21 best AI tools — from chatbots to form generators

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important developments of the last decade. AI tools have gone from basic to incredibly powerful, capable of doing complex, multistep tasks. A few years ago, it was impressive that your camera roll could automatically detect the difference between a cat and a dog in a photo; now you can ask an AI to build an adoption form for your animal shelter and it will be ready to accept answers in just a few seconds.

And that’s only one example. These sorts of powerful AI tools are taking over all sorts of apps. There are now AI writing tools, image generators, customer service apps, and so much more.

As a tech writer, I’ve been covering the rise of AI for more than a decade. Trying, testing, and using AI tools of every kind is my job — and, of course, I use the best ones every day to make my life easier. So I’m thrilled to share 21 of them with you.

What is an AI tool?

AI tools are apps and platforms that use artificial intelligence. For example, large language models allow them to understand your requests and respond in a human-like manner — while other tools use techniques like computer vision to interpret images, or generative AI to create written or visual content.

Some AI tools are standalone apps or chatbots, like ChatGPT, whereas others are built into existing services, like Jotform AI Form Generator. It’s a broad category, but almost every AI tool can be powerful and effective when used right.

How I selected the tools in this list

There are dozens of AI chatbots, image generators, social media management services, and more on the market. Countless existing apps have added AI features and new platforms are launching every day. But with so many to choose from, it can be hard to know what the top AI tools are — and which just have good marketing. Luckily, I’m here to help you make the right decision.

As I said, I’ve been using these sorts of tools for as long as they’ve been available, so I have a specific list of search criteria I’m always looking to fulfill:

1. Effectiveness: Whether it’s an AI search engine or AI project management app, it has to work well. A search engine that gives worse results than Google just isn’t worth using — even if it uses a flashy AI model.
2. User-friendly experience: Some apps have confusing user interfaces, awkward workflows, and are otherwise just not great to use. But great apps are easy to navigate, have a bit of personality, and are nice to use overall. If I didn’t like an app when I tested it, there was no way it was making my list.
3. Fair pricing: We all love a good deal — so every AI tool on this list is worth the subscription fee (and some are even free).

Best AI form generators

AI form generators do exactly what you’d expect — they use artificial intelligence to automatically generate an online form, often from a short written prompt. For example, you can enter “create an order form for my online t-shirt printing business” or “generate a feedback form for my dog grooming business” and receive an instant result.

Whether your business needs customer registration forms, feedback surveys, appointment booking forms, or anything else, an AI form builder is the most powerful way to automate them.

1. Jotform AI Form Generator

Jotform AI Form Generator is one such powerful tool — you can create a custom form in seconds with a written prompt, which can then be customized directly with assistance from the Jotform AI chatbot.

Similarly, the Jotform AI Survey Generator can create a survey from an uploaded file or with a short prompt. Like with AI forms, you can customize AI surveys with a range of question types including single-choice, multiple-choice, and yes or no.

If you need a quiz, you can create one with the AI Quiz Generator. Simply upload different documents and it will automatically create quiz questions based on them, or use a prompt to generate a quick list of questions.

It also features impressive integration capabilities, with Jotform’s extensive suite supporting over 250 platforms and hundreds of form widgets. Then track and manage all your AI form responses in Jotform Tables.

Jotform plans and pricing

• The Starter plan is free and includes five forms with 100 monthly submissions, Jotform Tables, and lots more.
• Jotform Bronze costs $34/month when billed yearly, and includes 25 forms with 1,000 monthly submissions.
• Jotform Silver costs $39/month when billed yearly, and includes 50 forms and 2,500 monthly submissions.
• Jotform Gold costs $99/month when billed yearly, and includes 100 forms and 10,000 monthly submissions.
• There is a more powerful dedicated enterprise plan with custom pricing.

2. Google Forms

Google Forms features an experimental AI Form Builder that uses its Gemini AI model, though you have to be a Google Workspace subscriber to use it — that’s Google’s business version of Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and the rest of its suite of apps.

Google’s AI Form Builder takes a prompt and creates a matching form in a few seconds. While it isn’t as advanced as Jotform’s AI Form Generator, it can integrate directly with Google Sheets for easy data collection and analysis. Plus, if you already pay for Google Workspace, it’s free.

Google Forms plans and pricing

• Google AI Form Builder is available to Google Workspace users on the Business Standard plan or higher.
• Business Standard costs $14 per user/month and includes 2TB of storage as well as the full Google Workspace suite of apps.
• Business Plus costs $22 per user/month and includes 5TB of storage, the full Google Workspace suite of apps, and enhanced security and management controls.

3. Fillout

Fillout has a simple AI form generator that’s especially suited to beginners. You can describe your form, list the questions you want to ask or import a form from another service or PDF — then the AI will generate an appropriate form for your needs. Once that’s done, you can edit or customize the form, and push it live to collect answers.

Fillout plans and pricing

• The Free plan is equipped with basic features, unlimited forms, and 1,000 responses/month.
• The Starter plan is available with all question types and 2,000 responses/month costs $19/month or $180/year.
• The Pro plan allows for custom email responses and 5,000 responses/month costs $49/month or $480/year. And finally, the business plan with form analytics and unlimited responses costs $89/month or $900/year.

Best AI chatbots

AI chatbots, also called AI assistants, are some of the most exciting new AI tools. They can help you find information from the web, answer questions, solve problems, write code, draft emails, and so much more. Their flexibility is a huge part of their appeal — all you have to do is enter a written prompt and the chatbot will do the rest.

I use an AI chatbot almost every day to quickly summarize lots of complex information or perform some basic data analysis. Here are the best AI tools I’ve worked with.

1. ChatGPT

ChatGPT arguably kickstarted the current AI boom so it’s no surprise that it’s still one of the best AI chatbots on the market. It’s powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1 models, which are some of the most advanced currently available.

Beyond typical text-based content generation, the AI tool also features an advanced voice mode that allows you to have an actual conversation with the model, or even ask it to identify what’s happening in a video in real-time. Depending on which version you are using, it can also search the web for answers or use large documents to provide additional context to its response.

ChatGPT is available on the web, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. If you want to be on the cutting edge, it’s the chatbot to use.

ChatGPT plans and pricing

• ChatGPT has a Free plan that includes access to GPT-4o-mini, limited access to GPT-4o, and standard voice mode.
• ChatGPT Plus plan includes access to GPT-4o, limited access to o1 and o1-mini, and advanced voice mode for a cost of $20/month.
• ChatGPT Pro plan includes unlimited access to o1, o1-mini, and GPT-4o, as well as limited access to o1-pro, and advance access to the latest features and costs $200/month.

2. Claude

Claude is one of the best ChatGPT competitors. Its three models — Claude 3.5 Haiku, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus — are designed to be safe, accurate, and secure. This focus on trustworthiness and reliability makes Claude a popular choice for businesses, plus its AI model has a more personable, human-like tone of voice.

For all that, Claude is still packed with features, like Artifacts — this allows you to ask Claude to create a small web app with a single prompt that runs in a popup window. If you need a quick tool to solve a math problem or reformat a string of text in a specific way, it’s great.

Claude plans and pricing

• Claude’s Free plan includes limited access to Claude 3.5 Haiku.
• Claude Pro at $20/month or $216/year includes more access to Claude 3.5 Haiku, as well as access to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3 Opus, and additional features.
• Claude Team includes more usage than Claude Pro as well as team management features for $25 per user/month or $360 per user/year.

3. DeepSeek

DeepSeek is a new AI chatbot competitor on the market. While it’s not as polished as ChatGPT or Claude, its AI models are just as powerful — and thanks to some incredible research advancements, it’s far cheaper to run. This means that DeepSeek gives you access to its most powerful models for free.

DeepSeek is available on the web and through iOS and Android apps. While it doesn’t have as many features as ChatGPT, the DeepSeek R1 model is incredibly impressive and can work through really complex problems.

DeepSeek plans and pricing

DeepSeek is completely free on the web, iOS, and Android.

Best AI writing tools

While every AI chatbot can be used to help write or edit, dedicated AI writing tools take things further. They make it easier to generate long, cohesive documents from a prompt, document, website, or other resources, or to edit your writing.

If you want a consistent brand voice across all your communications, press releases generated automatically, blog posts created in a few seconds, or just a super-powered spelling and grammar checker, these are the tools for you.

1. Jasper

Jasper is an AI writing tool for marketers. Originally called Jarvis, it was one of the first major AI writing tools. You can train Jasper in your brand’s tone and style preferences as well as provide all the additional context it needs to know about your company and its products. The AI can then take your written prompt or rough draft and generate perfect copy.

While it can generate any kind of writing you need, it excels at creating press releases, blog posts, social media captions, product descriptions, and other sorts of marketing copy with a consistent brand voice.

Jasper plans and pricing

• Jasper Creator plan equipped with one brand voice costs $49/month or $468/year.
• The Jasper Pro plan gives you access to three brand voices and 10 knowledge base assets for $69 per user/month or $708 per user/year.
• Jasper Business gives you unlimited access at a custom price point.

2. Grammarly

Grammarly is like a super-charged spelling and grammar checker. As well as correcting simple spelling errors and mistakes like repeated words or using “their” instead of “they’re”, the AI tool can help you with things like the passive voice, formality, and tone, ultimately keeping your communications on brand.

Grammarly’s browser plug-ins, apps, and integrations with other tools allow you to use it almost anywhere. Whether you’re writing an email to your boss, reviewing an online purchase, or chatting with a friend, it can help you say exactly what you mean to by editing your existing draft, or generating a message entirely from scratch.

Grammarly plans and pricing

• Grammarly Free plan comes with basic spelling and grammar corrections and 100 AI prompts/month.
• Grammarly Pro plan is equipped with advanced spelling and grammar corrections and 2,000 AI prompts/month costs $30 per user/month or $144 per user/year.
• The Enterprise plan is available at a custom price point.

3. Microsoft Copilot Pro

Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant built directly into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, Word, and Excel. This integration is what makes it one of the best AI writing tools. If you use Word, you have a handy AI at your fingertips ready to help out. If you need a template to work from, a first draft, or your work entirely rewritten, it can do it for you.

On top of that, Copilot works as a chatbot that can answer questions about any document, help you figure out how to phrase something, and generally make your life easier. You can even use it on the web or your smartphone, so your AI assistant isn’t just locked into Word.

Microsoft Copilot plans and pricing

• Microsoft Copilot Pro, which includes integration with Microsoft 365 apps, costs $20 per user/month.
• Copilot Pro subscription requires a Microsoft 365 Subscription that costs $7.20 per user/month for Business Basic with the web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook — or $15 per user/month for Business Standard with the desktop version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

Best AI image generators

AI image generators take text prompts and create a matching image. For example, you can type “a penguin playing bass in a pop punk band” and they will generate an image of a penguin rocking out on the guitar. More advanced AI image generators give you more control; you can upload images to use as part of the prompt, combine AI-generated images and real images, or match styles between images.

AI image generators are great for creating quick marketing and social media images. If you need a header image for a blog post or a graphic for an event poster, they’re ideal.

1. DALL·E 3

I’ve been using DALL·E since it first launched, but DALL·E 3, is among the best AI image generators available. The simplest way to access it is through ChatGPT, though you need a ChatGPT Plus subscription to do so.

Because DALL·E 3 works through ChatGPT, you can also use the chatbot to assist you in creating the exact image you want. DALL·E 3’s style isn’t quite photorealistic, but it’s still very effective for creating all sorts of images and graphics.

DALL·E 3 plans and pricing

• DALL·E 3 is available through ChatGPT as part of a ChatGPT Plus subscription that costs $20/month.
• You can also try it for free using Microsoft Bing Image Creator.

2. Midjourney

Midjourney has consistently been my favorite AI image generator. The web app is extremely powerful and provides advanced features like in-painting, out-painting, using images as stylistic references, using images as character references, and much more. There’s also a community aspect to it so you can see what prompts other people are using to create their images.

If you’re serious about creating high-quality AI-generated images and don’t mind a bit of a learning curve, it’s the app for you.

Midjourney plans and pricing

• Midjourney Basic Plan includes 3.3 hours of fast GPU time and costs $10/month or $96/year.
• The Standard Plan includes 15 hours of fast GPU time and unlimited relaxed GPU time for $30/month or $288/year.
• Midjourney Pro includes 30 hours of fast GPU time, unlimited relaxed GPU time, and stealth mode so you can create private images for $60/month or $576/year.

3. Canva Magic Studio

Canva is a powerful template-based graphic design app. Its AI image generation and editing suite, collectively called Magic Studio, allows you to combine human-designed and AI-generated elements.

For example, you can use a template to create an event poster, add your logo, and then for the main image, use Magic Studio to create whatever you need. If you’ve ever spent hours looking for the perfect stock photo, you can imagine how useful it is to create the perfect picture in a few seconds.

Canva plans and pricing

• Canva’s free plan includes limited AI usage.
• The Pro plan includes all AI features and costs $15/month or $120/year.

Best AI video generators

AI video generators use artificial intelligence to generate video content. They can take a text prompt and create a matching video from scratch, turn a still image into a video, or extend an existing video clip. While AI video generators aren’t quite as polished as AI image generators, they are useful for creating graphics like title cards and intros, digital backgrounds, social media clips, and more.

1. OpenAI Sora

OpenAI Sora is one of the most accessible AI video generators available at the moment. It can generate videos up to 20 seconds long in 1080p resolution from a text prompt, still image, or video clip. It can also remix and regenerate aspects of an existing video, and the built-in editor enables you to create a multiclip sequence.

Sora is available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users, so if you are interested in AI tools, there’s a good chance you already have it.

Sora plans and pricing

• Sora is included with the ChatGPT Plus plan at $20/month, allowing subscribers to generate videos up to 5 seconds long in 720p resolution.
• With the ChatGPT Pro plan at $200/month, you can generate videos up to 20 seconds long in 1080p resolution.

2. Synthesia

Synthesia allows you to turn a text script into studio-quality video with an AI avatar and voiceover — and if you’re anything like me, you’ll struggle to tell it apart from a real person. It’s great for converting marketing and training materials into quick and engaging videos — and best of all, it’s super easy to use.

Synthesia plans and pricing

• The free plan allows you to generate 3 minutes of video per month.
• The Starter plan allows you to generate 10 minutes of video per month using Synthesia’s AI avatars and costs $29/month or $216/year.
• The Creator plan lets you generate up to 30 minutes of video per month using personal avatars and costs $89/month or $768/year.

3. Runway

If you’re looking for a tool to create Hollywood-worthy videos, Runway is your best bet. Its AI tools have been used in movies like Everything Everywhere All At Once, as well as TV shows and music videos. On top of generating video from text, images, or video, Runway can generate audio and match it to a lip-sync video. It also has all the editing and organizational features professional video editors would expect for an efficient workflow.

However, all these powerful features mean there’s a bit of a learning curve with Runway. I’ve been casually editing videos for a decade and it took me a few weeks to come to terms with everything that Runway can do.

Runway plans and pricing

• There’s a free Basic plan with 125 one-time credits.
• The Standard plan will give you 625 credits/month as well as more advanced features for $15/month or $144/year.
• Pro plan with 2,250 credits/month and custom voices costs $35/month or $336/year.
• An unlimited plan with limitless video generation costs $95/month or $912/year.

Best AI customer service tools

AI tools can provide amazing customer service support. They can streamline your human agents’ workflow, find the right answer in your support database, and even solve your customers’ problems directly — 24/7 and 365 days a year. So, whether you want an AI tool that can bolster your current team or an AI customer support chatbot that can operate on its own, here are three of the best I’ve found.

1. Intercom

Intercom is already one of the best customer service tools, so it’s no surprise that their transition to AI has been so successful. Intercom’s Fin AI support agent can be trained on your customer support data to assist your customers on its own, while its AI-powered platform enables your support agents to better solve your customers’ problems with smart suggestions and their own AI copilot.

Intercom plans and pricing

• Essential Plan includes a single shared inbox and costs $39/user/month or $348/user/year.
• Advanced Plan includes multiple team inboxes and workflows and costs $99/user/month or $1,020/user/year.
• Expert Plan includes SSO, HIPAA support, and more enterprise features and costs $139/user/month or $1,584/user/year.
• Fin AI agent costs $0.99/resolution and AI copilot costs $35/user/month.

2. Zendesk AI

Another big name in customer support, Zendesk AI is a great AI-powered customer service app. It’s designed to help automate your customer service workflow, both by solving customer requests directly and providing your customer support agents with the information they need through a centralized knowledge base.

Zendesk AI plans and pricing

• AI agents are available on the Suite Team plan which costs $69/user/month or $660/user/year.
• Advanced AI features are available for $600/user/year.

3. Ada

While many AI customer support platforms are based around human agents, Ada is truly AI-first. Its support bots can hand off to humans if they need to, but they’re designed to be smart enough to solve your customer’s problems completely independently. Once you train Ada on your existing support content, it can get to work helping your customers. Depending on how you set things up, Ada can operate over messaging apps, email, and even voice calls.

Ada plans and pricing

Ada features a free trial, though after that, you’ll have to contact sales for more pricing details.

Best AI search engines

AI search engines use AI models to understand and present information from around the web. Instead of having to click through to each website, they give you a handy summary of all the key information. AI search engines are great for getting an overview of a complex topic, doing systematic research, and staying on top of the most recent information.

However, it’s important to remember that they aren’t a replacement for a traditional search engine, but a more focused tool for search-based research.

1. Perplexity

Perplexity is the best AI search engine. It accurately summarises search results and provides citations for each point. You can also ask follow-up questions, which I find is a great way of quickly getting the information you need.

Perplexity allows you to use a handful of different models including o3-mini, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Deepseek R1. So if you have a favorite model, there’s a good chance you can use it with Perplexity.

Perplexity pricing and plans

• The free plan allows for unlimited free searches and three pro searches per day.
• The Pro plan includes 300-plus pro searches per day and a choice of AI model for $20/month.

2. ChatGPT Search

ChatGPT Search allows you to use ChatGPT to pull in content from the open internet. It improves ChatGPT’s accuracy when it comes to current affairs, and turns it into an even more useful assistant. My favorite way to use it is to use ChatGPT Search to research something, and then ask it questions to help me analyze the results — for example, to find the best value phone plan for me.

OpenAI also just released an even more powerful research mode called Deep Research which should be even more suited to researching complex topics.

ChatGPT Search pricing and plans

• ChatGPT Search is available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers which costs $20/month.
• Deep Research is available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers which costs $200/month.

3. Google

While it might not be obvious, Google is increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. Its AI Overviews summarize the most relevant results and can save you from clicking around trying to find answers. Similarly, a lot of its suggestions are powered by AI. So, if you’re curious to try AI search, you might not have to sign up for any new tools.

Google pricing and plans

It’s completely free.

Comparison table of best AI tools

Be at the cutting edge of AI

AI tools are one of the most exciting tech developments of the last decade. Whether you’re trying to create a form, research a potential purchase, or edit a marketing video these AI tools can make it quicker and easier. And some of them can even be automated to speed up your workflow even more.

I’m a big fan of all the apps on this list and think you will be too. So get started with them today and be at the forefront of artificial intelligence technology.

Photo by Ivan Mudruk