcription, note-taking, and live summaries. It is available for iOS, Android, and Slack and is also available through a Chrome extension.

Although it can just as easily be used by individuals, the app is best suited for collaborative content, as different users can edit the transcript and add relevant comments and highlights as necessary.

Plus, by syncing with your various communication channels, it enables you to use AI-powered search to quickly find details hidden in an email thread or colleague’s calendar.

Otter.ai screenshot.

Pros Cons
Great for searching your apps and discussions to find key information. Words aren’t always transcribed accurately.
Automated meeting notes and summaries. Can struggle to discern between different speakers in meetings.

Cleo

Cleo icon.

Cleo is an AI assistant that helps users with personal finance management tasks. It’s available for both iOS and Android users.

Users can engage with the Cleo app for help with managing a personal budget, saving, avoiding certain types of purchases, and borrowing money.

Cleo also brings a certain amount of personality to the personal finance experience, giving its users the option to be “roasted” or “hyped” for their spending habits and how they align with their overall goals.

Cleo screenshot.

Pros Cons
Makes budgeting fun and light-hearted. Cash advance feature requires a membership.
Finds patterns in your spending habits that’ll help you get better at saving. Confusing subscription policies and limited customer support.

For more information about top generative AI software, see our list: Top Generative AI Applications and Tools

Health, Safety, and Transportation AI Apps

These apps address an array of health and wellness issues, ranging from supporting mental health to helping the visually impaired; additionally, we found a top transportation app that can also improve the quality of life.

Wysa

Wysa icon.

Wysa is a mobile app that takes a hybrid approach to mental health care, using both artificial intelligence and humans to give users the care they need.

Users have the option to engage with the conversational AI agent on demand, and this agent can then assign curated care guides, programs, and additional support to users who need it.

If a user is in a clinical program with Wysa, they may also receive regular check-ins from the AI agent, which can escalate to human coaches and therapists if necessary. Wysa is available for both iOS and Android users.

Below is a snapshot of the AI mental health assistant helping me find some calm through exercises tailored to my specific situation:

Wysa screenshot.

Pros Cons
Situation-specific advice and exercises. Likely not as helpful as an actual practitioner, but can help in a pinch.
Chatbot has a calming, sensitive, and helpful tone. Sometimes it doesn’t understand that you’ve been helped and can get caught in a loop.

Youper

Youper icon.

Youper is an AI-driven mental health app that relies on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) best practices and methodologies.

With Youper, users first complete a detailed assessment to give Youper the data it needs to curate a more personal experience. From there, its conversational AI has on-demand conversations with the user.

This is an exciting app option for users who want to track their mood or symptoms over time, as Youper offers detailed symptom monitoring and analytics features with helpful visualizations. Youper is available to both iOS and Android users.

As shown below, when you first open the app, it will take you through a series of questions to get an understanding of your specific mental health goals:

Youper screenshot.

Pros Cons
Symptom monitoring and analytics to track and somewhat gamify mental health improvement. Must pay for the app.
Provides a personalized experience. App can freeze at times.

Seeing AI

Seeing AI icon.

Seeing AI is an app that’s primarily designed for the visually impaired and blind to get detailed audio descriptions of their surroundings.

The app can be used to translate documents, products, handwriting, and currency into audio descriptions, and even more abstract concepts like colors, people, and scenes can be transformed into auditory narrations. Seeing AI is only available to iOS users, though similar apps are available for Android users.

Below is the page that displays when the app is reading a book aloud:

Seeing AI screenshot.

Pros Cons
Audio-descriptions of books, documents, and surroundings. Can be some accuracy issues.
Easy-to-use interface (YouTube videos explain each feature). Narration is slightly monotone and boring (matters more for K-12 use)

FitnessAI

FitnessAI icon.

FitnessAI is an AI-driven fitness training app that generates personalized workouts for users based on their personal goals, fitness levels, and health backgrounds.

For instance, if you have lower back issues, it will suggest workouts that avoid straining the area. It will also give you detailed instructions on how to do the workouts and use whatever equipment is required.

Additionally, if users keep up with their workout logs, the AI can assist them with deciding on the optimal rest period and workout difficulty levels for future workouts.

FitnessAI is only available for iOS users, though similar AI fitness and nutrition apps are available for Android users as well.

FitnessAI screenshot.

Pros Cons
Creates personalized fitness plans based on your injuries, gym preferences, and goals. Might reinforce bad habits, suggesting workouts you enjoy doing rather than ones that’ll help you meet your goals.
Tracks your progress and recommends rest period length. Pretty expensive at $89.99 per year.

Waze

Waze icon.

Waze is a popular navigation and transportation app that uses a combination of AI and machine learning to optimize user routes and predict their typical driving patterns and styles.

The app also uses Google Cloud’s AI Platform to develop a network for Waze Carpool, which is a sustainable way for users to share their trips with each other when following similar routes and schedules.

Further, it will alert you when obstacles are up ahead. Waze is available for both iOS and Android users.

Waze screenshot.

Pros Cons
Often finds faster routes than other comparable apps. Sometimes takes you through places you’d rather avoid.
Accurate predictions about ETAs. Its “upcoming hazard” notifications can be distracting, even if they’re meant to help.

Entertainment, Art, and Creative AI Apps

Focusing on creativity, these AI apps enable users to do everything from edit photos to generate art to enjoy their favorite music.

Lensa AI

Prisma Labs icon.

Lensa is an AI photo editor and retoucher that also allows users to create videos, add special effects to images, and create avatar characters in different styles.

Its range of features and editing styles make it a popular image-editing tool for the everyday consumer. AI Image creation apps like Lensa are transforming the development of images in many ways; at the very least they are blurring the lines between photography and graphic arts.

Lensa AI is available for both iOS and Android users.

Lensa AI screenshot.

Pros Cons
Great for retouching and image creation. Expensive avatar packages often make mistakes and aren’t advanced enough to warrant the price.
Generates avatars quickly based on your specs. Some artists have raised concerns, claiming the app is copying their style.

Wonder

Wonder icon.

Wonder is an AI-generated art app that allows users to submit text prompts to create art in many different styles.

No coding experience is necessary, as the tool creatively generates the art based on user requests and descriptions, as well as on submitted photos. Wonder is available for both iOS and Android users.

To illustrate, here’s what it gave me when I asked it to create an image of a haunted Victorian house:

Wonder screenshot.

Pros Cons
Makes image generation easy. Sometimes the app doesn’t understand complex prompts.
No coding required. Doesn’t offer prompt engineering features to help you write better prompts.

Spotify

Spotify icon.

Available for IOS and Android users, Spotify is one of the most popular music and podcast streaming apps on the market, and part of this popularity comes from the curated experiences it creates for users through AI.

Its latest AI addition is the AI DJ, which pulls data from user listening history and other factors to create curated set lists and explanations of the music that gets played.

For example, noticing I’ve been listening to a lot of classical music and Lord of the Rings film scores lately, it created this playlist for me:

Spotify screenshot.

Pros Cons
Studies your listening habits, favorite songs, and taste to make recommendations. Sometimes overestimates how much you like a genre.
Easy way to store and listen to your music. Price can be too much for some listeners.

Facetune

Facetune icon.

Facetune by Lightricks has been a popular photo and video editing app since the earliest days of Instagram, owing to its easy-to-use interface and wide variety of photo-editing features.

More recently, the company has added various AI-enhanced and AI-powered features, including the AI Selfie Generator, AI avatars, and the AI Photo Enhancer.

With the selfie generator tool, users can generate different image styles for their selfies with their own prompts or they can use Facetune’s own library of AI-generated presets. Facetune is available to both Android and iOS users.

Here are just some of the image-editing tasks you can automate with the app:

Facetune screenshot.

Pros Cons
Makes it easy to edit photos and images. Must pay for some advanced features.
Can create AI selfies and avatars. May raise ethical concerns due to its distortion of beauty standards.

Character AI

Character.ai icon.

Character AI is an AI and generative AI tool that allows users to have realistic conversations with AI avatars and characters they create.

These characters can be created for more serious purposes, like preparing for a job interview or imagining what it would be like to speak with a dead relative, but they can also be used for more fun conversations, like pretending to chat with your favorite celebrity. Character AI is available to both iOS and Android users.

When creating your AI characters, you can select many characteristics, including the sound of their voice:

Character AI screenshot.

Pros Cons
Easy to create your own talking AI chatbot. User interface is somewhat messy and confusing.
Simulate real-life conversations to prepare for them. Can be highly addicting.

AI Dungeon

AI Dungeon icon.

AI Dungeon is a generative AI tool that allows users to simulate and create characters, adventure prompts, and virtual worlds for virtual gaming experiences. Users take turns with the AI and work together to build a story.

Through this experience, game designers and writers can brainstorm their plots and character behaviors and get new ideas for their fictional world.

Although users have full freedom to create scenarios from their imagination, the tool also comes with a few foundational prompts if anyone needs assistance getting started. AI Dungeon is available to both iOS and Android users.

To illustrate, here is a roleplay game where I’m in brutal combat with an evil elf:

AI Dungeon screenshot.

Pros Cons
Allows you to run through role-play scenarios for fun or for brainstorming. Sometimes its responses don’t correspond to your choice of action.
AI responses are well-written and inventive enough to transport the user into a fictional world. Text can be nonsensical in some scenarios.

Photoleap

Photoleap icon.

Photoleap is another image editing app from Lightricks that focuses on AI-powered image generation and photo editing. It can create an interesting array of styles and image moods.

Users can submit text prompts to create unique images and can also benefit from a tool for AI avatar generation. Photoleap is available to both Android and iOS users.

Below are some of its AI editing features that you can use to alter photos and images for your marketing campaigns, advertisements, or personal use:

Photoleap screenshot.

Pros Cons
Great for high-resolution image editing and creation. Processing speed for images can be slow.
Simple to use. Lacks background removal and generative fill feature.

For more information about how generative AI is used across sectors, see our guide: Generative AI Examples

Education AI Apps

AI apps are becoming a popular choice for learning any number of subjects, including math, science, and language skills.

Socratic by Google

Socratic icon.

Socratic is an education-focused application that is powered by Google AI. Students in subjects ranging from science and math to literature and social studies can submit questions — either through typed text, voice prompts, or homework screenshots.

In response, Socratic offers detailed responses that blend text explanations, diagrams, images, and internet results to give users a more well-rounded response. Socratic is available to both iOS and Android users.

Socratic screenshot.

Pros Cons
Gives explanations that help you understand the “why” behind an answer. Some students might just use it to get answers to questions without thinking or learning.
Useful for a wide range of subjects. Can aid in cheating.

ELSA

ELSA icon.

ELSA is a conversational AI application that focuses primarily on English language-learning initiatives, both in schools and company settings.

It’s great for practicing your accent and pronunciation, as it will grade your recorded spoken responses to its questions.

Users are given access to ELSA’s AI coach, which is able to detect progress in their speech patterns and pronunciation. AI within the system is also used to create customized curricula for students that fit their specific performance and behaviors over time.

ELSA is available to both iOS and Google users.

ELSA screenshot.

Pros Cons
Scores how much you sound like a native speaker. Doesn’t always explain why exactly you fall short on pronunciation.
Supports a wide range of languages. Interface is a bit confusing.

Grammarly

Grammarly icon.

Grammarly is a writing assistance tool that can help users with simple spelling and punctuation errors but also goes beyond basic proofreading to offer AI-powered suggestions for improved correctness, clarity, and delivery for user-specified target audiences.

The tool also more recently added generative AI assistance to support brainstorming, content creation, and rewrites of existing content. A version of the Grammarly tool — the Grammar Keyboard — is available to both Android and iOS users.

For example, now whenever I write an email on Gmail I can switch to the Grammar keyboard and get feedback on the tone and grammar of the writing:

Grammarly screenshot.

Pros Cons
Catches grammar and spelling mistakes. Some suggestions seem like bad ones.
Makes suggestions about how to improve your writing. Free version doesn’t check for style or context.

For an in-depth portrait of today’s generative AI leaders, see our guide: Generative AI Companies: Top Leaders

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Which AI App Is Everyone Using?

The most popular AI app is Chat-GPT. It functions as a research tool, content creator, text summarizer, and personal assistant. That said, not everyone is using it — there are other apps out there for different purposes. For example, Pi, which many find to be a friendly and humorous AI chatbot app.

What is the Best AI App Currently?

Currently the best AI app is Chat-GPT, mostly because of its highly accurate and in-depth responses to questions and prompts across many subjects, but also because so many people are using it and as a result there is a lot of information out there about how to get the most out of the tool.

Is There a Better AI App Than ChatGPT?

Depending on your preferences and needs, yes, there are definitely AI apps out there better than ChatGPT. For example, if you value conversational memory in a chatbot, then Claude might be better. If you want a tool that generates images, MidJourney has GPT beat.

Bottom Line: Top AI Apps Offer Enormous Functionality

This guide to the best AI apps provides a portrait of an exciting AI mobile market, especially as new players emerge on a near-daily basis.

The four overarching categories we’ve covered above are where most AI apps for mobile users are focused today, but that’s quickly expanding. More AI developers are launching tools for things like virtual shopping and entertainment experiences, telehealth, and project management, to name a few categories out of many.

Whether you’re looking for a tool that can support key business initiatives or simply want an AI solution for personal use cases, the AI mobile market is a great place to start for user-friendly and low-cost AI applications.

For a detailed list of today’s free AI apps, see our in-depth report, Free AI Tools

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AI For Sales Training: Overview and Examples https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-for-sales-training/ Wed, 22 May 2024 15:18:07 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=224678 Learn how AI can ace your marketing stratagem through AI sales training. Here's a quick guide.

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Artificial intelligence has many applications for sales training, from facilitating sales roleplay sessions to providing coaches with advanced performance analytics they can use to inform their sales training plans.

This is a huge boon for salespeople. In sales, the most effective way to develop skills is through consistent, deliberate practice enhanced by accurate, evidence-based feedback. Artificial intelligence makes both of these more accessible than ever before.

We’ll look at how to make the most of this new technology, and share ways to integrate AI sales training tactics and software into your company’s skill development program.

What Is AI Roleplay In Sales Training?

One of the most powerful applications of artificial intelligence in sales training is in sales roleplaying.

AI roleplay refers to the activities and software that sales reps use to simulate real-life conversations with customers as a form of sales practice.

With an AI role-play training platform, sales leaders can customize AI chatbots that match their various buyer personas.

Sales reps can then speak or message with the AI in various pre-made or custom sales scenarios, from cold calls to objection handling sessions.

For instance, here’s a basic mock sales call scenario in PitchMonster:

Basic sales call scenario in PitchMonster.
An example of feedback from an AI sales application. Image: Pitchmonster.io

After the roleplay exercise, reps receive feedback about their performance, helping them improve next time around.

Here’s what an AI coach thought of my performance (seems like fair advice):

AI coach sample evaluation from PitchMonster.

On some platforms, you can even upload your company’s sales standards so that the feedback is in line with your company’s sales methodology and skill development goals.

These AI role-play tools are still in early development, so they may have limitations, but look for them to become increasingly realistic and advanced as time goes on.

To gain a deeper understanding of today’s AI software for sales, read our guide to AI Sales Tools and Software

Key Components of an AI-Driven Sales Training Program

There are three main components to an AI-driven sales training program: AI-powered roleplay partners, a conversational intelligence platform, and sales performance analytics.

All three work in tandem to empower coaches and accelerate the skill development of your customer-facing team.

AI-Powered Roleplay Partners

AI-powered roleplay partners are the AI chatbots and avatars with whom your sales reps will practice various sales conversations.

While it’s certainly possible to create your own AI chatbots by training Chat-GPT on your customer persona, product info, and call transcripts, it’s far easier to invest in AI sales training software that comes with a pre-built, yet customizable AI avatar.

These tools provide in-depth feedback to help reps improve quickly:

In-depth feedback tools from PitchMonster.
This dashboard full of AI sales roleplay tools can helps sales reps practice for real life sales calls.

Conversational Intelligence Software

If AI role-play software facilitates your call practice sessions, conversational intelligence tools like Gong will help you identify which skills your reps should be practicing.

By monitoring and analyzing a rep’s sales calls, these platforms can identify weak spots where the calls generally go wrong, as well as best practices to reinforce in your training.

For instance, the tool might discover that one of your reps is too talkative during discovery calls and that the best reps ask 8-10 questions per call.

This insight will help you design an AI roleplay exercise that will help the rep overcome this weakness.

Sales Performance Analytics

Sales performance analytics tools, often found in your CRM, help you identify key improvement areas in your rep’s skill sets by tracking key performance metrics.

For example, if an Account Executive has an unusually high loss rate in the demo phase of the sale, it’s time to focus on coaching them on that skill.

Performance analytics also helps you assess the effectiveness of your sales training program. If your cold calling reps have been using your AI roleplay to practice for several months and booked meetings per call aren’t rising, it’s time to update the exercise.

To learn about AI for customer relationship management, read our guide: Top 8 AI CRM Software 

How Is AI Used For Sales?

With so many AI companies in the market, artificial intelligence is entering almost every function and stage of sales, from automating repetitive tasks to facilitating sales training activities.

Below are some of the key use-cases for AI in sales:

  • Create Sales Scripts: Generative AI like Chat-GPT can help you brainstorm and write sales scripts to use when talking with your target audience.
  • Automate Inbound, Transactional Sales: AI chatbots can help inbound customers on your website find products, conduct research, and make the purchase.
  • Improve Sales Training and Coaching: With AI role-playing software and data analysis tools, reps can more easily practice and get helpful feedback about their skills.
  • Power Sales Forecasting: Predictive sales analytics platforms, powered by AI, can help you make more accurate sales forecasts and adjust accordingly.
  • Automate Sales Tasks: AI features can automate simple tasks like updating CRM data fields, which leaves reps more time for practice and conversations with buyers.
  • Ideate Sales Questions: Sales reps can give AI chatbots info about the buyer they’re speaking with and ask the tool to ideate relevant questions they should ask the buyer.

By streamlining the sales process, AI gives reps more time to focus on practicing and developing the core skills of their craft.

4 Benefits of Using AI In Sales Training

By including AI in your sales training program, you can make role-play more impactful, spot improvement areas, empower reps to self-train, and automate repetitive sales coaching tasks.

Make Role Playing Feel Realistic to Reps

Sometimes, when a sales rep is running through mock calls with a peer or manager, it’s hard for them to take the role-playing exercise seriously.

Despite their efforts in imagination, the rep knows this is the same person they ate lunch with earlier, not the persnickety, slightly hostile lead they’re pretending to be.

With AI chatbots, salespeople often feel like they’re having a real conversation with a buyer. It’s also less awkward, so reps are more likely to put in effort and take it seriously.

Easily Identify Key Improvement Areas

With performance analytics software, AI coaches, and conversational intelligence tools all providing you and your reps with data about their performance, it’s easy to spot skills that need development.

AI coaching tools like Mindtickle will even assign scores to reps for different training exercises:

Performance scoring in training from Mindtickle.
A page dedicated to an AI role playing exercise. Source: Mindtickle.

This feedback allows you to personalize training and focus it on weaknesses rather than strengths.

You’ll also be able to use AI to find team-wide trends and bottlenecks that you can address in team training sessions.

Equip Reps to Train Themselves

Imagine a rep has a sales call in thirty minutes with a new type of prospect and wants to run through some mock conversations but doesn’t have anyone to practice with.

Thanks to AI role-playing software and AI chatbots, they can easily warm up for the call on their own.

Plus, they can expose themselves to various scenarios without actually experiencing them in the sales world, so when the situation does occur, they’re prepared.

Best of all, access to role-play practice allows reps to practice more often, so their skills develop faster.

Free up Time for Sales Coaches and Managers

With generative AI tools automating performance analysis and role-play, sales coaches have more time for the parts of sales training only they can do.

Those activities include motivating reps, helping them navigate tricky deals, and creating more advanced sales training curriculums.

How To Use AI To Train Your Sales Team

AI can help you run roleplays, practice for sales calls, scale and automate coaching, and onboard new reps. Let’s dive deeper into how this technology helps with each of these sales training activities.

AI Sales Roleplaying

AI roleplaying software enables you to put your sales reps into a variety of virtual real-life sales scenarios with AI-powered avatars who match your ideal customer and resemble real buyers.

This enables reps to practice their conversational skills on-demand for a wide scope of sales calls, including cold calls, discovery, presentations, negotiation, and closing.

Using AI to analyze these practice calls, these tools will also provide reps with feedback on their sales vocabulary, use of filler words, ability to hit the key points in your sales script, and more.

This allows reps to practice without a sales coach – which is a greatly improved use of overall staff time.

Preparing for Upcoming Sales Calls

Sales reps can use generative AI tools like Chat-GPT to prepare for upcoming sales calls.

After training the tool on your customer data and the specifics of the sales scenario, reps can use the chatbot to brainstorm potential objections and questions they should be prepared to answer.

As an example, in this interview, Sales Coach Chris Dupre at Impact shares a specific use case.

He discusses how he sometimes uploads a call transcript into Google Docs and labels the seller as A and the prospect as B. Then he loads that into Chat GPT, tells the chatbot to play person B, and asks it to role-play a sales conversation.

He’ll also use this tactic to identify actions that’ll move the deal forward.

For instance, after uploading the call transcript, he might ask the AI chatbot which hurdles he still needs to get over to close the deal, or which questions he should ask to move things forward.

This brainstorming exercise allows reps to think through potential paths the upcoming conversion could take, and prepare responses, rebuttals, and questions ahead of time.

Even if all the scenarios are off the mark, the rep will go into the call feeling more confident, which matters a lot in sales.

AI Coaching and Feedback

Whether it’s assessing a rep’s performance during their role-play session or reviewing a new hire’s first sales call with a prospect, AI coaching tools make coaching far more scalable by taking over many of the performance analysis and feedback responsibilities.

Conversational AI platforms like Gong can also monitor every call your team makes, analyze the conversational data, and discover the actions and behaviors of top performers.

Aware of these best practices, the AI coach listens to each rep’s calls and gives them recommendations for how they can improve, such as “focus more on talking benefits.”

Further, AI coaching tools also typically come with a searchable database of past calls. This enables reps to easily study the habits and techniques of top performers.

It can also help sales managers identify each rep’s weak points:

Sales rep weak points identification from Gong.
An example page that provides AI-based feedback for sales reps. Source: Gong.io

Onboarding New Sales Reps

Sales onboarding software helps you speed up your ramp time so new salespeople start performing in weeks rather than months.

These tools allow you to build onboarding pathways, which include various exercises, AI role-play, training videos, templates, training documents, action items, and milestones.

Sales coaches can watch the progress of each new-hire and use AI-driven analytics to identify areas where they still need to improve before they’re ready to host a demo or call a lead.

For example, here’s an SDR onboarding plan:

SDR onboarding plan from Wonderway.
An example of an AI-supported sales onboard process. Source: Wonderway.io.

Top 3 AI Training Software & Tools

Here are leading AI sales training tools that will help you integrate artificial intelligence into your company’s sales skill development program.

PitchMonster

PitchMonster is an AI sales role-playing software that allows reps to speak with AI-powered avatars who are trained on your customer data.

With these human-like avatars, reps can practice handling objections, opening calls, and much more.

After each training session, the tool offers feedback about the rep’s performance that is based on your company’s standards.

Performance feedback from PitchMonster.
An example of feedback from an AI sales training tool. Source: Pitchmonster.io

Mindtickle

Mindtickle is sales coaching software that comes with conversational intelligence and performance analysis features that help coaches identify weaknesses among their sales reps and design more personalized sales training plans.

Mindtickle also allows you to create AI-based call scores, themes, and trackers to spot teachable moments within sales calls.

Further, you can build call libraries of both good and bad examples that sellers can access and study to improve their craft.

AI-based call scores, themes, and trackers to spot teachable moments within sales calls from Mindtickle.
This AI sales training tool provides feedback on each element of a sales call. Source: Mindtickle.

Gong

Gong is an AI coaching platform that monitors and analyzes your rep’s sales calls and provides them with data-driven feedback that’s grounded in the tool’s understanding of what actions and behaviors drive success or failure.

It’s also extremely helpful for sales coaches. By analyzing thousands of your team’s calls, Gong’s AI can identify the topics, phrases, and behaviors that are worth replicating across your team or abandoning entirely.

This gives sales coaches valuable direction and material for their training programs.

Sample sales material from Gong.
An example of an AI tool’s analysis of an sales rep’s performance. Source: Gong.io.

Bottom Line: AI Boosts the Quality of Sales Training

AI sales tools are entering almost every part of sales, from cold email to forecasting. But sales training may be the area where it has the greatest potential to improve the actual performance of reps.

By facilitating role-play sessions and providing data-driven performance feedback to reps and coaches, AI sales training software can help reps get the practice and advice they need to develop their skills, kick bad habits, and reach their full potential.

To see a list of the leading generative AI apps, read our guide: Top 20 Generative AI Tools and Apps 2024

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6 Best Machine Learning Certificates 2024 https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/machine-learning-certificate/ Wed, 15 May 2024 20:10:06 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=224600 6 Best Machine Learning Certificate Programs to Master AI, 2024

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The machine learning market is projected to grow at a remarkable annual rate of 36 percent from 2024-2030, making it one of the most in-demand skill sets for programmers, data scientists, and aspiring AI professionals.

To capitalize on this trend, many ML professionals are getting their machine learning certification — a formal recognition of your ML expertise by a reputable certifying body, such as Cornell University, Google, IBM, and other top AI companies.

Typically, these ML certification programs are taught by industry experts or professors and come with course material in the form of videos, quizzes, assignments, and readings, all culminating in a final certification exam – and possibly resulting in career advancement.

Here are our top picks for the best machine learning certifications of 2024:

Machine Learning Certification Comparison Chart

When selecting a machine learning certification, it’s important to take into account the certifying body, duration of the program, and course fee. You should also make sure it aligns with your artificial intelligence and ML experience level and offers study resources and techniques that fit your learning style.

Best for Certifying Body Duration Study Resources Experience Level Fee
Machine Learning Specialization (Coursera) Beginners breaking into the field. Stanford University 2 months (10 hrs per week) Videos, labs, quizzes, reading, app items, projects. Novices $59 per month
IBM Machine Learning Professional Certificate (Coursera) Intermediates looking to update their skill set. IBM 3 months (10 hrs per week) Videos, labs, quizzes, reading, app items, projects. Intermediates $59 per month
AWS Certified Machine Learning ML professionals who build and deploy models in AWS. Amazon 3 hours (65 questions) Practice questions, exam guide, exam readiness webinar. Advanced $300
Google Professional ML Engineer Certification ML professionals who build and deploy models with Google Cloud. Google 2 hours (50-60 questions) 14 Google ML preparation courses and one Google lab. Advanced $300
eCornell Machine Learning Certificate Program Those interested in learning Python for ML via an academic experience. Cornell University 3.5 months (6-9 hours per week) Live sessions, projects, videos, readings. Beginners $3,750
Microsoft Azure Data Scientist Associate Certification ML professionals who build and deploy in Azure. Microsoft 100 minutes ~12 hr course, 100 prep videos, exam practice sandbox. Advanced $165

Stanford Machine Learning Specialization (Coursera)

Best 3-course series for machine learning beginners.

Taught by AI visionary Andrew NG, Stanford’s 3-course, beginner-friendly machine learning specialization will introduce you to key artificial intelligence concepts and teach you to build and train ML models using Python.

Unlike most other certification programs, this ML course is geared toward the total beginner, recommending only that course-takers have high school math knowledge and basic coding skills (loops, functions, if/else statements). As a writer who took a free intro Python course via CodeAcademy for fun, I can tell you these are easy concepts to pick up.

This low barrier to entry combined with its immersive, comprehensive, and hands-on learning experience makes this ML certification the perfect option for aspiring AI professionals looking to break into the field.

Who Should Get This Certification?

This certification is ideal for total beginners looking to get an entry-level position in the field of ML, as well as early-career data analysts, software engineers, and ML interns looking to upskill in machine learning. Some sample salaries for positions that this ML certification could possibly lead to:

  • Junior Data Analyst: $85,000 per year.
  • Machine Learning Intern: $104,000 per year.
  • Junior Software Engineer: $130,000 per year.

Pricing

  • $59 per month for a Coursera subscription.
  • Can take the courses for free but won’t receive a certification.

Recommended Prerequisites

  • High school math (algebra, arithmetic).
  • Basic coding (loops, functions, if/else statements).

For more information about generative AI providers – which are companies that hire ML experts – read our in-depth guide: Generative AI Companies: Top 20 Leaders

IBM Machine Learning Professional Certificate (Coursera)

Best 6-course series for intermediate ML professionals looking to upskill.

IBM’s Machine Learning Professional Certificate is designed to help intermediate-level tech professionals master practical, up-to-date machine learning concepts and skills that they can apply to the analysis of real-world datasets.

Through six courses, you’ll learn exploratory data analysis for machine learning, supervised ML, unsupervised ML, and deep/reinforcement learning.

All of this culminates in a final capstone project where you’ll train a neural network, construct regression models, create recommender systems in Python, and more. Once completed, you’ll receive a certificate from IBM, thus positioning you as a machine learning expert.

Who Should Get This Certification?

IBM’s certification is meant for scientists, business analysts, and software developers who want to improve their analytical skills in data science and machine learning, but the certificate is highly useful to ML professionals aspiring to a variety of data-focused roles. Some sample salaries for positions that this ML certification could possibly lead to:

  • Business Analysts: $99,000 per year.
  • Machine Learning Engineer: $165,000 per year.
  • NLP Scientist: $146,000 per year.
  • Data Engineer: $155,000 per year.
  • Software Engineer: $145,000 per year.

Pricing

  • $59 per month for a Coursera subscription.
  • Can take the courses for free but won’t receive a certification.

Recommended Prerequisites

  • Background in math, statistics, and computer programming.

AWS Certified Machine Learning

Best exam for indicating your machine learning expertise in the AWS platform. 

The AWS Certified Machine Learning Speciality is a 3-hour exam that validates your ability to build, train, tune, and deploy machine learning models on AWS.

The exam can be taken in-person or online, and will test how well you can state the intuition behind basic ML algorithms, perform hyperparameter optimization, and follow model-training and deployment best practices.

For those looking to prepare, check out the AWS Skill Builder, where you’ll find helpful course material and practice questions.

Who Should Get This Certification?

This certificate is for professional developers and data scientists who have worked with ML in AWS and want to validate this skillset to employers, perhaps to land a more senior data science role. Some sample salaries for positions that this ML certification could possibly lead to:

  • Machine Learning Engineer: $165,000 per year.
  • Data Scientist: $155,000 per year.
  • AWS Data Engineer: $164,000 per year.
  • Software Engineer: $145,000 per year.

Pricing

  • $300

Recommended Prerequisites

  • Intended for working developers and data scientists with over a year of experience developing, architecting, or running machine learning workloads in AWS Cloud.

To see a list of the leading generative AI apps, read our guide: Top 20 Generative AI Tools and Apps 2024

Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer

Best exam for proving your ML expertise in Google Cloud solutions.

The Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Certificate is an exam for ML professionals who build and optimize ML models using Google Cloud technologies and best practices.

Sections of the exam include 1) architecting low-code ML solutions, 2) collaborating with teams to manage models, 3) scaling prototypes into ML models, 4) serving and scaling ML models, 5) automating ML pipelines, and 6) monitoring ML solutions.

Google offers learning materials in their Machine Learning Engineer Learning Path, where you’ll find 14 courses and one lab. Google also offers an 8-course series through Coursera for preparing for the exam.

Who Should Get This Certification?

Working ML engineers and developers looking to promote their knowledge of Google Cloud technologies, ML engineering best practices, and cutting-edge ML techniques. Some sample salaries for positions that this ML certification could possibly lead to:

  • Machine Learning Engineer: $165,000 per year.
  • Data Scientist: $155,000 per year.
  • Google Machine Learning Engineer: $165,000 per year.
  • Software Engineer: $145,000 per year.

Pricing

  • $300

Recommended Prerequisites

  • Minimum proficiency in Python and SQL.
  • Experience handling large, complex datasets.
  • Strong programming skills.
  • Knowledge of data processing tools.
  • Experience building and maintaining ML models on Google Cloud.

eCornell Machine Learning Certificate Program

Best program for an academic Python-based machine learning program.

The eCornell Machine Learning Certificate Program offers aspiring and current data science professionals the opportunity to learn machine learning and Python fundamentals in an online yet academically-rigorous environment.

At $3,750, this educational certificate program is by far the most expensive on our list. But it also comes closest to stimulating the small-classroom experience, offering online courses created by Cornell faculty, hands-on projects, live discussions sessions, and serious feedback on your assignments from course facilitators.

If you’re an aspiring machine learning professional looking to shorten your growth curve, this high-ticket certificate program might be worth the price. If you think you can pass the exam without the learning path, you can check your readiness with a free pretest now.

Who Should Get This Certification?

Aspiring and working developers, data scientists, programmers, software engineers, and statisticians looking to learn how to develop and implement ML algorithms with Python. Some sample salaries for positions that this ML certification could possibly lead to:

  • Machine Learning Engineer: $165,000 per year.
  • Machine Learning Intern: $104,000 per year.
  • Junior Data Analyst: $85,000 per year.
  • Python Programmer: $146,000 per year.

Pricing

  • $3,750

Recommended Prerequisites

  • Familiarity with Python.
  • Knowledge of probability theory, multivariate calculus, linear algebra, and statistics.

Microsoft Azure Data Scientist Associate Certification

Best exam for data scientists confirming their ML expertise in Microsoft Azure.

The Microsoft Azure Data Scientist Associate Certification is a 100-minute, online exam for intermediate data scientists and developers familiar with using data science and machine learning techniques to develop and run machine learning workloads on Azure.

The skills tested in the exam include machine learning solution design and prep, model training, data exploration, model deployment, and model retraining — all in reference to Microsoft Azure.

To help you prepare for the exam, Microsoft offers some 13 hours of course material, 100 exam prep videos, a practice assessment, and an exam sandbox where you can practice answering questions in the same interface you’ll see during exam day.

Who Should Get This Certification?

Professional developers, data scientists, and ML engineers who want to validate their abilities to deploy and maintain machine learning workloads on Azure. Some sample salaries for positions that this ML certification could possibly lead to:

  • Machine Learning Engineer: $165,000 per year.
  • Data Scientist: $155,000 per year.
  • Azure Data Engineer: $166,000 per year.
  • Software Engineer: $145,000 per year.

Pricing

  • $165

Recommended Prerequisites

To gain a deeper understanding of today’s top large language models, read our guide to Best Large Language Models

Key Benefits of Earning a Machine Learning Certification

Below are some of the best reasons to get your machine learning certification, ranging from launching an ML career to staying current with ML techniques.

Validate Your Machine Learning Skills & Knowledge

It’s one thing to tell an employer that you’re well-versed in building ML solutions in Google Cloud. It’s another to show them a certificate from Google validating this assertion.

With certificate programs, you can pass exams and earn certificates from reputable institutions that prove you know your stuff. This will help you stand out in the machine learning and data science job market.

Start a Career in Machine Learning

Not sure what the difference is between machine learning and deep learning? Or generative AI?  No problem. Some machine learning certifications are designed to help total novices learn the fundamentals of machine learning, gain practical ML skills, and break into the field of AI, data analysis, and machine learning.

Learn the Current ML Techniques, Tools, and Trends

Certificate programs provide you with learning materials that draw from techniques, tools, and frameworks that professional data scientists and ML engineers are using in their real-world jobs.

This makes a program a valuable option for even the seasoned ML professional looking to update their skill set to match the current best practices, while gaining recognition for it.

Earn at Affordable Prices Compared to College Degrees

Compared to college degrees in computer science or data analysis, which cost over six figures, these certification programs enable you to earn credit for machine learning skills and gain a respected credential for as low as a couple hundred dollars.

Go at Your own Pace

Certificate programs enable you to prepare for certification exams and take machine learning courses at your own speed, from the comfort of your home. This makes them ideal for busy tech professionals.

How to Choose the Best Machine Learning Certification for You

When deciding on a machine learning certificate, it’s important to take into account the following considerations:

  • Price: Find a certification that works with your budget.
  • Prerequisites: Make sure the courses and/or exam cater to your specific experience level.
  • Specialty: Some programs are designed for professionals familiar with a specific solution (for example, Google’s certificate is for building ML models using G Suite technologies), so pick a program that focuses on the tools you plan to work with.
  • Learning Materials: Whether you’re learning a new ML subject from scratch or filling in some gaps to prepare for the exam, check out the study materials and online courses to see if they are sufficient for your needs.
  • Your Career Goals: Pick a certificate program that will help you land the job or get the promotion you desire.

In sum, the best machine learning certification will be one that fits your budget, experience level, and timeline, and helps you achieve your specific machine learning and AI career goals.

How We Evaluated Machine Learning Certifications

To evaluate the various machine learning certifications on the market and find the best ones, we looked at the cost of the certification, the reputation of the certifying body, the quality of learning materials, and the accessibility.

Cost

We looked into how much the machine learning certification costs in terms of time commitment and exam and course fee.

Reputation of Certifying Body

The “street cred” of the certifying body came into our consideration since they’re likely to provide cutting-edge courses and will look great on your resume to future employers.

Quality of Course / Exam Preparation Material

We examined the learning materials to see if they would adequately prepare an aspiring machine learning professional for the jobs they’re applying to. We focused on hand-on learning experiences like projects and assignments.

Accessibility

To assess the accessibility, we checked out how easy it was for users to prepare for and take the exam from home, as well as factors like access to course instructors and self-paced learning.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How do you prepare for machine learning certification?

To prepare for machine learning certification, start by reading the exam’s prerequisites. If you feel you fall short, check to see if the certifying body offers preparation materials that will help you round out your knowledge.

Most program’s offer a learning path that includes online videos, practice questions, and readings. Some course-based programs, like eCornell’s certificate, even offer feedback on your assignments as well as live discussions hosted by course facilitators.

Which machine learning certification should I get first?

The first machine learning certification you should get is the one you feel most comfortable passing. For example, if you have experience doing ML projects with AWS, take the AWS certificate exam. If you’re a total newbie, take Stanford’s ML specialization through Coursera. That’ll ensure you get the credentials you deserve as quickly as possible.

Can you get a machine learning job with just certifications?

Though it may be difficult without on-the-job experience, you can still get a machine learning job with just a certificate by using these tactics:

  • Learn ML in Public: Take on machine learning and coding projects and write about your findings and the process on social media to position yourself as an expert.
  • Pretend you Have the Job: Find areas of interest where you can apply machine learning to improve some aspect, then create an ML model or solution and share it.
  • Focus on Smaller Companies: Startups will be more likely to hire you for a niche ML skill than big companies, who generally want people with advanced degrees.
  • Prepare for Interviews: Practice talking about the machine learning projects you’ve worked on, the latest technologies and trends, and your relevant technical skills.

If you do these activities consistently, you’ll have a greater chance of landing a machine learning job with nothing but your certification. At any rate, your prospects will be better than if you merely sent out resumes highlighting your certificate and in-course projects.

Bottom Line: Machine Learning Certifications Can Boost Your Career

A machine learning certification is one of the most affordable and time-efficient ways to validate your machine learning knowledge and expertise – and get hired in a lucrative new role.

Once you’ve completed the exam, you can list the formal certificate on your LinkedIn profile and resume to help you land machine learning jobs or get a promotion. Good luck!

If you’re looking for additional AI certifications to help you stand out, check out our list of the top 30 AI certifications.

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Predictive Sales Analytics: Using AI to Drive Sales https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-predictive-sales-analytics/ Sun, 12 May 2024 22:04:05 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=224587 Unlock sales potential with predictive analytics. Discover strategies and AI applications for predictive sales success.

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Predictive sales analysis refers to the AI software and processes that businesses use to make accurate predictions about the future by analyzing data corresponding to various factors, including historical sales data, economic conditions, customer trends, and more.

These AI-based predictions help sales leaders and managers make accurate sales forecasts they can trust, which enables sales teams to effectively plan, budget, and anticipate pipeline risks and opportunities.

Predictive sales analytics projects are delicate and multi-step, so it’s common for businesses to use sales analytics software to streamline the process. These AI-powered platforms typically integrate with your CRM and other data sources and analyze that data according to the insights you want to generate. Some CRMs also come with predictive analytics features.

Let’s look at the many facets of predictive AI sales analysis, including how it works, benefits, challenges, key tools, and the future of this emerging use of AI in sales.

6 Benefits of AI-Based Predictive Sales Analysis

Predictive sales analysis using artificial intelligence has many benefits for all types of businesses, from increasing the accuracy of your sales forecasts to helping you spot and plan for potential risks like cash flow slumps or economic downturns.

Below are five of its biggest benefits:

Increase the Precision of Your Sales Forecast

Predictive sales analytics tools improve the accuracy of your sales forecasts in various ways:

  • Automatically gather relevant past and current sales, marketing, and financial data from your data sources and AI CRM.
  • Clean the data, enrich datasets, remove redundancies, and fill in missing fields.
  • Apply machine learning and statistical techniques to effectively turn the data into insights and sales predictions.
  • Predict industry and competitor trends that will help you make better forecasts.

Using predictive analysis software also ensures that your predictions aren’t corrupted by human error.

And when you’re confident in your forecasts, you’ll be more likely to use them to inform your business and sales plans. Doubt is the enemy of effective execution.

Understand Your Customers on a Deeper Level

By analyzing customer data such as past purchases, survey feedback, and social media activity, AI-based sales analytics helps you form a clearer picture of your customer segments and how they’ll change going forward.

With a better idea of their future needs and behavior, you can build sales processes and offers that resonate with those buyers.

For example, you might predict that in 2025 your target customers will be seeking out more self-service options for exploring your solutions.

In that case, you could integrate a better AI chatbot into your website that can automatically send them content and recorded demos related to their interests. This helps you win customers from competitors who aren’t taking this into account.

Predictive Analytics

This predictive sales analytics tool by Clari summarizes topics and offers additional guidance for sales reps. Source: Clari. 

Enhance Your Marketing Campaigns

Insights into the future desires and situations of your audience will help you create data-driven marketing campaigns that reach and engage your buyers.

By reviewing past campaigns and other data, predictive analysis can help you find the marketing channel with the best ROI, identify the attributes of your highest-quality leads, and write copy that moves buyers to take action.

To learn about AI for customer relationship management, read our guide: Top 8 AI CRM Software 

Effectively Allocate Your Assets

AI-based analysis can help you predict future events like slumps in sales numbers in a certain territory, which will enable you to improve inventory management and staff assignment.

With predictions like that at your disposal, you’ll also be able to put your effort and money into high ROI-activities and market segments while avoiding the ones that look unpromising.

Improve Sales Performance

Predictive analytics tools can tie into your CRM and the other platforms your sales teams use.

This enables you to track key sales metrics and figure out which processes and tactics will work in the future and which ones need adjustment.

These tools can also assist in predicting shifts in the marketplace, which will affect which sales skills you focus on developing.

If, for example, it looks like your leads are going to increasingly come from social media, it’s important to train your sales team in social selling.

More Proactive Risk Management

Imagine a meteor was heading for Earth.

With predictive analytics, the scientists could identify the timeframe and likelihood the meteor strikes, but that’s not all — they’d also be able to examine the effectiveness of the various meteor-prevention strategies.

For instance, the military’s option might be to “blow the darn thing up.” Using predictive analysis, the scientists could then assess the effectiveness by predicting the weather patterns at that time, where the pieces would fall, and how likely their missiles were to hit the target.

This is the power of predictive analytics for businesses.

Sales operations leaders can spot potential causes of future drops in sales and make predictions about how well each avoidance strategy would work. This gives them the greatest chance of eliminating or at least mitigating the risk to the pipeline.

To gain a deeper understanding of today’s AI software for sales, read our guide to AI Sales Tools and Software

How does Predictive Sales Analytics Work?

Predictive sales analytics uses AI, machine learning, and statistical models to find patterns in data and forecast future sales trends.

The data it analyzes depends on your forecasting goals but often includes things like:

  • Customer information
  • Market trends
  • Economic conditions
  • Past sales performance
  • Marketing data
  • Financial numbers

Usually, businesses use a predictive analytics software, or sales forecasting tool, to automatically gather and update relevant data, clean it, analyze it, and auto-generate reports based on questions they need answered.

Some businesses may still use spreadsheets. However, this method is comparatively inefficient and prone to human error compared with using an AI-based analytics approach.

Example of a Predictive Sales Analysis Project

Imagine you run a retail chain. In order to forecast demand for seasonal products, you use predictive sales analytics to analyze historical sales data, customer behavior, and external factors that affect foot traffic, like weather patterns.

The results empower you to optimize inventory levels, plan promotions, and intelligently allocate resources, resulting in increased sales and fewer inventory shortages. The value here is leaving behind the classic retail “gut instinct” approach and focus on a strictly data driven approach, bolstered by AI.

6 Effective Ways To Use Predictive Sales Analytics For Sales Forecasting

There are many ways predictive analytics and AI sales tools can help you create more accurate sales forecasts in less time:

  • Create Ongoing Forecast Refinement: Predictive analytics tools can tap into real-time data and adjust your forecasts accordingly.
  • Leverage AI Chatbots: Use AI chatbots to gather more customer data and feedback that will fuel your predictive analyses and sales forecasts.
  • Uncover Relevant Economic Trends: Track economic indicators to predict certain fluctuations in market demand, and use this to inform your sales forecasts.
  • Use Detailed Deal Tracking: Sales analytics platforms can estimate the likelihood that a deal in your pipeline will close and bring these estimates into the sales forecast.
  • Collect More Customer Data: Set up your predictive analytics tool to auto-collect customer purchase and behavioral data so you have more data for your forecasts.
  • Create Better Lead Scoring: Improve your lead scoring model with AI-based lead generation tools that measure a wide range of variables; this will help you more accurately predict which leads will turn into sales, once again improving your sales forecasting.

Whether it’s forecasting next year’s customer behavior trends or estimating the number of sales in a given future quarter, predictive analytics software can dramatically improve your process by making it easier to collect and make sense of data from various disparate sources.

3 Predictive Analytics Tools For Your Team

Below are three powerful predictive analytics tools that will help your sales team make accurate sales forecasts in an efficient manner.

Alteryx icon.

Alteryx

Alteryx is an AI platform for enterprise analytics. Its automated data preparation, AI-powered predictive analytics, and easy-to-use interface allows analysts to create predictive models and transform data into sales insights.

If you’re a big organization looking to create a more data-driven culture that uses AI-based predictive analytics across departments, this is a great option for you.

Clari icon.

Clari

Clari Forecast is a predictive revenue and sales forecasting software that uses AI-based sales analytics and deal inspection to make accurate sales forecasts.

It takes into account rep inputs, sales performance across segments, deal context, and other predictions into one powerful forecasting model. The tool will also recommend tactics for hitting your revenue targets.

Zendesk icon.

Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is an affordable sales CRM with various sales forecasting features, including win probability forecasting, sales forecasting, monthly forecast analytics, and pre-built analytics dashboards.

It’s designed to give salespeople their sales performance via accurate data-driven insights and predictions based on various CRM metrics, like salesperson performance and pipeline value.

3 Challenges of Predictive Analytics In Sales Forecasting

The major challenges of predictive analytics in sales forecasting include poor data quality, complexity of the projects, and the unpredictability of significant market-altering events (also known as “black swans”).

Lacking Accurate or Sufficient Data

Poor data quality and insufficient data are common hurdles for businesses attempting to do predictive analytics. After all, these AI tools require sound inputs to make their predictions.

If you haven’t been tracking relevant metrics, say the open rate of past email campaigns, then the analysis won’t be able to use that data in its predictions.

To compensate for a lack of in-house data, sometimes companies use data scraping tools, which allow them to extract data like product prices or lead data from public sources.

They may also use tools like B2B database platforms like ZoomInfo to gain more information about their customers or to enrich their current database with more information.

Also important: remember to make sure that your predictive analytics tool integrates with your various data sources. If not, your project will quickly run into limitations.

Predictive Analytics Projects Are Delicate, Multi-Step Processes

Due to the complexity of predictive analytics, expertise and care are required to properly integrate it into your sales forecasting methodology.

Sales teams will likely need training and support to get to a skill level where they feel comfortable using predictive analytics and the required tools.

Of course, there are user-friendly predictive analytics platforms and CRM features that make it easier for non-techies to conduct predictive sales forecasting.

Global Events, Economic Conditions Are Highly Unpredictable

Regardless of the soundness of your methodology and the quality of your data, the sales forecasts you make with predictive analytics are still not guarantees; they’re estimates.

Many unforeseen factors, from political shifts to technological advancements, can pop up and render your forecast inaccurate.

That said, quality data is becoming increasingly available, and so are the AI tools that allow you to use it to understand the future.

Therefore, you may be able to integrate economic and other types of data into your sales forecasts to make them extremely robust.

Future Trends of Predictive Sales Analytics

Predictive sales analytics will continue to become more available and advanced as AI companies continue to develop and offer more robust predictive capabilities.

Further, in the next few years, expect to see more CRMs coming out with AI-based sales forecasting to meet the rising demand among sales professionals and executives for artificial intelligence.

Also, large language models (LLMs) and AI chatbots like Chat-GPT will make it easier for users of all technical skill sets to make sales predictions.

Assuming the generative AI tool is trained on company data, a VP of Sales can simply ask the generative AI certain questions, such as, “what will be our sales in Chicago in May 2026?”

Overall, predictive sales analytics will become more democratized as software companies aim to make their platforms easier for professionals to use.

Bottom Line: AI Drives Improved Sales Analytics

Predictive sales analytics and AI sales tools are making it easier than ever for businesses to capture data from various sources and make predictions, including sales forecasts, about the future.

This helps businesses prepare for potential risks, budget accordingly, and make sales plans that better fit future market trends and customer expectations.

To see a list of the leading generative AI apps, read our guide: Top 20 Generative AI Tools and Apps 2024

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6 Best Prompt Engineering Tools in 2024 https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/prompt-engineering-tools/ Mon, 22 Apr 2024 21:30:23 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=224506 Prompt engineering tools are software platforms that help business owners, content creators and prompt engineers craft effective prompts that maximize output from their large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools. In other words, the best prompt engineering tools provide you with the instructions and support for getting your AI tools to create what you […]

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Prompt engineering tools are software platforms that help business owners, content creators and prompt engineers craft effective prompts that maximize output from their large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools.

In other words, the best prompt engineering tools provide you with the instructions and support for getting your AI tools to create what you want, whether that’s a piece of marketing copy or an AI image of a burning castle for an advertisement.

Typically, the leading prompting tools offer searchable prompt libraries where you can pay for – or freely access – high-quality, pre-made prompts. They also offer prompt organization functionality, prompt evaluation tools, and plenty of inspiration to help you write your own prompts and prompt templates.

Here are our top six picks for prompt engineering tools:

  • AIPRM: Best for an easy-to-use ChatGPT prompt Chrome Extension
  • SaaS Prompts: Best for finding free ChatGPT prompts for SaaS companies
  • PromptBase: Best for a massive library of for-sale prompts
  • PromptHero: Best for finding quality free AI image prompts
  • Agenta: Best for evaluating prompts for LLM-based AI applications
  • PromptPal: Best for an affordable subscription-based prompt library

Top 6 Prompt Engineering Software Comparison

Below is a comparison table that will help you quickly find the best prompt engineering tool for your specific business needs:

Prompt Library Size LLMs Supported Image/Text Prompts Prompt Testing and Evaluation Starting Price
AIPRM 4,500+ ChatGPT Both Limited Free
SaaS Prompts 500+ ChatGPT Text-only No Free
PromptBase 100,000+ Midjourney, GPT, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and more Both No $1.99
PromptHero Doesn’t say Midjourney, GPT, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and more Image-only No Free
Agenta Not available OpenAI, Cohere, local models, and any LLM app architecture Not available Yes Free
PromptPal 2,700+ Midjourney, GPT, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, Llama AI, and more Both No Free

AIPRM icon.

AIPRM: Best for an Easy-to-Use ChatGPT Prompt Chrome Extension

Positioned as the “cheat code” to ChatGPT, AIPRM is ChatGPT prompt management software and a Chrome extension that provides business users with 4,500+ pre-built prompts that they can find, enhance, and copy inside of the ChatGPT interface.

With numerous topical and activity-based search filters, users can easily discover prompts for various tasks, whether that’s creating copy for a LinkedIn ad or writing Midjourney prompts. You can also save your favorite prompts to a curated list, where other members of your team can access them, and even build new custom prompts with its prompt variables.

Premium users can access the Custom Tones and Style feature, which enables them to automatically apply their company’s branding to all of the prompts they use. This is a great tool for those who want an easy-to-use Chrome extension to streamline their interactions with ChatGPT and routinely get the right large language model outputs for their specific business needs.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Simple to use inside of ChatGPT Restricted to ChatGPT
Can apply branding across all prompts Must pay for AIPRM-verified prompts

Pricing

  • Free Chrome extension with basic features.
  • AIPRM Plus: Gain access to tone and writing style feature and more prompts.
  • AIPRM Pro: Gain access to AIPRM-verified prompts and other advanced features.

Features

  • 4,500+ ready-made prompts for ChatGPT
  • Prompts for generating high-quality content for sales and marketing
  • Prompt branding with tone and style
  • Easy-to-use Chrome extension
  • Easy-to-navigate prompt search engine

To gain a deeper understanding of today’s top large language models, read our guide to Best Large Language Models

SaaS Prompts icon.

SaaS Prompts: Best for Finding Free ChatGPT Prompts for SaaS Companies

SaaS Prompts is a prompt library that contains 500+ ready-made ChatGPT prompt ideas that’ll help SaaS companies grow their business. There are prompts for numerous topics that matter to SaaS founders, from fundraising and social media to product launches, and you can filter through them easily on the website.

That said, this tool is best used for streamlining content generation tasks, whether that’s writing an actionable email template for following up with trade booth leads or building an outline of a brochure. It’s great for busy SaaS founders and entrepreneurs who need help interacting with ChatGPT and want some guidance via example prompts created by an expert in how ChatGPT works.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Quality outputs using the prompts Most of the prompts are pretty simple
Free to use Only a prompt library

Pricing

  • Free prompts.

Features

  • 500+ pre-made, actionable SaaS-related prompts
  • Prompts for fundraising, sales, product management, and more
  • Prompt templates for classification, text summarization, and report generation
  • Helpful ideas for prompt engineers and SaaS business owners.

PromptBase icon.

PromptBase: Best for a Massive Library of For-Sale Prompts

PromptBase is a prompt marketplace where you can buy and sell high-quality image and text prompts for Llama, GPT, Midjourney, and other generative AI tools. You can filter through the marketplace using checkboxes for LLM, category, popularity, and prompt type (text or image). Categories range from chatbot and email to business and travel.

Compared to other prompt engineering tools, PromptBase has a remarkably high quantity of prompts, with its total library surpassing 100,000 AI prompts, all of which are built by prompt engineers and approved by PromptBase’s team.

This means it’s easy for business owners, creatives, and developers to quickly find the effective prompts they’re looking for, so they can significantly improve LLM output while decreasing API costs and saving time.

For more information about generative AI providers, read our in-depth guide: Generative AI Companies: Top 20 Leaders

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Extensive library of prompts for popular LLMs Missing some key LLMs like Gemini
Most prompts are under $5 Costs can quickly add up if you buy a lot of them

Pricing

  • A la carte — pay for prompts you want to buy.

Features

  • 100,000+ affordable AI prompts, including business-focused prompts
  • Compatible with ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and more
  • Can buy task-specific generative AI apps
  • Easy-to-use search and filter function
  • No-code app builder

PromptHero icon.

PromptHero: Best for Finding Quality Free AI Image Prompts

PromptHero is a tool for finding and building AI image prompts for the most popular AI image generator tools, including Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. Users can leverage the platform to discover prompts and gain inspiration for how to write their own by exploring the wide range of key phrases and techniques used by the prompt creators on the platform.

For example, if you needed an image of a Victorian house, you could search “victorian house,” review the prompt of the image you liked, and then use that as a template for your own prompt. Marketers, advertisers, designers, and any business that needs to generate AI images that meet their specifications will find value in this tool.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Works with the top AI image generators Not meant for text-generating prompts
Incredible range of images and prompts Can be explicit images in the search results

Pricing

  • Free to use.

Features

  • Create AI image prompts by borrowing effective key phrases
  • Discover AI image prompts using the search engine
  • Works with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, and other AI image generation tools
  • Build out a prompting portfolio
  • Find prompts for thousands of different image categories

Agenta icon.

Agenta: Best for Evaluating Prompts for LLM-Based AI Applications

Agenta is an open-source end-to-end LLM development platform, available for free on GitHub, that specifically helps developers build, test, and deploy LLMs and LLM-powered applications.

Part of this development process includes quickly experimenting with and evaluating LLM prompts in an iterative manner to find the best methods for producing ideal results, and Agenta provides helpful tools for this aspect.

In the Agenta playground, developers can build prompt templates, compare different versions of prompts, and try out different prompt parameters. They can also easily collaborate on prompt engineering with non-developers, such as subject matter experts and product managers, to streamline the development process.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Open-source and free to use Can be difficult for non-techies to use
Can easily compare and evaluate prompts Not for finding new pre-tested prompts

Pricing

  • Free and accessible through GitHub.

Features

  • Prompt parameter testing
  • Prompt variant comparison
  • LLM app development platform
  • Prompt template creation and saving
  • Work in your chosen developer framework and workflow
  • Non-developer collaboration

PromptPal icon.

PromptPal: Best for an Affordable Subscription-Based Prompt Library

PromptPal is a prompt library where users can discover thousands of user-uploaded text and image prompts for popular LLM tools, including ChatGPT, Midjourney, LLaMA AI, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion. It’s sort of like what Shutterstock or Unsplash are for stock photos and images.

To find situation-specific prompts, you can use the in-app search engine. Type in “Article Writing,” for example, and you’ll see numerous prompts for various related tasks, from outlining a blog post to brainstorming article titles.

Most of their prompts are hidden behind a paywall, and you’ll have to sign up for their Pro plan at $3.74 per month to access them, but that’s a small price to pay for the time a solid prompt saves you. Though this isn’t the best tool for developers building or evaluating prompts, it can be useful for content creators or freelancers who need prompts for simpler tasks or some inspiration for writing their own.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Works with many of the most popular LLMs Must buy the Pro plan to see the most prompts
Many free and quality prompts for text and images Can sometimes be hard to find the right prompt

Pricing

  • Free access to many prompts.
  • Pro Prompts: $3.74 per month (gain access to Pro prompts).
  • Pro Chatbot: $3.74 per month (unlimited queries for AI chatbots).
  • Combo: $5.99 per month Get Pro Plan and Pro Chatbot.

Features

  • Prompts for ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and LLaMA AI
  • Access to free pre-tested, user-shared prompts
  • Low monthly subscription cost to access premium prompts
  • Search engine for discovering task-specific prompts
  • Categories for content creation, coding, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more

Key Features of Prompt Engineering Software

Prompt engineering software comes with a diverse toolbox of prompt creation and finding features, including searchable prompt libraries, prompt experimentation and testing, and prompt organization features. These tools also generally differ based on which LLMs they support and their balance of image and text prompts.

Prompt Library / Search Engine

Prompt libraries are repositories of prompts organized into various categories, such as business, fundraising, or fantasy images. A quality prompt engineering tool will also have an advanced search engine to filter through the library and easily find the right prompts for your specific needs.

LLM Compatibility

LLM compatibility refers to a prompt engineering tool’s ability to generate and offer prompts for a specific large language model or generative AI tool. Most prompting tools work with the biggies, like ChatGPT or Dall-E, but some might be restrictive — like SaaS Prompts, for example — which can only be used with ChatGPT. It’s important to find a prompting tool that is compatible with your go-to LLMs.

Prompt Evaluation

Prompt evaluation is a feature that allows users to quickly assess the effectiveness of their prompts or inputs for a particular task while also refining these prompts through an iterative process based on such feedback. Typically, this is made possible via parameter testing, prompt version comparisons, automated prompt suggestions, and other helpful tools. This feature is especially critical for developers building LLM-powered AI applications.

AI Image and Text Prompts

Some prompting tools specialize in providing AI image prompts (prompts that generate AI images), while others focus more on text-output prompts.

For the image prompts, users can usually search for images, click on them, and see the prompt used to create the images, thus providing them with inspiration for making similar images on the given LLM. Text-output prompts, on the other hand, are listed in a prompt library by the name of the output you’re hoping to create — e.g., ad copy for a tech brand.

Prompt Saving and Sharing

When you find or create high-quality prompts that reliably give you the outputs you’re looking for, you’ll want to save them and share them with the rest of your team, so a feature that allows you to do so while keeping your prompts organized is important in a prompt engineering tool. This will also help you quickly find those prompts when you need them, helping your business increase productivity when interacting with LLMs and other generative AI tools.

How to Choose the Best Prompt Engineering Software for Your Business

To choose the best prompt engineering software for your business, you need to consider several factors:

  • The tool’s compatibility with your current LLMs and AI tools.
  • The range of the tool’s functionality (Agenta, for example, has excellent prompt evaluation features, while others do not).
  • Whether you need text or image prompts (or both).
  • The price you’re willing to pay.
  • Your common categories of output (for instance, SaaS Prompts has prompts for outputs SaaS brands typically need).

The best tool will fit your budget, work with your existing systems, and provide you with the capabilities you need to increase productivity and decision-making when working with generative AI tools.

Want a scannable list of 150 artificial intelligence companies with groundbreaking tools? Check out our article on the top AI companies, where you can discover more tools for increasing the productivity of your business.

How We Evaluated Prompt Engineering Software

To identify the best prompting tools, we determined whether they contain the most important features for businesses and whether they are compatible with popular LLMs. Then we made sure they were easy to use for the target users and affordable based on their offerings. Each percentage below marks the weight given to each scoring criterion.

Core Features – 30%

We checked the availability and effectiveness of each tool’s prompt library, search engine, prompt saving function, and prompt evaluation capabilities.

LLM Compatibility – 25%

To assess prompting tools on LLM compatibility, we checked which large language models and generative AI tools they offered prompts for, putting a premium on the more popular AI tools.

Ease of Use – 25%

We looked into how easy it is for a user to find and create prompts with the tool and integrate it into their day-to-day workflow. This meant examining the user interface, coding requirements, and the complexity of the major features.

Pricing – 20%

To evaluate price, we looked into their free offerings, subscription prices, and, for marketplaces, the cost of an average prompt.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Prompt Engineering Tools

What Are the Benefits of Prompt Engineering Tools?

Prompt engineering tools help you more efficiently and consistently produce desired outputs in your large language model and AI tools by providing you with exact inputs (aka prompts) and the strategies for creating them.

How Can I Use Prompt Engineering Tools Effectively?

Prompt engineers and business professionals can use prompt engineering tools effectively by regularly discovering new prompts, testing them either on the platform or in their LLM, and tweaking them with an iterative process until they fit the needs of your application or task.

Are There any Challenges or Limitations With Prompt Engineering Tools?

A common limitation of prompting tools is that you may be unable to find a pre-made prompt that’s designed for your specific task, meaning you’ll have to use available prompts for related tasks as inspiration rather than words to copy and paste into your LLM.

Bottom Line: Prompting Tools Boost AI Productivity 

Prompt engineering tools have the power to dramatically increase the productivity of prompt engineers, content creators, designers, and anyone else working with large language models and generative AI tools.

By enabling you to find and build effective prompts, these tools streamline the hunt for the perfect phrases and instructions that’ll give you the outputs you need. In doing so, they enable users to gain maximum competitive advantage from artificial intelligence software.

For a detailed list of today’s free AI apps, see our in-depth report, Free AI Tools 

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6 Best Large Language Models (LLMs) in 2024 https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/best-large-language-models/ Tue, 16 Apr 2024 16:23:32 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=224428 Looking to take your business to a new level through large language models (LLMs)? Check out our complete list of the best LLMs.

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Large language models (LLMs) are advanced software architectures that use AI technologies like deep learning and neural networks to perform complex tasks like text generation, sentiment analysis, and data analysis.

Today’s best general-use large language models can streamline a large variety of business tasks, from content creation and customer service to workflow processing.

Able to understand and generate human-like text, LLMs aid in tasks like writing social media posts and ad copy, crafting personalized responses to customer inquiries, summarizing data for decision-making, and even helping your team come up with new ideas that drive innovation. LLMs can also be integrated into your current software platforms to improve their efficiency and effectiveness and open up new functionality and automations.

Here are our picks for the best large language models for your business:

  • GPT-4: Best for creating marketing content.
  • Falcon: Best for a human-like, conversational chatbot.
  • Llama 2: Best for a free, resource-light, customizable LLM.
  • Cohere: Best enterprise LLM for building a company-wide search engine.
  • Gemini: Best for an AI assistant in Google Workspace.
  • Claude 3: Best for a large context window.

Top Large Language Model Software: Comparison

When evaluating large language models for your business, it’s important to learn about each tool’s developer, parameters, accessibility, and starting price.

A note on parameters: Though greater parameter size does typically signal higher accuracy of an LLM, remember that you can fine-tune most of these AI tools on your own company-, task-, and industry-specific data. Also, some AI companies offer several LLM models, differing in size, with the lower-parameter versions on the lower end of the pricing scale.

Developer Parameters (of Largest Model) Accessibility Starting Pricing
GPT-4 Open AI 1.7 trillion Chat GPT (uses 3.5, must upgrade for 4) and the Open AI API $20 per month for access to GPT-4
Falcon Technology Innovation Institute (TII) 180 billion Open source (available on Amazon SageMaker and Hugging Face) Free
Llama 2 Meta 70 billion Open source (download to desktop) Free
Cohere Cohere 52 billion Open source (Cohere API is the easiest access option) Free
Gemini Google Unrevealed Google Gemini App or Gemini API Free
Claude 3 Anthropic About 2 trillion Claude AI app and Claude API $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.25 per million output tokens

 

ChatGPT icon.

GPT-4: Best for Creating Marketing Content

OpenAI’s GPT-4, accessed typically through the free AI tool ChatGPT, is an advanced natural language processing model. Compared to other LLMs, its combination of large-scale pretraining, contextual understanding, fine-tuning capabilities, and advanced architecture makes GPT particularly adept at writing detailed, sophisticated responses to your prompts, making it a great assistant to any marketer.

By training GPT on your brand’s tone and style, you can have it generate text that fits your specific style and can be easily assimilated into email campaigns, ad copy, social media posts, presentations, and other external and internal content for your business. And with its new image reader, you can even upload an ad image and ask it to write a clever caption.

Pros & Cons

Pros Cons
Free basic version with ChatGPT Occasional hallucinations
Can understand and create visual information Output is politically biased
Coherent, detailed text outputs Must buy subscription for advanced features

Pricing

  • ChatGPT-3.5: Free version.
  • ChatGPT-4 Plus: $20 per month (create custom chatbots, access latest upgrades, image generation, and generally more intelligent responses).

Features

  • Generate articulate, creative text
  • Edit and optimize copy
  • Summarize text and pictures
  • Conduct market analysis
  • Do keyword research
  • Write code
  • 175 billion parameters

To learn more about this leading LLM, read the full review of ChatGPT 4.

Technology Innovation Institute icon.

Falcon: Best for a Conversational, Human-Like Chatbot

Accessed mainly through Hugging Face, Technology Innovation Institute’s Falcon is an open-source LLM that is tailored for conversational interactions with natural back-and-forth exchanges.

Trained on dialogues and social media discussions, Falcon comprehends conversational flow and context, allowing it to deliver highly relevant responses that take into account what you’ve said in the past. In essence, the longer you interact with Falcon, the better it “knows you,” and the more use you can gain from it.

This artificial intelligence learning capability makes Falcon ideal for AI chatbots and virtual AI assistants that provide a more engaging, human-like experience than ChatGPT.

Pros & Cons

Pros Cons
Open to commercial and research use Fewer parameters than GPT
Highly conversational user experience Supports only a handful of languages
Human-like text generation Falcon 180B is resource-intensive to run

Pricing

  • Falcon is a free AI tool and can be integrated into applications and end-user products.

Features

  • Create human-like textual responses
  • Track context of the ongoing conversation
  • Fine-tunable base model
  • Answer complex questions
  • Translate text
  • Summarize information
  • Integrate it at no cost into your business applications

For more information about generative AI providers and their LLMs, read our in-depth guide: Generative AI Companies: Top 20 Leaders

Meta icon.

Llama 2: Best for a Free, Resource-Light, Customizable LLM

Meta AI’s Llama 2 is an open-source large language model that can assist with a variety of business tasks, from generating content to training AI chatbots. Its three models are trained on a relatively small number of parameters, making them fast in terms of prompt processing and response time.

Designed to be fine-tuned using your company- and industry-specific data, users download it for free to their desktop and customize it to their needs, without using many computational resources. This makes it a great option for smaller businesses that want a free and adaptable LLM that’s easy to deploy.

Pros & Cons

Pros Cons
Fast and resource-efficient Before fine-tuning, no coding or math support
Free and open-source Output may not be as creative as GPT
High scores in reasoning and coding tests Smaller parameter size than comparable tools

Pricing

  • Open source and free for research and commercial use.

Features

  • Advanced reading comprehension
  • Text generation
  • Company-wide search engines
  • Text auto-completion
  • Data analysis

Cohere icon.

Cohere: Best Enterprise Solution for Building a Company-Wide Search Engine

Cohere is an open weights LLM and enterprise AI platform that is popular among large companies and multinational organizations that want to create a contextual search engine for their private data.

Cohere’s advanced semantic analysis allows companies to securely feed it company information—sales data, call transcripts, emails, etc.—and then, with a quick search, find answers to questions like “What were Q4 margins in the Western US?”

This streamlines intelligence gathering and data analysis activities, allowing your team to make total use of the enterprise data you capture. You can access Cohere through their API or via Amazon SageMaker. Cohere’s models are available for companies to deploy publicly on AWS, GCP, OCI, Azure and Nvidia, as well via VPC or a company’s on-premise environment.

Pros & Cons

Pros Cons
High-quality semantic analysis More expensive than most LLMs
Data and searches are kept private Free version is mostly a trial/testing ground
Highly customizable Ill-suited for smaller businesses and startups

Pricing

  • There is a free version, and then the Production tier, which offers three products (command, rerank, and embed) and charges per 1M tokens of data output and input.
  • Must call Sales for a quote on their highly customizable Enterprise tier.

Features

  • Designed for enterprise applications
  • Semantic analysis and contextual search
  • Content generation, summarization, and classification
  • Supports over 100 languages
  • Advanced data retrieval (re-ranking)
  • Deployment on any cloud or on-premise

Google Gemini icon.

Gemini: Best for an AI Assistant in Google Workspace

Gemini is a large language model, content generator, and AI chatbot within Google’s Gemini AI suite. It’s multimodal, so it can understand not only text, but also video, code, and image data.

Its big differentiator is “Gemini for Google Workspace,” an AI assistant that’s connected with Google Docs, Sheets, Gmail, and Slides, thus opening up a whole set of use cases for Google Suite users. Starting at $20 per month, you can use Gemini to easily find and draft documents, analyze spreadsheet data, write personalized emails, build presentations and decks, and more.

Pros & Cons

Pros Cons
Highly affordable option for professionals Gemini Pro (free version) lacks accuracy
Connects seamlessly with Google apps Relatively new compared to other tools
Impressive reasoning capabilities Slightly glitchy photo interactions

Pricing

  • Offers free version of Gemini AI with basic functionality.
  • Gemini Advanced, the Premium tier, costs $19.99 per month (gain access to Gemini 1.0 Ultra, advanced Google Suite features, and functionality to do complex tasks).

Features

  • Conversational AI chatbot
  • Create presentations easily
  • Generate content
  • Analyze reams of data
  • Multimodality
  • Google Workspace AI assistant

Anthropic icon.

Claude 3: Best for a Large Context Window

Available through API and an app, Anthropic’s Claude 3 is a large language model that can help businesses with advanced analytics, document processing, and highly articulate text generation that is well-written and friendly in tone.

It’s been compared to GPT in terms of functionality, but it stands out in one major way: recall. Its context window (about 200,000 tokens) is larger than the average LLM, making it great for coders who want it to remember their previous exchanges, or an entire coding base, when it provides its new responses. This context window also has applications for businesses needing to summarize large documents, such as legal firms performing legal review.

Pros & Cons

Pros Cons
Very conversational, friendly chatbot experience Low request quota—about 45 messages per five hours
200,000-token context window Cannot produce new images
Lightning-fast responses Can struggle with numerical and logic questions

Pricing

  • Claude 3 comes in three different sizes: Haiku for simple tasks, Sonnet for difficult tasks, and Opus for highly complex tasks.
  • Pricing starts at Haiku: Input: $0.25 / MTok, Output: $1.25 / MTok.

Features

  • Text summarization
  • Content generation
  • Advanced reasoning
  • Data analysis
  • File uploading and tracking
  • 200,000-token context window
  • Friendly, accurate chatbot

Key Features of Large Language Model Software

Large language model software typically includes features that help businesses process large amounts of information, and answer complex questions about their market or company data. LLMs also generate intelligent, contextually relevant outputs in various formats, from coding and images to human-like textual responses. Since LLMs are generally meant to be “built-on-top-of,” their APIs and ability to integrate with other applications are also massively important to users.

Conversational AI Chatbot

Most LLMs offer an AI chatbot, which understands and generates human-like responses based on user input and training data. These helpful chatbots continuously improve their performance—aka their ability to follow your directions—by analyzing interactions and your satisfaction with them. Professionals generally use chatbots to quickly write content, conduct research, generate code, and analyze data.

Text Summarization

Text summarization is a powerful feature of LLMs that can save your business a lot of time when it comes to reading and interpreting lengthy documents, such as legal contracts or financial ledgers.

AI-based text summarization works by condensing these swathes of text into concise representations while retaining the key information. Acting like an analyst, this feature can aid in decision-making by providing you with the most relevant details of long reports and studies. It can also help you create content based on the document, such as an abstract for a dense lab report.

Content Generation

Marketers and small business owners will probably find LLMs’ ability to generate content to be its most time-saving feature. Using specific prompts like “Write a witty social media caption to this image,” users can quickly pump out sophisticated and human-like content.

End results include email copy, social media posts, sales pages, product descriptions, and more. Of course, when writing with these tools, you should take care to add your own personality and insight into the copy, acting as its editor. Otherwise, the content might read as robotic and contain errors.

Fine-tunability

Crucial for the applicability of LLMs, fine-tunability is the ability of LLMs to be customized to specific tasks or domain-specific knowledge with relatively small amounts of task-specific data.

For example, pretend a SaaS brand is using a customer chatbot powered by an LLM, and they notice the chatbot is struggling to answer questions about upgrade options for a specific product tier. The company then fine-tunes the LLM using a dataset containing transcripts of buyer interactions related to these specific upgrades, thus improving its performance.

Multimodality

In business, you often need to create more than just text. Multimodality refers to an LLM’s ability to understand and generate responses in other modalities such as code, images, audio, or video.

This opens up opportunities for businesses to create applications that leverage multiple modalities, such as augmented reality (AR) experiences or interactive multimedia content. It also helps businesses engage with customers—imagine a chatbot that can analyze a photo of a broken product and then recommend solutions and steps to fix it in image and text.

APIs & Third-party Integrations

Third-party integrations and application programming interfaces are important features of LLMs because they enable seamless integration of language model capabilities into existing systems and applications, allowing businesses to leverage the power of natural language processing without having to develop their own models from scratch. To illustrate, businesses commonly integrate their LLM with their customer service platform to build smarter AI chatbots.

How to Choose the Best Large Language Model for Your Business

The best large language models typically offer streamlined content generation, text summarization, data analysis, and third-party integrations, while also being highly customizable and accurate. That said, the ideal large language model software for your business is one that aligns with your particular needs, budget, and resources. Before evaluating LLMs, you should also identify the use cases that matter most to you, so you can then find models designed for those applications. Do you value affordability the most? Do you need a robust feature list and have the budget to deploy it? Given the complexity of LLMs – including how rapidly the sector changes – extensive research is always required.

How We Evaluated Large Language Models

To evaluate these large language model software, we assessed their pricing, parameter size, context window, customization options, and overall deployability. Each percentage represents the importance of the factor to the typical business user.

Intelligent Outputs – 30%

To assess the intelligence of the large language models, we reviewed research comparing their scores on various intelligence tests in reasoning, creativity, analysis, math, and ability to follow instructions.

Cost – 20%

We scored each tool on pricing by evaluating their free versions and by finding the cost of their paid versions, in terms of computational resources and price.

Accuracy – 20%

To assess the accuracy of a tool’s output and question answering, we looked into the LLM’s parameter size, the quality of the training data, frequency of retuning, and various tests on accuracy.

Customization – 15%

To investigate the customization options of each LLM software, we looked at how well each model can be fine-tuned for specific tasks and knowledge bases and integrated into relevant business tools.

Context Window – 15%

The context window size determines the scope of information the model can consider when making predictions or generating text, making it a proxy for how well an LLM can understand linguistic patterns, produce contextually coherent outputs, and simulate real-world dialogue.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Large Language Models

What are the applications of large language models?

The applications of large language models range from customer service chatbots and market research to document summarization and content creation in various formats, including text, images, and code.

What are the advantages of using large language models?

The advantages of large language models in the workplace include greater operational efficiency, smarter AI-based applications, intelligent automation, and enhanced scalability of content generation and data analysis.

Are there any limitations or challenges with large language models?

The major limitations and challenges of LLMs in a business setting include potential biases in generated content, difficulty in evaluating output accuracy, resource intensiveness in training and deployment. Additionally, the need for robust security measures to prevent misuse is a major issue for companies.

Bottom Line: The Power of Large Language Models

With the right large language model software, you can streamline many critical tasks for your business and free up more time to focus on strategic thinking and creative work. LLMs are the very foundation of success with artificial intelligence, and so selecting the best LLM for your purposes goes a long way toward gaining value from your AI use.

Despite GPT-4 winning in terms of public profile, the choices are numerous. It’s important to pick the tool that automates your most time-consuming tasks, integrates with your current tech stack, and helps your business achieve its goals, whether you want to increase marketing output or analyze data faster.

For a full portrait of the AI vendors and the wide array of LLMs they use, read our in-depth guide: 150+ Top AI Companies 2024

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