The artificial intelligence revolution is here—and embracing it can make a major difference to the way you work. According to Accenture's projections, AI is set to increase labor productivity by almost 40%. What would you do with that extra time and energy? What would it mean for your creativity, your bottom line, and the overall success of our business? 

Investing in AI, it’s safe to say, is a great idea. But where do you start? Not to worry, our list of the best AI software platforms (both free and paid) has you covered.

The 8 Best AI software for different needs

Ready to win your time back with AI? Here are our reviews for the eight best AI software platforms for different needs. 

1. Jasper (previously Jarvis)

The best AI-writing tool for marketers.

Long before ChatGPT took the internet by storm, Jasper was already operating with a strong user base of over 100,000 people. The tool uses OpenAI's API to provide text generation capabilities through the GPT models—i.e., it hasn't trained its own model. 

So why do thousands of people use Jasper instead of OpenAI?

Well, the answer is value addition. Although Jasper uses OpenAI's model, the platform has added a lot of additional value to make it more relevant to business users. This includes templates to help you get desired results, a "boss" mode to help you generate long-form content faster, and SEO-writing capabilities (which are amplified by Jasper's collaboration with SurferSEO). 

More recently, the company introduced Jasper for Business, which includes features to help you customize the output to your brand voice and to improve your team's ability to collaborate. 

Pricing: Jasper offers a free five-day trial with 10,000 credits. The cost of the paid tiers depend on how many AI credits you buy. For example, 50k words/month on the Boss Mode plan will cost you $59/month (with discounts for annual billing).

2. ChatGPT

The best free AI writing tool.

This AI writing tool needs no introduction—it flat-out went viral. Prior to ChatGPT, you could still use OpenAI's platform to generate text using GPT-3, but it was more like a sandbox. It wasn't really user-friendly and you had to fine-tune your prompts. 

ChatGPT gained a lot of attention because it made AI writing accessible to the general public, and the platform is easy to use—it's just like talking to a chatbot. You can also pick out templates from ChatGPT's community library, which will help you get desired outputs, like blog posts outlines or captions for a social media post. Lots of other AI writing tools are now using ChatGPT's API to deliver similar capabilities. 

Pricing: ChatGPT has a generous free plan with some restrictions. You can upgrade to the paid tier for $20/month.

3. Otter.ai

The best free AI transcription tool.

For complex transcription needs, you'll likely need to hire human transcribers, which you can do from a service like Rev. But if you have simpler, everyday transcription needs—like transcribing your business meetings or interview recordings—then an AI-powered tool like Otter.ai is a great option.

Otter.ai uses natural language processing to process words and identify speakers (including when they're talking). It also strips out filler words like "um" and "uh" to make your transcript more concise. The app has helpful customization features, like the option to tag your own voice so Otter.ai recognizes it automatically, and you can also teach it jargon and new words by creating your own custom library.

Pricing: Otter.ai offers both free and paid plans for individuals—the free plan includes 600 minutes of transcriptions per month, but each transcription is limited to 40 minutes, and there are limits on the number of files you can import. The Pro plan costs $12.99/month and takes you up to 6,000 minutes per month with a transcription limit of four hours per transcription. 

4. GrammarlyGO

‍The best free AI writing assistant.

Lately, generative AI tools have taken the spotlight, so it's easy to forget simpler options that are just as reliable. Grammarly is a case in point; it remains one of the most widely used free AI tools. The writing assistant's free plan checks for spelling and grammar errors, and also detects your tone and offers suggestions for improving conciseness. And now there's GrammarlyGO, which helps you unlock ideas as you compose, rewrite, ideate, and personalize your writing with AI. You'll need a Premium account to access these features, though. That tier of pricing also includes:

• A plagiarism detector that produces detailed reports
• Tone suggestions
• Sentence rewrites
• A custom library for your vocabulary 
  

If you just need a simple spelling and grammar checker, then Grammarly's free plan is a great choice. But if you're looking for a powerful writing assistant, you'll want to upgrade to the paid plan.

Pricing: Grammarly Premium costs $12/month if you pay annually, $20/month if you pay quarterly, and $30/month if you pay monthly. How much you pay for Grammarly Business depends on the number of seats you buy and your billing cycle. 

5. Writer

The best writing assistant for content teams.

Writer is a writing assistant built for business users—it's more tailored to the needs of marketing and content teams. Writer helps content teams stay consistent in their messaging and get more work done with the help of AI. 

Beyond typical spelling and grammar checks, Writer offers text shortcuts, AI-powered sentence rewrites, an AI-powered first draft generator, AI writing, and more. You can also create custom style guides, including ones for different clients and projects, and share them with your team. 

Pricing: Writer offers a free 14-day trial for you to test the tool out. The Team plan, which is for one to five users, costs $18/user/month. If you have a larger team, you'll need to contact Writer directly to get a quote for their Enterprise plan.

6. Midjourney

The best AI software for generating images.

Midjourney is one of the most well-known artificial intelligence tools for generating images. The platform's bot has been trained on large image datasets, giving it the capability to generate images on command. You can give Midjourney prompts for the type of images you want and it'll try to produce an output that aligns with what you've asked. 

Since Midjourney is still developing, it might not give you your desired result on the first go—you might need to keep tweaking your prompt until you get the image you had in mind. But, hey, the platform's improving as we speak, and it's already quite capable. Here's how one person is using it to visualize the world in their book:

Pricing: Midjourney AI has a free trial that lets you generate up to 25 images. After that, you'll need to upgrade to a paid membership, which ranges from $10 to $60, depending on the tier you go for.

7. Magical

The best AI app for writing messages and automating repetitive tasks.

Magical is one of the most versatile AI tools on our list—it helps you save time with data entry automation, personalized text expansion, and AI writing assistance. The app works where you do by integrating with your everyday work flows, for example:

• If you're a recruiter, you can use Magical to send personalized messages to applicants you're corresponding with. Then, you can use the app to automatically update candidates' information by teleporting data from your open tabs to your ATS.
  
• If you work in sales, you can use Magical to send customized outreach messages to prospects, and you can automatically update your CRM with their information by transferring data from your open tabs. (P.S. If you’re doing outreach, check out these 7 sales cold email templates for inspiration.)
  

You get all this functionality without needing to do any setup—just add the app to Chrome in one-click and get started immediately. Magical is also an entirely no-code solution.

Pricing: Magical is entirely free to use! 

8. Listnr

The best AI voice generator.

Whether you're looking to add a voiceover to your ads, create an audiobook, make an explainer video, or something else entirely, a text-to-speech AI voice generator can work wonders. And while there are plenty of artificial intelligence platforms you can choose from, Listnr is one of the best options in this category. The AI tool offers lots of customization options—you can specify genres, choose an accent, and even create your own personalized audio player to embed on your blog (to create an audio version of your writing).

Listnr currently supports over 75 languages, with different accents for each language. It also has lots of features to help you distribute your commercial content. You can distribute your audio (with commercial rights) to platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, for example.

Pricing: Listnr's plans start at $19/month, and if you pay yearly, you'll get 2 months free. 

Ready to embrace AI?

While the robots aren't quite ready to take our jobs (or eliminate the human race), AI has come a long way and software applications that leverage AI technology can help you massively improve your productivity.