Best generative AI tools for writers to start with
Generative AI is changing the way we communicate, write and create content in general. If we don’t learn to work with it, I believe we won’t be able to match the speed and quality of the work of those who do.
If you do a google search for ‘best AI tools for writers’, there are 653 million search results. It’s overwhelming and confusing, and frustrating.
Pick a tool that you like the sound of and you find it’s only a 7–14 day trial after which you need to pay $40–250 dollars per month to continue using it. Needless to say you don’t want to spend that to learn if you like a tool, and 14 days isn’t enough to understand the best way to use the tool.
I’ve been playing with generative AI tools for a while now, and here are the ones I find most useful and a great place to begin your experimentation with generative AI.
Chat GPT is free and easy to use. If you haven’t started using any generative AI tools, spend a day or so playing around with Chat GPT, it’s an enjoyable way to get an idea of the potential that it can offer. However, I don’t find it the best tool to use to do any writing or content creation work.
Summary:
Why use: Play!
Who should use: Anyone just starting out, to get an idea of generative AI’s potential.
Cost: Free
I absolutely LOVE Notion. For many reasons. It is a fantastic tool for project management, note-taking, filing articles, organizing your work; and has a really good AI tool inbuilt so you don’t have to go out of the platform to use AI for any of your work.
For example, I am writing this now in Notion, I just need to press the space bar and the AI tool will ask me what I need help with and do it for me. Whether it’s organizing my work, or checking my grammar or improving my writing, or writing a first draft!
Notion is free to use; and its AI tool gives you 20 prompts to play with for free too. After that, you can use the tool for as little has $10 per month.
Summary:
Why use: Project and task management, note taking, AI assistant and AI writing tool all in one.
Who should use: As a writer or journalist starting out with generative AI this is the only tool you need.
Cost: Free with 20 AI prompts. $10 per month for AI tool.
- Jasper: Jasper is the first tool I started with, and paid a whopping $500 for a year’s subscription, plus $20 per month for Jasper Art. If you work in marketing, PR or any type of brand related content creation, Jasper is a better tool to use purely because it is built to be a marketers assistant. Jasper Art, honestly not so great. Most the images it creates for me seem distorted but that could be my poor prompts.
Summary:
Why use: All things marketing related are covered. 50+ templates, brand voice integration, unlimited prompts, browser extension. If you work in communications or marketing, this tool will help you speed up your work x 3 times in my opinion.
Who should use: Marketing and communications professionals, for personal use.
Cost: $40 per month for Jasper AI (without Jasper Art). If you have small team, for $99 per month, 3 people can access it.
- Content At Scale: As a communications and PR professional looking to better my output, I recently came across Content At Scale, a tool I found via Julia McCoy, who is a content hacker and now the President of Content At Scale!
I’ve spent a lot of time researching the tool and find it mind blowing what it can do, especially for a PR, communications or marketing agency. And that’s the reason it was built, to scale content marketing services. If you work at an agency or in the communications department at a company, this is the tool to deploy for your team.
Summary:
Why use: An excellent tool for a PR, marketing or communications agency (or department), or even a startup, to deploy if they are looking to scale their content marketing output. It can create high-quality AI SEO content at scale and is built to meet Google’s EEAT requirements. It has extraordinary capability to generate research-backed long-form posts in minutes from a keyword.
Who should use: Deploy in your company for use by a team, to scale the team’s work. Companies, agencies and startups.
Cost: Plans start at $250 per month; cheaper than hiring a full-time resource!
This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through these links, I will receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, of course. I only recommend products I’ve tried, researched, or use and love myself.
