The Magic of AI Tools

30 May 2023 / 31 minutes to read

Elena Daehnhardt

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An affiliate disclosure I am an affiliate of Synthesia.io mentioned in this post.

If you click an affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, I will earn a small commission at no additional cost (you pay nothing extra). This is important for promoting tools I like and supporting my blogging.

I thoroughly check the affiliated products' functionality and use them myself to ensure high-quality content for my readers. Thank you very much for motivating me to write.

Table of Contents

Introduction

In my previous post The Evolution of AI, I have outlined arguably the most critical milestones in AI evolution. I recommend reading that post to understand the foundation work of AI and ML technologies.

In this post, I share the fantastic AI products available in 2023 and organised these applications and development platforms into three tables for enterprise, personal-level and development tools. Please consider that this organisation is very simplified; hence we can also use enterprise-level tools as individuals, and likewise, companies can use applications created for personal usage. Some applications, such as Canva, are universal. Let’s start!

Real-World Applications

AI tools have found a multitude of real-world applications across diverse industries. Let’s explore some notable examples:

Healthcare: AI is transforming healthcare with applications like medical image analysis, disease diagnosis, and drug discovery. AI-powered algorithms can analyse medical images, such as X-rays and MRI scans, to assist in the early detection and diagnosis of diseases. Companies like Zebra Medical Vision and Ada (Ada is also available in App Store) are making significant strides in this area.
Finance: AI tools are revolutionising the finance industry by automating processes, detecting fraud, and predicting market trends. Robo-advisors, powered by AI algorithms, provide personalised investment advice to individuals. Companies like Kavout (AI for investing) and booke.ai (bookkeeping) are leveraging AI to enhance financial decision-making.
Manufacturing: AI is enhancing efficiency and productivity in manufacturing processes through automation, predictive maintenance, and quality control. AI-powered robots and machines can perform complex tasks with precision and speed. Companies like Sight Machine and C3.ai are leveraging AI in manufacturing operations.
Customer Service: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants transform customer service by providing instant support and personalised interactions. These tools can handle routine inquiries and automation, freeing up human agents for more complex issues. Examples include IBM Watson Assistant and Dialogflow for conversational AI bots.
Transportation: AI is driving advancements in transportation with applications like autonomous vehicles, traffic prediction, and logistics optimisation. Self-driving cars, powered by AI algorithms, aim to improve road safety and efficiency. Companies like Waymo and Tesla are at the forefront of this innovation.

These are just a few examples of how AI tools are being applied in various industries. The potential for AI is vast, and its impact continues to expand as technology advances and new use cases emerge. These AI tools are mostly created for enterprise-level automation and businesses. I have included these applications in the table “AI for businesses and organisations” at the end of this article.

If you are a usual app user or developer like me or a small business owner, keep reading and explore AI tools with me for personal use. I have summarised these AI apps into “Productivity”, “Entertainment” and “Development” sections, and the corresponding tables are in the sections “Personal AI applications” and “AI and ML for development and deployment”.

Productivity

Let’s look into arguably the most interesting AI applications that are helpful for productivity for personal usage and small businesses.

Automation

bardeen.ai is a no-code AI workflow automation platform for repetitive tasks such as notifications, scheduling, recruiting, text summarisation, web scraping, screen capture, automated e-mails, and more. See their tutorials at bardeen.ai

AI-powered CRM

salesforce is an AI-powered platform that brings intelligence to its customer relationship management (CRM) system. It leverages AI algorithms for predictive analytics, personalised recommendations, and automated workflows to enhance sales and marketing processes.

AI sales agents

Are you exhausted from writing cold marketing e-mails? AI can help book meetings through live chat sessions, reach the right people, generate valid customer information, check the kalendar.ai.

No code

I think the “no code” concept will become more popular soon. No wonder since generative AI can write code well after training on a massive code volume. The AI App Generator bricabrac.ai can build web apps, websites and games without coding based on user text descriptions. bricabrac.ai is in Beta testing now. It can write Javascript, HTML and CSS without any human involvement!

Clarifai is a production-level AI platform designed for developers, data scientists, and those without coding experience.

Writing Assistance

Nowadays, we don’t need a large team of writers and contributors when preparing blog posts or social content. scribee.xyz helps us to write textual and visual content while leveraging professional ready-to-use templates to create content quickly.

We all know about chatGPT by OpenAI and Jasper.ai tools that can also write good quality content. Besides, chatGPT is capable of writing reasonably good code. Some pitfalls exist since their training databases are not regularly updated, and some generated links and citations are missing. Besides, attributing the content on which these tools are created is not transparent.

The new chatbot tool at poe.com offers access to Sage, GPT-4, chatGPT, Claude, NeevaAI and much more. You can explore existing bots or create your own!

With Chatbase, we can easily create ChatGPT-like chatbot for own data by uploading documents or providing a website link, which can be integrated as a widget on a website or accessed via the API for interactive conversations.

If you are concerned about privacy when using chatGPT or similar tools and not afraid of source installation locally on your computer, go to privateGPT GitHub repository

AI-powered Workspace

Notion AI provides a framework for personal and team productivity for organising a workspace, content summarisation, project management, visualisation and loads of AI-powered tools.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping was never so easy, like now with AI. Check www.coolmindmaps.com.

AI-art generators

Midjourney, Jasper.ai, DALL-E and Stable diffusion use text prompts or input images to generate AI art in a few seconds. I have used these image generators together with chatGPT to create Vermeer-like images; see “From Dutch Golden Age to AI Art: A Journey with Vermeer and AI”. I am going soon to write more comprehensive post on Midjourney prompts, which I find very useful. I have also described the “art-bubble” effect resulting from the AI art generators overtraining on classical paintings.

AI design tools

I use Canva for creating my Pinterest pins. It has AI-powered features for removing backgrounds and drawing image parts “on-the-fly”. Canva’s Magic Edit AI feature allows altering images and drawing image parts using textual prompts. However, you can do so much more!

Entertainment, Creativity and Life

However, most of the applications can be used for entertainment and in business settings. For instance, DeepFake avatars can help create educational content or as automated assistance. Thus, the breakdown into personal and other categories is fluid.

Curing Loneliness

A social influencer Caryn Marjorie with a group of psychologists and AI developers created CarynAI “to cure loneliness” since “Men are told to suppress their emotions, hide their masculinity, and to not talk about issues they are having. I vow to fix this with CarynAI”, see her tweet or read the story on nbcnews. You can try getting early access at the caryn.ai.

Beats generation

Generate fantastic and original beats with AI at drumloopai.com, which can create drum loop in desired genre and tempo, “it’s like having a professional drummer right in your pocket” drumloopai.com.

AI-generated personalised images

DreamPic.AI employs cutting-edge AI technology to create personalised images of individuals in different styles. By uploading 10-30 photos, our AI model is trained to generate new pictures of you in the chosen styles, which can be conveniently viewed and downloaded as a single archive through a provided link.

Remove backgrounds

PhotoRoom helps to remove backgrounds, undesirable objects, and imperfections and fast retouch images.

Generate images and logos

We can use accomplice.ai with an AI-powered image editor to create pictures and logos of different styles based on text input.

AI-portraits

With StableDiffusion, we can create our own AI portrait images and even imaginary avatars, realistic portraits and images. The beginners’ guide is here. You can also try one web application to create AI portrait variations.

If you like coding in Colab, I recommend this tutorial by Arib, explaining all the steps for creating avatars using your pictures.

DeepFake Avatars

Deep Neural Networks can be used to create video avatars representing persons, their appearance and their voice. DeepFake avatars are sophisticated and helpful in developing business support, educational, and entertainment content. Anywhere we need to have a presenter, we can use the DeepFake avatars. That’s great since we can save so much time for video recording.

Here are some prominent avatar creators to date:

Synthesia.io creates high-quality DeepFake avatars, which are quite pricey.
colossyan.com also provides avatars localisation to more than 120 languages.
D-ID’s AI Presenters help to create conversational AI presenters.

What I like the most is that we can use and adapt the existing code base for creating deep fakes and face swapping, such as the repositoryDeepFaceLab enabling high-quality face-swapping videos, GPL-3.0 license. You can easily search what DeepFake repositories are available for Python on GitHub.

However, these realisations often require access to GPU or TPU resources for training or fine-tuning DeepFake models. Luckily, we can use Google Colab resources and protect our privacy while retaining our video/audio content. If you like coding, I recommend creating deep fakes for learning and fun!

Creativity with DeepAI

DeepAI platform offers various AI tools and APIs for tasks such as image recognition, text generation, face detection, and style transfer, enabling developers to leverage AI capabilities easily.

Griefbots and Companions

Griefbots offer a digital representation of deceased persons. They can be realised as text-based models or visual avatars that family members or friends can “communicate” with their loved ones. Fu Shou Yuan International Group offers subscriptions to digital representations of deceased persons; see Will AI help us grieve better? Or way, way worse? by Ben Berkley writes that it is unclear whether griefbots will help in the grieving process, or rather create more complex psychological effects that somehow affect the process of letting go.

The Hereafter.ai application enables storing life experiences, memories and photos that will allow a conversation with the “virtual you”. Similarly, Replika develops an AI companion for a real-time experience.

Development and Deployment

These AI tools in this section are helpful in software development and deployment. You can also use some of them, such as HuggingFace’ transformers, while learning to code. I promise that one of my next posts will be about using Transformers, and it will be epic :) Subscribe to my AI newsletter to make sure to catch that great post coming anytime soon.

Transformers Agents

HuggingFace developed Transformers Agents enabling LLMs (OpenAssistant, StarCoder, OpenAI …) that responds to complex queries and offers a chat mode. It can create images using your words, have the agent read the summary of websites out loud, and read through a PDF. The agents can output Python code using its AI reasoning tools. Check transformers documentation or, if you like a bit of code, Colab at Transformers can do anything.

ML deployment

DataRobot MLOps offers a central hub for your live AI models. It provides a single location where you can deploy, keep an eye on, handle, and regulate all your models in action, regardless of their origin or deployment details.

Build custom ML

Google AutoML enables users to build custom machine learning models without extensive knowledge of machine learning. It automates the model training process and allows developers to create tailored solutions for their needs.

Natural Language Processing platform

wit.ai is a natural language processing platform acquired by Facebook, offering APIs and tools for building conversational agents, chatbots, and voice-controlled applications that can understand and respond to user inputs.

Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services

Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services is a suite of AI-powered APIs and services from Microsoft, offering functionalities such as speech recognition, language understanding, image analysis, and more, to enhance applications with intelligent capabilities.

TensorFlow.js

TensorFlow.js is a JavaScript library developed by Google that allows running and training TensorFlow models in the browser, empowering developers to build and deploy AI-powered applications directly in JavaScript.

Code completion tools

GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered code completion tool developed by GitHub in collaboration with OpenAI. It is designed to assist developers in writing code more efficiently and effectively. GitHub Copilot uses machine learning models trained on many publicly available code repositories to suggest code snippets, completions, and even entire functions or classes as developers write code.

By analysing the context, comments, and patterns in the code being written, GitHub Copilot can generate suggestions that align with the developer’s intent. It supports multiple programming languages and integrates directly into popular code editors like Visual Studio Code.

GitHub Copilot aims to improve developer productivity by automating repetitive tasks, reducing the need to search for documentation or examples, and speeding up the coding process. It can help with tasks such as writing boilerplate code, filling in function parameters, suggesting variable names, and offering code samples based on the current context.

However, it’s important to note that GitHub Copilot is an assistive tool and should be used as a productivity aid rather than a replacement for critical thinking and understanding of code. Developers should carefully review and validate the suggestions provided by Copilot to ensure correctness, security, and adherence to coding best practices.

GitHub Copilot is a subscription-based service, and its availability and pricing details can be found on GitHub’s official website.

Tabnine

Another solution that I use with PyCharm is Tabnine integrates with various code editors and provides intelligent suggestions and auto-completions based on context, significantly enhancing developer productivity.

There are so many applications that can be added to this post! For instance, you perhaps already know about these great applications, they also AI-powered:

These AI web apps provide various functionalities and capabilities for natural language processing, computer vision, speech recognition, and more. Feel free to explore them further by following the provided links. Indeed, I have included these five incredible apps in the useful tables below in the “Apps Overview” section summarising all the apps in this post. Notice that these applications have APIs and are helpful mainly for software and web services development.

You can drop me a message and share your favourite application so that I can update this blog post, and my readers will be happier.

Apps Overview

So much to think about! I have summarised the described AI apps and platforms in these three tables for personal-level AI applications for entertainment and productivity, applications for machine learning and AI development, and production-level AI solutions and platforms for businesses.

Personal AI applications

I have listed the personal AI apps, entertainment, education, finance, productivity and health here. These applications can also be used for small teams and businesses. For instance, DeepFake avatars can be expensive for individuals but affordable for companies. chatGPT can also be used by software developers and beginner coders besides writing text content.

AI app or platform	Description	Website
Ada	Health-related decision support	Ada.com
booke.ai	Bookkeeping	booke.ai
Kavout AI for investing	AI for investing	kavout.com
bardeen.ai	No-code workflow automation	bardeen.ai
Scribee.xyz	Writing assistance, textual and visual content	scribee.xyz
Poe.com	Chatbot, various AI models	poe.com
chatGPT by OpenAI	Content generation	chatGPT
Chatbase	ChatGPT-like personalised chatbots using own data	Chatbase
PrivateGPT	AI language model similar to chatGPT, installed locally for privacy.	PrivateGPT
Cool Mind Maps	AI-powered mind mapping	coolmindmaps.com
Midjourney, Jasper.ai, DALL-E, Stable diffusion	AI-art generators that create artwork based on text prompts or input images.	Midjourney,Jasper.ai, DALL-E, Stable diffusion
PhotoRoom	Removes backgrounds, undesirable objects, and imperfections and fast retouch images	PhotoRoom
Accomplice.ai	AI-powered image editor and generator to create pictures and logos of different styles based on text input	accomplice.ai
Canva	Design platform with AI-powered features for creating visuals and removing backgrounds.	Canva
DreamPic.AI	Personalised images of individuals in different styles	DreamPic.AI
AI avatars with Stable diffusion	AI avatars using variations	AI portrait variations
synthesia.io, colossyan.com, D-ID	AI DeepFake avatars	Synthesia.io , colossyan.com, D-ID’s AI Presenters

CarynAI	AI-powered virtual girlfriend designed to help cure loneliness.	caryn.ai
DrumloopAI	AI platform for generating original drum loops in desired genres and tempos	drumloopai.com
Hereafter.ai	Virtual you, storing life memories	Hereafter.ai
Replika	AI companion	Replika
Notion AI]	AI-powered workspace	Notion AI

AI and ML development/deployment tools

AI app or platform	Description	Website
GitHub copilot	AI-powered code completion tool	GitHub copilot
Bricabrac.ai	No-code AI App Generator that builds web apps, websites, and games based on user text descriptions	bricabrac.ai
Clarifai	Production-level AI platform for developers, data scientists, and non-coders	Clarifai
Tabnine	Code completion tool integrating with various code editors	Tabnine
HuggingFace Transformers Agents	Enables AI models to respond to complex queries, create images, read website summaries, and generate Python code	huggingface
TensorFlow for JavaScript	Running and training TensorFlow models in the browser	TensorFlow.js
DeepAI	AI platform offering various tools and APIs for image recognition, text generation, face detection, and more	DeepAI
DeepFaceLab	High-quality face-swapping videos using deep learning techniques	DeepFaceLab
DataRobot MLOps	Central hub for easily managing and deploying live AI models.	DataRobot
Google AutoML	Creating custom ML models	Google AutoML
Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services	APIs and services for creating AI-powered apps	Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services
wit.ai	APIs and tools for building conversational agents, chatbots, and voice-controlled apps	wit.ai

AI for businesses and organisations

I have listed here mainly AI products for businesses and organisations. Products such as Tesla and Waymo cars are yet not for mainstream personal usage.

AI app or platform	Description	Website
Zebra Medical Vision	Healthcare	Zebra Medical Vision
Salesforce	AI-powered CRM platform that enhances sales and marketing processes with predictive analytics, personalised recommendations, and more	Salesforce AI
Sight Machine	Manufacture	Sight Machine
C3.ai	Enterprise AI solutions	C3.ai
IBM Watson Assistant	Enterprise-level automation workflows	IBM Watson Assistant
Google Dialogflow	conversational AI	Dialogflow
Kalendar.ai	AI sales agents for booking meetings and generating valid customer information through live chat sessions.	kalendar.ai
Tesla	Transportation, smart cars	Tesla
Waymo	Autonomous driving	Waymo

Ethical Considerations

As AI tools become increasingly prevalent, addressing the ethical considerations arising from their use is crucial. Here are key aspects to consider:

Bias and Fairness: AI algorithms are only as unbiased as the data they are trained on. It is essential to identify and mitigate biases in training data to prevent discriminatory outcomes.
Privacy and Data Security: AI tools often rely on large datasets, raising concerns about privacy and data security. Safeguarding personal information and ensuring compliance with data protection regulations is paramount. Please remember that many beta testing applications undergo human evaluation, and your chat dialogue data is often not encrypted.
Transparency and Explainability: Some AI algorithms’ “black box” nature poses challenges in understanding their decision-making processes. Ensuring transparency and explainability in AI systems is crucial to building trust and addressing accountability.
Human Oversight and Responsibility: While AI tools automate tasks, human oversight and responsibility remain critical. Balancing autonomous decision-making and human judgment is essential, especially in areas with significant consequences.
Economic Impact and Job Displacement: The widespread adoption of AI tools may lead to job displacement in specific sectors. Preparing for the economic impact and developing strategies to reskill and upskill workers are essential.
Social Impact and Inclusivity: AI should be developed and deployed to benefit all individuals and promote inclusivity. Efforts should be made to address biases, ensure accessibility, and bridge the digital divide.
Considering these ethical dimensions is crucial to harnessing the full potential of AI tools while safeguarding individual rights, promoting fairness, and fostering trust in their use.

Possibilities and Implications

The possibilities AI tools offer are vast and ever-expanding, revolutionising how we live, work, and interact with technology. From improving efficiency and productivity to pushing the boundaries of creativity and entertainment, AI tools have the potential to reshape various aspects of our lives.

In productivity, AI-powered tools can automate repetitive tasks, analyse data at unprecedented speeds, and provide valuable insights for decision-making. This opens up new business opportunities to optimise their operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation. With AI tools handling mundane tasks, human workers can focus on more strategic and creative endeavours, leading to greater job satisfaction and improved outcomes.

The implications of AI tools are not limited to productivity alone. In art and creativity, AI-art generators offer a fresh perspective and challenge traditional notions of what constitutes artistic expression. These tools can create captivating art pieces, mimicking various styles and genres, sparking debates about the role of AI in artistic creation and the nature of human creativity itself.

AI is also transforming entertainment experiences. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide personalised interactions and immersive experiences, blurring the line between reality and virtual worlds. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to recommend movies, music, and books tailored to individual preferences, enhancing our entertainment consumption.

However, as we embrace the possibilities offered by AI tools, it is crucial to consider the ethical, social, and economic implications accompanying their integration into our daily lives.

Privacy concerns arise as AI tools gather and process personal data, raising questions about data security and individual autonomy. The potential for job displacement also warrants careful consideration, as automation and AI advancements may reshape the employment landscape.

Moreover, the biases embedded in AI algorithms and datasets challenge fairness and inclusivity. AI tools may perpetuate societal inequalities or reinforce existing biases without careful design and monitoring.

It is essential to ensure transparency, accountability, and ethical practices in developing and deploying AI tools to mitigate these risks and create a future that benefits all.

(left) My original photo; (right) Canva's Magic Edit on my photo with a Strawberry Throne

Conclusion

We have a list of some AI productivity and fun applications available today. I will keep this post updated with new developments in the future. What AI tools do you like?

References

About Elena

Elena, a PhD in Computer Science, simplifies AI concepts and helps you use machine learning.

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Citation

Elena Daehnhardt. (2023) 'The Magic of AI Tools', daehnhardt.com, 30 May 2023. Available at: https://daehnhardt.com/blog/2023/05/30/ai-tools/

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