In this article I’ll look at some key players that have emerged as titans in the artificial intelligence website space. If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines waiting for true winners to emerge, this article will get you up to date on a range of business-oriented AI tools worth trying out.
This is a “living” article; I’ll update it from time to time when some new shiny thing blows my mind, as the AI online space is shifting fast. This article was last updated on February 1, 2024. Be sure to check the comments –feel free to add suggestions for the next update.
Table of Contents
Titans Have Emerged
Artificial intelligence has, in my opinion, finally become useful in varying degrees –depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Ranging from AI “value add” features within existing software platforms, to purely standalone tools that generate original content all on their own. The results are often so impressive I am somewhat apprehensive about what this technology will do to the job market and how many people it will put out of work.
Artificial intelligence has touched every industry –from education and AI tools for teachers, all the way to the trades with BuildOps construction AI. Artificial intelligence has even been used to create the dankest of troll memes, like the Clown-Tron; an AI meme generator that paints Canada’s Justin Trudeau as a clown with unlimited potential.
To date, I’ve been sitting on the sidelines as artificial intelligence tools battle for purpose. Other than MidJourney, what AI tools I explored last year didn’t overtly impress me. I figured I’d wait until the landscape had matured.
While video AI still has a way to go, I think that most AI applications have matured enough to serve their purpose. From here on in, good AI tools just get better.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
What you put into your AI prompts –the instructions you give it, typically in plain English for the average user, will define your success with whatever AI website you’re looking at.
You could be experimenting with a really powerful AI website and get garbage results that turn you off because your prompts suck.
Microsoft has created an open-source prompt engine to educate, inform, and implement effective AI prompts. It’s worth looking at whether you’re a beginner or early adopter who’s already been using AI online tools since their inception.
Beyond that, there’s Learn Prompting, and MIT has free AI learning resources –but don’t stop there, a light Google search will reveal there’s AI prompt learning resources for miles.
Art and Photography
There are AI websites and apps that can very capably generate original visual content, as well as edit content that’s already been created.
They’re still working out the kinks –literally and figuratively. But all in all, AI platforms for art and photography are ready for primetime.
In terms of fully-featured image generation from scratch, the AI tools that impress me the most today are MidJourney, NightCafe, Leonardo, Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator, Dall-E by OpenAI, OpenArt, Adobe Firefly, DreamStudio, Craiyon, IMG2Go, HotPot, Imagine, Magic Studio by Canva, and on your phone you can download Dream.
AI photo editors I’ve tried include Adobe Photoshop, Pixlr, Fotor, Luminar Neo, and Lensa on mobile.
Video Generation and Editing
Currently, I think the best examples of AI-generated video at the time of writing is from Peter Gabriel’s I/O album (although as a lifelong fan, I may be biased). He’s been pushing the boundaries of animation in his music videos since before the days of Steam, Big Time, and Sledgehammer.
Each song he released on I/O has two mixes, and the singles have a video for each mix. All of the videos were generated using Stable Diffusion AI, and some of them were awarded for their creativity.
Overall, AI video generation is still not where it’s text and image AI counterparts are; in layman terms as I understand it, Stable Diffusion’s AI-generated video is in essence just the product of a heavy duty AI image generator that is doing a form of frame-by-frame animation with one-off imagery it’s generated –giving video a surreal feeling, as in the Panopticom video above.
Coming up fast behind Stable Diffusion, is Google’s Lumiere and Runway; creating compelling but, at this time, often flawed video representations of just about anything under the sun (provided it’s kosher with their TOS). I suspect either one will soon be for video what MidJourney is for art and photography.
I don’t think it will take longer than this year for AI-generated video to rival deepfakes of the finest quality.
Future AI prompts for video generation will be like “give me a Matrix sequel with Amy Schumer as the hero, and make all the agents look like Hamburgler”. Boom, blockbuster.
Other forms of AI-generated video are less artistic, albeit often convincing enough “talking head” videos that could serve business use cases as in the example below from Synthesia:
In terms of AI for video editing, I’m a fan of Kapwing because it does basic video generation and editing pretty well, all in one tool. I made this Instagram Reel using Kapwing’s AI features and I use their video editor interface for my YouTube videos to clean up audio, remove gaps in speech, and make social media clips.
Kapwing is obviously a more basic example of AI video generation; all it did for my Instagram Reel was assemble a video with media created by humans.
For the most part, we’re still a few months out from seeing AI tools that can create full videos from scratch, via text prompt. But Kapwing did write the entire script for that video, narrated it, and it found suitable videos to throw in. I probably use 10% of Kapwing’s features and it’s still worth the monthly cost.
Beyond that, I’m seeing great results with CapCut as well, more on that one another day as I have more time to experiment with it.
Voice and Music Generation
AI-generated music featuring the voices of popular artists without their consent has entered the chat.
“Heart on My Sleeve” is a track that features the voices of Drake and The Weekend –although I think The Weekend’s voice track could have had analysed more source material as it sounds a bit fake. The song was created using a range of tools, and this article will break them all down.
Simply put, it wasn’t a one-click operation to create that song, but it perfectly demonstrates where we’re at with AI-generated voice and music so I won’t have to elabourate much further on this one.
If you’re looking for more AI tools to generate music and voice audio, check out Murf, Splash Pro, and AIVA.
Slide Deck Generation
Making slide decks sucks almost as much as being forced to view them.
AI websites that create slideshows are working to turn slide decks into creative expressions of information that won’t make audiences spontaneously fall asleep crying.
So far, I’m impressed with Beautiful.ai, Decktopus, Tome, and Slidesgo.
Watching videos about AI tools that create slide decks hurt almost as much as Powerpoint presentations of old, but this video demonstrates how Beautiful.ai works –and it’s worth watching if you’re here to learn about AI-generated slideshows.
Copywriting and Article Generation
To date, humans are still writing every article on Hobo with a Laptop –something I think I’ll always do, on principle and respect for my audience. But I have experimented with article writing using artificial intelligence websites here and there over the last few years.
Each of the following AI tools for writing articles have grown by leaps and bounds over the last 3 years I’ve been experimenting with them; Rytr, Jasper AI, SudoWrite, Surfer, WriteSonic, and CopyAI.
And then of course, you could use Bing Copilot AI, Google’s Bard, X’s Grok, Open AI’s ChatGPT, ChatSonic, and others to kickstart an article.
Many AI website do use the latest GPT build (it’s currently on version 4), but they make changes to it similar to how there’s various flavours of Ubuntu Linux (PopOS!, Elementary, or KDE Neon, Zorin, among many others).
More, Always
That’s a wrap for today, but I will certainly revisit this article every few months to point to any new AI technology I’ve discovered. I have a feeling things are about to explode, and reality is on the verge of becoming the most absurd it’s ever been.
May the legal battles, begin! Thank gosh we have stunning and brave Kamala Harris in charge of US policies regarding artificial intellegence, eh? What could go wrong?