The 7 Best Free AI Tools For 2024
We've seen some amazing advances in AI and large language models over the last 12-months. But with so many new releases of AI text generation models like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini and more it can be hard to keep up with which tools are the best and easiest tools to use to generate content using AI.
To make things easy I've tested out all of the free and paid LLMs out there and with even more crazy advances in large language models coming over the next 12-months I wanted to share with you the 7 Best AI text generation tools that you can start using right now and which are all completely free to use.
Claude AI Chat
Claude is a large language model (LLM) created by Anthropic with the overarching purpose of being a helpful conversational assistant. Claude 2.0 launched within the last 12-months and ew'll likely see more releases that improve things in the next 12-months too.
According to Anthropic, “Claude is a next-generation AI assistant based on Anthropic’s research into training helpful, honest, and harmless AI systems.” So, how does Claude compare to ChatGPT?
One of its main strengths is its ability to quickly generate high-quality content for different purposes that in my opinion is on a par with GPT3.5.
It's main advantage over ChatGPT and Bard is that it outputs much longer responses allowing for more meaningful articles to be produced in a single conversation. This might be a double edged sword for some who want short and specific responses from their chatbot.
Like other AI chatbots, Claude’s chat interface is user-friendly and minimalist and you can upload documents most importantly it's free and definitely worth checking out
ChatGPT
ChatGPT has taken the world by storm over the last 12-months partly because of it's generous free tier allowing anyone to experience the power of generative AI on web and mobile.
ChatGPT's free tier uses GPT3.5 Turbo which is super quick and provides excellent responses to most prompts. The addition of voice and the mobile app have expanded accessibility of this super powerful tool.
The main drawback of the ChatGPT free tier is having to wait during busy periods and missing out on the greater power provided by GPT4 and it's plugins including document upload, vision and DALLE-3 though all of these will likely trickle down to the free tier in the future.
For me ChatGPT is still my go-to large language model due to it's consistency and ease of use.
Bard AI Chat
Bard is Google's experimental, conversational, AI chat tool. It is meant to function similarly to ChatGPT, with the biggest difference being that Google's service pulls its information from the web for free.
Bard has come under some flack since it's release with some inaccuracies demonstrated.
Like most large language models, Bard can code, answer math problems, and help with your writing needs.
Google has introduced extension into Bard which allow connections to google workspace including google drive and gmail as well as youtube and maps to pull useful data into the chat interface.
With Gemini Ultra Google's most capable LLM which has been shown to outperform GPT3.5 launching in Bard, Google is clearly going all in against OpenAI and ChatGPT over the next 12-months.
When using Bard I've found that the responses tend to be much faster than other tools like ChatGPT and the integration with Google including search and YouTube adds an extra dimension when it comes to researching and managing information.
Compared to ChatGPT and Bing Bard is also not limited to a set amount of responses. You can have long conversations with Google Bard, but Bing is limited to 30 replies in one conversation. Even ChatGPT Plus limits users to 50 messages every three hours.
Bing AI
Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI the company behind ChatGPT and they are busy integrating OpenAI's tools into as many products as possible from Microsoft Office to their own Bing Search engine.
Bing Chat from Microsoft comes with GPT4 as standard which otherwise can only be accessed on ChatGPT Plus subscriptions at $20/month.
I tend to use GPT-4 on my ChatGPT Plus subscription and while slower to generate responses than GPT3.5 the content is usually higher quality and comes with plugins, GPTs and more features.
Some GPT-4 features are missing from Bing Chat, however, and it’s clearly been combined with some of Microsoft’s own proprietary technology. But you’ll still have access to GPT4 and the advanced intelligence that comes with it.
While Bing Chat is free, it is limited to 15 chats per session and 150 sessions per day and for me personally the interface isn't that appealing to use but it's definitely worth checking out.
Character AI
Character AI embodies just how fun using AI can be. The platform allows you to browse thousands of AI created chat bots or create your own.
Characters can be used for anything from language learning to choose your own adventure style creativity games and more.
Creating a character is really easy. You just choose a name, add a greeting and then generate an image for your character. There are some more advanced options too like choosing the character's voice and providing more background and example conversations to make your character unique.
A bit like ChatGPT you can then speak with your personalized characters and use them for anything you like.
Character AI is free on mobile and desktop and then the paid version is $9.99 per month which includes priority access and early access to the latest features.
Perplexity
Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine and chatbot that utilizes advanced technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to provide accurate and comprehensive answers to user queries. It is designed to search the web in real-time and offer up-to-date information on various topics. Perplexity AI is powered by large language models, specifically OpenAI’s GPT technology, which allows it to understand and generate human-like text. It's an answer engine that focuses on advancing how people discover and share information.
Perplexity AI is available on the web and as an app for iPhone users, making it easily accessible to a wide range of users. Users can access Perplexity AI for free from their website. Here are the steps to use Perplexity AI:
1. Head to www.perplexity.ai
2. To ask the model a question, simply type in your request in the search bar and click the blue arrow.
3. Review Perplexity AI’s answer and the sources.
4. Ask another question using the “Ask a follow-up” bar below.
TextFX
The TextFX project is a very cool lab experiment from the team at google. It's billed as AI-powered tools for rappers, writers and wordsmiths and it even has Lupe Fiasco walking through all of the tools on offer.
TextFX comes with 10 specific tools aimed at boosting creativity. These include breaking a word into similar-sounding phrases, evaluating a topic through different points of view and creating acronyms using the letters of a word.
For me the coolest things about TextFX is that not only does each tool come with a video guide from Lupe Fiasco but the look under the hood link shows you the actual prompts used which is just super interesting and well worth checking out.
Copy.AI
As a little bonus CopyAI provides a range of automated creativity tools to overcome writer's block, along with AI-generated templates that can jumpstart your writing projects. The platform also includes a long-form document editor that allows you to centralize your ideas and streamline your writing process.
CopyAI's workflow for product descriptions includes AI-powered writing tips and ideas to help you create effective content.
CopyAI features a Chat interface similar to ChatGPT but pairs this with a notes field on the right hand side of the screen so that you can save your responses directly. Unlike ChatGPT the Copy Chat bot has the ability to scrape websites for public data which means it can personalize emails from data on Linkedin or summarize a YouTube video if you supply the link and it will even search pubmed and provide links and summaries if you're writing an academic article.
The pop-up modal-based interface may not be to everyone's liking but it is fairly simple and minimalist.
CopyAI's biggest benefit is it's pricing. It has a 2000 word limit on it's free plan and then unlimited words on it's paid plan which starts at $49/month.