35 AI tools you can try for free

Thanks to the hype around ChatGPT, we’ve entered a weird new world in which generative AI tools are suddenly everywhere.

But this AI tool boom has just as quickly become a glut, with countless copycat services and ones that demand up-front payment just to see what they’re about. Trying out generative AI tools is a great way to understand their upsides and limitations—and yes, there are many limitations, despite the hype—but it can be hard to know where to start.

Here, then, is a big list of free artificial intelligence tools you can check out. Use them to explore new knowledge areas, sharpen your prose, summarize lengthy articles, and even come up with fresh images and sounds.

Free AI chat and search tools

1. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a chat-based bot that’s frighteningly good at looking stuff up for you, generating ideas, writing complex missives, telling stories, and a whole lot more. It’s taken the term “artificial intelligence” to a whole new level.

Answers to your requests are returned in conversational, human-like language, so it feels like you’re having an actual chat with someone—albeit someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of just about everything. Be careful, though: As remarkable as ChatGPT is, it sometimes gets its facts wrong—either in maddeningly subtle ways or hilariously obvious ones.

Free, but costs $20 per month to speed up responses and use during peak demand.

2. The new Bing

ChatGPT-based conversations and search results inside Bing.

3. Perplexity.ai

Ask questions and follow-ups, get direct responses with citations. Free to use with the option to upgrade to Pro.

4. YouChat

Ask questions and follow-ups, and engage in ChatGPT-style conversations. Free; sign-in required.

5. Poe

Conversational AI from Quora that includes multiple assistants with differing strengths. Free; sign-in required.

Free AI artwork generators

6. Stable Diffusion Online

Free Stable Diffusion artwork generator; no login required.

7. El Pintador

Free Stable Diffusion artwork generator for iOS with a “Learn” section that provides prompt crafting advice.

8. DiffusionBee

Stable Diffusion artwork generator for MacOS, works offline with no usage limits.

9. Dall-E

​​Your weirdest, most obscure art creations can finally come to life thanks to DALL-E. Type anything just about anything into the search bar and watch as OpenAI’s image generation tool churns out multiple pictures for you to choose from.

You can try Dall-E for free through Bing, or use it with a paid ChatGPT Plus subscription.

10. Craiyon

Online artwork generator that uses the Dall-E Mini model. Removing watermarks requires a $5-per-month subscription.

11. Nvidia Canvas

Windows software that turns brushstrokes into artwork. Requires an Nvidia RTX graphics card.

12. Playform

Online app that turns sketches into artwork. Free to try, but requires paid credits to download watermark-free images.

13. AutoDraw

A venerable old-timer, AutoDraw has been around as a Google project since 2017. This free tool turns your haphazardly scribbled doodles into actual drawings by offering up suggestions based on what you’ve put on the page.

It’s great for when you need to mock up a design quickly but you need it to look, well…like you didn’t draw it with your mouse. And it’s free to use, with no account or subscription required.

Free AI writing tools

14. PicsArt AI Writer

Generate marketing copy, slogans, product descriptions, LinkedIn headlines, Instagram captions, and more. Free.

15. NotionAI

Use prompts to create text inside any Notion document, activated by pressing Space on a new line. You can try it for free with a limited number of complimentary AI responses, then it’s $8-10 per month for the add-on subscription.

16. Chatbot tools

Tools such as ChatGPT, YouChat, and Poe can be used to generate copy as well.

Free AI content summarizers

17. Eightify

Create text summaries of YouTube videos, with highlights you can click on to jump to the relevant video section. Up to three free summaries per week (on videos less than 30 minutes). For unlimited summaries, a subscription runs $4.95 per month, or $3.95 per month if you pay annually.

18. Summarize.tech

Another YouTube summarizer that’s less in-depth than Eightify. It allows you to summarize a few videos a day for free or, with a $10 per month Premium subscription, you can summarize up to 200 videos a month.

19. Gimme Summary

Chrome extension for summarizing web articles, seemingly works by asking ChatGPT to condense the article content. Free to use, but slow.

20. SkimIt.ai

Email an article link to go@skimit.ai, get a summary in 10 minutes.

21. Wordtune Read

View article and PDF summaries next to the full text, with excerpts highlighted. Five free summaries per month, then $9.99 per month.

22. OtterPilot

Feature of the Otter meeting assistant that transcribes and summarizes video calls. Free for up to 30 minutes per call and 300 transcription minutes per month, or you can sign up for a Pro account for $10 per month to increase those limits.

23. Sonoteller.ai

Paste a link to a song on YouTube, get an analysis of its lyrical content, instrumentation, genres, and moods. Free to use.

Free AI speech-to-text transcriptions 

24. Whisper

Online transcription of audio files using language models from OpenAI. Free.

25. Buzz

Offline version of Whisper for Windows, free unlimited use.

26. MacWhisper

Offline version of Whisper for Mac. Pay what you want, or a one-time payment of about $30 for larger language models and translation.

Free AI visual editors

27. Runway

Photo and video editor with an array of AI tools, including green screen, image expansion, and 3D texture creation. Free with limitations on export resolution and AI tool use, then $12 per month.

28. Genmo

Turn still images into animations using text prompts. Free with usage limits.

Free AI audio tools

29. AIVA

An acronym for Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist, AIVA helps you create custom music tracks without any musical knowledge.

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

The free version allows for personal use and offers three downloads per month, with paid plans starting at around $15 a month.

30. ElevenLabs

Generate speech from text, free for up to 10,000 characters of text per month. A $5-per-month subscription lets users clone an existing voice.

31. Riffusion

Generate music from text descriptions using Stable Diffusion. Free.

32. Boomy

Generate music tracks by specifying the genre, instruments, and production values. Free with limits, then Creator ($9.99 per month) and Pro ($29.99 per month) subscriptions for more.

33. Beatoven

Create music by specifying the genre and mood. Free to use with no downloads, subscriptions starting at $6 per month for 15 minutes of downloads, or by-the-minute purchases.

Free AI presentation tools

34. Tome

Build a presentation with this AI app, which allows users to incorporate text, images, and embeddable content from desktop or mobile. “As content is typed or inserted into each page’s canvas, it automatically reflows and stretches to look, well, presentable, without the need to scale and crop material to fit the confines of a traditional rectangular side,” Steven Melendez wrote in a previous Fast Company article.

Tome launched a paid Pro plan and offers custom-built enterprise plans, but the company is committed to continuing its free plan for individual users, cofounder Keith Peiris told Melendez.

Free AI games tools

35. AI Dungeon

Age-wise, if you’re of a certain, ahem, vintage, you may fondly recall the days of text-based adventure gaming. Well, those days are back with AI Dungeon, which leverages artificial intelligence to generate storylines that never play the same way twice. You can create your own games and share them with others.

You can play with a free account that uses the service’s basic AI technology or opt for premium packages starting at $10 a month that use more advanced AI models.

Got an interesting AI tool not listed here? If it has a free component and is in some way unique from the offerings above, feel free to reach out about it.

Doug Aamoth also contributed writing, reporting, and/or advice to this article.

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