I keep getting asked about which AI tools are actually useful, especially from friends and family trying to make sense of all the hype. So here's my running list of what's worth checking out right now.
Chat Assistants
ChatGPT
My go-to for first drafts and problem-solving. Free tier works fine, but I spend enough time in it that paying for GPT-4 made sense.
Claude
Better at handling longer texts than ChatGPT. Really good at making AI-generated text sound human. The free version is solid.
Jan
Runs on your own computer instead of the cloud. Needs decent hardware, but worth it if you care about privacy or need to work offline.
Grok
New kid on the block. Has real-time knowledge which is neat, though still finding its groove.
Generative Platforms
Midjourney
Yeah, you have to use Discord. Yeah, it's weird at first. But it makes the most beautiful images of any AI I've tried. Seriously addictive once you get the hang of it.
DALL·E
Easier to use than Midjourney. Better for realistic stuff. Sometimes that's all you need.
Flux
New but promising. Actually follows your prompts without needing to play the "guess what the AI wants" game.
Runway
They're doing cool things with video. Type what you want, get a video clip back. Still rough around the edges but wild when it works.
API & Development
Together AI
Fast inference, good fine-tuning options. Solid if you're building AI into your apps.
fal.ai
Great for real-time media processing. Their API is actually pleasant to work with.
Replicate
Makes it dead simple to use open source AI models. Good pricing model too.
Mystic.ai
Enterprise-focused deployment. Multi-cloud support if that's your thing.
Hugging Face
Where you go to find AI models. Massive community. Their Transformers library is everywhere for a reason.
Additional Tools
Langflow
Visual builder for AI workflows. Nice if you want to chain stuff together without coding.
Gumloop
Hosted automation for AI workflows. Set it up once and let it run.
NotebookLM
Google's take on AI documents. Good at connecting dots across lots of text.
Lex
Writing editor with AI-powered polish. Great checks for brevity, confidence, passive voice, and grammar. Makes final cleanup a breeze.
Making Tools Work Together
Here's a workflow I use regularly: I have a custom ChatGPT setup that formats recipes - whether from blog links, text dumps, or just ingredients and a target outcome. ChatGPT does the heavy lifting of structuring everything, but the writing comes out robotic. So I feed that through Claude, telling it specifically to remove the AI voice. Then it's over to Lex for final polish - its checks for brevity, confidence, passive voice, and grammar clean everything up nicely.
What I've Learned
- Start simple. Get comfortable with one tool before adding others.
- Don't pay until you know you'll use it enough.
- Everything needs cleanup - these aren't magic.
- Save prompts that work well.
- For dev stuff, use hosted before self-hosting.
I keep finding new uses for these tools as they evolve. I'll update this when I find something worth adding.