The newest breakthroughs in “AI” have created a lot of new downstream developments in software. If you look around, everything is becoming AI-driven; in this way, though, it really is just a marketing term that’s replacing the more accurately termed method called “machine learning.” While recognizing that some of the hype behind the AI explosion might be a bit over-the-top, it’s still a vibrant part of the software world where change is accelerating after a huge explosion in interest. Today, we’ll look at how to get started with new AI apps to increase your productivity and streamline your day-to-day tasks and organization.
1) AppSumo
If you’re looking for a big repository of established and well-rated apps for your business, AppSumo is a great place to start. While they don’t focus exclusively on AI apps, they have a wide range of apps to help you master any business task you could think of. It has a classic app-store feel without any fluff or games included. Their reviews section can be really helpful, since they show the user’s information to help establish their credibility. Plus, their rating system is 1—5 Tacos instead of Stars, which is really appealing to a southern Californian.
App Sumo have a strong editorial presence in their market as well: they make their own introductory YouTube videos that show you the best features of the apps in the store. This extra layer of comment gives you more confidence that the app’s features are what you’re looking for and their demonstrations are concise and helpful in determining if the app does what you want.
Our favorite feature of AppSumo is the transparent pricing (with the caveat that the MSRPs on the site are seemingly made up). It’s pretty common for software companies to make it hard to see what you’ll pay for an app in the future, but on AppSumo the price clearly indicates the cost for a lifetime license. Most of the apps have a few feature tiers, so make sure to see what you get for each subscription tier when you check it out.
2) Futurepedia.io
If you’re only interested in seeing what is happening in the AI app space, head over to Futurepedia.io, a similar repository for AI-specific apps. Here you’ll find all sorts of I-can’t-believe-that’s-possible apps, like 104 different apps that create AI images of people. These apps can be useful if you need stock images or videos—the reason why they’re AI apps is because the people in these images don’t exist. That might seem a little weird, but the idea is to make new pictures that are embellishments on reality or take a real subject (like you, for instance) and create a good-looking profile picture that isn’t 100% real. A more practical app might be one that analyzes photos of you and creates professional-looking headshots for your LinkedIn profile.
The text-based and writing services that you’ll find on Futurepedia are often ghostwriter apps like ChatGPT, but more fine-tuned for specific parts of a business. There are 193 AI copywriting tools listed right now, so it’s likely that there’s one out there tailored for a particular writing task that you do regularly. I, of course, wouldn’t use one of them to write this blog, but if you were interested in generating some marketing copy automatically then reviewing and refining it yourself, you can find an app that will create a base of text for you to make good-looking, readable copy.
3) OpenAI (official ChatGPT) apps for iOS and Android
Earlier this summer, OpenAI released their mobile apps for ChatGPT. These apps give you access to ChatGPT’s most popular features, and all the premium features if you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus. The main feature that ChatGPT Plus offers is the more robust GPT-4 version of ChatGPT, with a more current dataset and better “reasoning skills.” OpenAI claim that the GPT-4 version scores in the 90th percentile on the bar exam, for example.
While much has been made of ChatGPT’s writing ability, it might be even more useful to think of it as a search engine, but with extra attention paid to some of its flaws. If you’re tired of the way Google brings back YouTube videos for everything that you search for, for instance, asking ChatGPT might be a better option for some of your searches. Again, though, it’s important to be cautious when asking ChatGPT about factual things since it still hallucinates from time to time.