What AI tools exist today and what each one is good for

“Artificial intelligence” sounds like one thing, but it is a label for a whole range of different tools – and each one is good at something else. One will transcribe a recorded meeting for you, another will create an image, a third will help you write an email. So there is not much point in asking “which AI is the best” – it is more useful to know what each one is good for. In this overview we go through the main categories and what an ordinary person can use them for.

Why you cannot say which one is the best

The short and honest answer: because “the best” always depends on what you want it for. A tool that is great at coming up with text may not be good at transcribing a recording, and vice versa. And even if one leads the field today, things may be different in a few months – this area changes fast. That is why this overview does not pick a winner; it sorts tools by the kind of job you would reach for them for. The categories stay, even when specific products get renamed or replaced.

Treat this overview as a map, not a review. It will not tell you which app to download as “the right one”, but it will help you recognise which category your need falls into – and therefore what to reach for in the first place. The rest is a matter of trying things out; most tools can be tested for free with no commitment.

Chatbots: writing and answering questions

The most widespread and best-known category. A chatbot is a tool you write to as if you were sending messages – you ask in your own words and it replies with coherent text. The best known is ChatGPT, but it is far from the only one; others such as Gemini or Claude belong here too. We have written about ChatGPT separately in the article what ChatGPT is.

What chatbots are good at: wording and rewriting text, summarising something long, explaining a term simply. Where they are weaker and need keeping an eye on: precise calculations, completely up-to-date facts and citing a reliable source. They can answer confidently even when they are wrong – we will come back to that.

You can check at any time which chatbots people compare today and how they rank on the public leaderboard arena.ai. It is worth knowing, though, what it actually measures: people compare two answers blind and vote for the one they like better. So it is a measure of which model is more pleasant to chat with – not of factual accuracy, price or privacy. And it says nothing at all about categories such as speech transcription, translation or images. The site is fairly technical; you will find a table of models ranked by votes there. The order changes all the time, which is why we deliberately do not copy it here.

How do you get a better answer from a chatbot? It helps to give it context – who you are, who the text is for and what you want to do with it. If the answer does not fit, feel free to have it rewritten: “make it shorter”, “say it more simply”, “add an example”. Treat it as a conversation, not as a search box where you type a single word.

AI search

A classic search engine answers your query with a list of links, and you have to pick and click through them yourself. AI search goes a step further: it puts those pages together into a coherent answer straight away, often with links to the sources it drew on.

It is convenient, but there is a catch: the answer sounds like the finished truth, even though a mistake can creep into it. That is why, with AI search, it makes sense to click on the sources listed and check them for anything important – especially numbers, dates and names. Treat it as a handy first step, not the final word.

It is most useful where you would otherwise have to go through several pages and piece the answer together yourself – for example to get your bearings in an unfamiliar topic or to compare options. For things where accuracy or money is at stake, though, always open the source and read it directly.

Images and video

Another category can create an image from a description in words – you write what you want to see and the tool draws it. Besides creating from scratch, this also includes editing existing photos: removing the background, filling in a missing part, increasing the resolution. Video is similar, just more demanding.

An ordinary person might use it for an illustration on an invitation, to touch up a photo for an advert or for a picture in a presentation. One rule applies, though: be careful with photos of real people and events – an edited or made-up image can easily mislead someone.

Video is a younger and, so far, rougher discipline than images – short clips can already be created from a description, but you can usually tell. Even so, it is handy for simple animations or for enhancing and editing existing footage. Expect a helper, not a film studio.

Speech transcription, subtitles and translation

In our view, this is the most underrated category, and yet one of the most useful for everyday life. AI can turn recorded speech into text – whether as a transcript of an entire meeting or interview, subtitles for a video, or straight away as a translation into another language.

Imagine an hour-long recording of a meeting that turns into readable minutes in no time, or a video for which you have subtitles generated. For a small business, and for someone who is hard of hearing, this is a huge help. Neither the transcript nor the translation is usually perfect down to the last word, so it is a good idea to read the result through – but it still saves a lot of time.

Quality depends on the recording: with clean sound and a single speaker, the tool does an almost perfect job, while background noise, a strong accent or several people talking over each other make it struggle. Sometimes you need to correct a name or a technical term by hand – but it is still faster than typing everything from scratch.

Help with work

At work, AI acts as a helper at your fingertips. It will sort data into a spreadsheet and advise on a formula, prepare a draft email that you then just adjust, summarise a long document in a few bullet points or help with programming – write a piece of code and help find a bug.

What they all have in common: AI gives you a quick first draft, but responsibility for the result stays with you. Recalculate the key figures in a spreadsheet, read the email through, test the code. It gets you off to a faster start, but it does not replace checking.

It is especially useful when writing in a foreign language: it will help you word an email in another language, correct mistakes and suggest a more polite phrase. Here too, though, with an important message it is good to understand the result – not to send it blind.

AI you already have without knowing it

Artificial intelligence is not just a chat on a website. You use a lot of it routinely without calling it that: the voice assistant and predictive text on your phone, smart focusing and enhancement in the camera, the filter that sorts spam in your email, or controlling a smart home.

Many of these features belong to the world of connected devices that communicate with each other over a network – if you are interested in how it all fits together, we have described separately how the internet works and what the internet of things is. The point is that AI has long since stopped being just a novelty on the screen; it works quietly in the background of the things you have at home and in your pocket.

This also includes the recommendations you come across at every turn – “tailor-made” suggestions for films, music or products, traffic jam estimates in maps or the order of posts on social networks. Artificial intelligence is behind these too; you just do not see it.

What is free and what is not

For most tools the general principle is the same: there is a free version with limits – a limited number of queries, slower responses or fewer features – and alongside it a paid subscription that lifts the limits. For trying things out and ordinary occasional use, the free version is usually more than enough.

We deliberately do not give specific prices here – they change faster than anything else, and any figure would do more harm than good within a few months. You will always find the current terms directly on the website of the tool in question; that is where you can be sure, whereas here they would quickly go out of date.

What to watch out for

Keep two things in mind at all times. First: AI can get things wrong and sound just as confident as when it is right. It does not do this on purpose – it simply fills in whatever “fits”, even if it is not true. That is why you should verify important claims, numbers and names from another source.

Second: whatever you write to AI leaves your computer for that service's servers. Do not enter sensitive information into it – personal ID numbers, passwords, internal company documents. We look at how personal data is protected in general in the article on GDPR and personal data protection, and at why you should keep an eye on who you hand what over to in the one on cookies and third parties.

And third: AI is not a person, even though it writes like one. It has no opinions or experience – it puts its answers together from what it saw during training, including the errors and biases that were in that material. On sensitive topics – health, law, finance – treat what it says as a first orientation and base important decisions on an expert or a verified source.

This area is evolving fast. The date above shows when we last went through the overview – the categories of use stay, but specific tools and their terms may change.

Frequently asked questions