Five cool free ways to start using AI right now

Rob Waugh
·Contributor
Updated ·3 min read
Hologram of the artificial intelligence robot showing up from binary code.
Hologram of the artificial intelligence robot showing up from binary code.

Since ChatGPT launched and became the fastest-growing app of all time a year ago, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a global obsession.

With fears and hopes around the technology dominating tech headlines over the past year, generative AI has become a topic of dinner-table conversation around the world.

But what can you actually do with it beyond making Chat-GPT write reports and school essays?

Below, we’ve rounded up some of the cool services you can use right now, free, which are all powered by generative AI.

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Create a logo for yourself

Creating a logo for yourself or your business is now near-instant thanks to the free-to-try AI app Looka.

Looka walks you through the process of logo creation, asking what industry you work in and prompting to create a slogan as well as a company name.

You can create logos for any company or organisation in seconds (Looka)
You can create logos for any company or organisation in seconds.

Looka is available via Looka.com (you have to sign up either with email or via Google’s sign-in service).

Bring photos to life

The Deep Nostalgia service is a clever, and sometimes alarming, use of generative AI to bring old photos back to life.

Available at MyHeritage.com, the service allows you to upload an old photo and it animates it with smiles, blinks and head movements using AI.

Transcribe your voice instantly (free)

Voice transcription has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, thanks to artificial intelligence, and whether you’re taking notes or recording a brainstorming session, there are free apps to do it.

Professional-grade alternatives such as Otter (there’s a free trial, but it's only seven days) offer fancy features such as name-tagging different speakers, but apps such as Google Keep and note-taking app Evernote also offer free AI-powered transcription.

Google's excellent free Recorder app offers live transcription on screen, and the ability to access audio files from your PC, but is at present only available on Pixel phones.

Summarise long documents instantly (free)

If you're dealing with a long report at work, or a homework assignment, AI can help you by offering an instant, bullet-pointed summary of PDF or .doc files.

Claude, a rival to ChatGPT, can offer instant summaries of most common document formats, which are a useful way to speed up research.

You can upload files directly in the chat window: navigate to Claude.ai, you'll need to log in, either with your email or via Google or other services (it's totally free).

Then click the 'attach' button and ask Claude 'Can you summarise this', or 'Give me a bullet-point summary of this document'.

Improve your writing

Sure, apps such as Microsoft word offer red lines to point out grammar errors, but AI-powered Grammarly takes it to the next level.

Grammarly offers not just instant corrections of errors (explaining what is wrong in every case) but also suggestions of how to write more clearly.

Weak adjectives are highlighted, and if you over-use a particular word, Grammarly will point it out too.

It also highlights when sentences are over-complicated and could be broken up.

The free version is available for Android, iOS, PC and as a browser extension.