There’s part of me that actually hates AI as a result of it has taken work away from me and my colleagues. And though I discover it helpful for sure issues, I’d favor humanity wasn’t changed by AI.
That mentioned, AI is certainly helpful. Over the previous few years, ever since ChatGPT blew us away with its conversational abilities and agentic talents, I discover myself utilizing some type of AI software nearly day-after-day.
Sometimes it’s simply to speak—I fairly like gushing to an AI chatbot over a brand new present I’m watching with out risking spoilers—however most of the time, these AI-driven apps are slowly reworking the way in which I work and stay my life. I’m not about to allow them to take over fully simply but, however I’ll begrudgingly admit that I’m additionally unwilling to surrender AI altogether.
All that to say, AI was as soon as seen as a mere gimmick however has efficiently advanced into one thing better. Here are a few of my favourite AI-assisted apps that I really use on a day-to-day foundation.
Adobe Photoshop for Generative Fill
Jon Martindale / Foundry
When Adobe launched its AI-powered Generative Fill feature again in 2023, it was billed as a option to create masterpieces in file time by rapidly including and eradicating components from photos by way of textual content prompts. That’s all effectively and good, and I’m certain persons are utilizing it to nice impact, however I actually solely use it for one factor: picture cleanup.
Every time I write an article like this one, I’ve to seize just a few photos for illustrative functions. Usually that’s a screenshot or two, however it may typically contain product photographs, inventory photos, and different particular images associated to no matter I’m writing about. The drawback is, the pictures are by no means fairly precisely what I want.
That’s the place Generative Fill comes into play and saves the day. Normally I’d need to painstakingly lower out bits, clone areas, use the therapeutic brush over imperfections, increase the picture, copy and paste backgrounds, crop to a particular side ratio… But nowadays? I can simply describe what I want and have Generative Fill do it for me.
Want to take away one thing? Just draw a field round it and depart the Generative Fill immediate clean—it’ll wipe out no matter is there and mix the hole into the background. Same goes for increasing the size of a picture with out stretching, or hiding personally identifiable data behind one thing extra sophisticated than a easy blur filter.
Generative Fill isn’t good—and that’s good as a result of it means I maintain my Photoshop abilities sharp—however it’s a huge time saver and some of the efficient AI-driven instruments of the previous few years.
PDFgear for AI enhancing and solutions
Jon Martindale / Foundry
My seemingly lifelong seek for a capable-yet-free PDF editor ended final 12 months once I found PDFgear. But not solely is it a free PDF editor that may do every part the large gamers can do—together with annotations and signatures—it additionally has a built-in AI assistant that’s genuinely helpful.
PDFgear has an AI chatbot that may carry out varied enhancing duties with pace and precision, making it a great tool for tweaking sophisticated paperwork with out introducing formatting errors or compromising the unique aesthetics of the doc’s design. It can annotate, extract knowledge and pictures, and even simply speak to you about what’s in it.
I particularly prefer it for locating data in advanced board sport rulebooks. Sure, a very good index or glossary goes a great distance, however asking a pure language query of the Twilight Imperium Living Rules is far quicker than flipping backwards and forwards by means of the 30-ish pages of countless textual content. My eyes slip off that like water from the proverbial duck’s again—however with AI, it’s quick, straightforward, and correct.
My colleague reviewed PDFgear and found it excellent with sturdy AI options price utilizing, so I’m not alone on this one!
ProWritingAid for AI recommendations
ProWritingAid
If you thought in any other case, let me break it to you: skilled writers use spell examine. While my colleagues and I used to debate whether or not instruments like Grammarly and ProWritingAid had been “cheating,” that ship has lengthy since sailed. These days, it’s nearly anticipated—and why not? Sure, my editor may catch all my typos and grammar errors, however AI instruments can go approach past that. ProWritingAid makes me a greater author, interval.
To be clear, I don’t use ProWritingAid to generate textual content for me. Instead, I take advantage of it to investigate what I’ve written and level out all of the areas the place my writing could possibly be improved. Maybe I’ve inadvertently used passive voice, or perhaps I reuse the identical phrasings too typically, or perhaps sentences might be worded extra clearly. It’s helpful, and the persistent presence of those reminders makes me enhance over time.
ProWritingAid is sort of a voice on my shoulder reminding me that I can all the time do higher with tighter copy. I admire it.
Microsoft 365 Copilot and Designer
Jon Martindale / Foundry
Microsoft has been all-in on AI since ChatGPT made its main debut, however regardless of Copilot integrations in Bing Search and Windows 11, they’ve struggled to discover a actual function for it past the fundamentals provided by different AI chatbots. That mentioned, one space the place I’ve discovered authentic use for it? The varied integrations throughout Microsoft 365 apps.
I’m a LibreOffice person at coronary heart, however even I’ve been having fun with Copilot’s fast textual content era in Word and slide era in PowerPoint. Asking the place one thing is inside an enormous doc of tons of of pages is so handy, and once I wish to whip up a fast draft of a doc to offer me a baseline to work with, it saves a ton of time.
Copilot actually got here in useful lately once I was invited to offer a chat to a few courses at my youngsters’ faculty about how computer systems work. I haven’t used PowerPoint in a long time, so it was an actual deal with to have the ability to boot up the most recent model and have Copilot and Designer collectively generate for me a easy presentation template which I may then tweak and replace in line with my very own wants. Literal hours saved.
I like to consider myself as a PC professional, however I’m not an professional in each app. Fortunately, with Copilot and Designer, I don’t should be.
ChatGPT for every part else
Jon Martindale / Foundry
ChatGPT has advanced right into a catch-all AI software for me over the previous 12 months. Whether it’s having a spoiler-free dialog concerning the newest episode of Severance, utilizing it to learn to code my first sport venture, going backwards and forwards to follow roleplaying D&D characters, and even treating it like a digital counselor, it’s develop into a fantastic tool with practical results. I even requested it to assist me reword my responses in an argument with a member of the family to be much less combative—and it labored!
In my work life, I take advantage of ChatGPT to spit out briefs for articles I’m writing to assist me hone in on the construction I’m searching for. I take advantage of it as a fast and soiled different to a thesaurus, and to seek out data on the net that Google simply can’t appear to for some purpose.
Again, ChatGPT is way from good and I’m not about to depend on it—or any of the instruments on this listing—for mission-critical duties, medical diagnoses, monetary recommendation, and many others. But for these moments the place I may use the assistance of another person to sort out one thing easy, I’m discovering that ChatGPT and different AI apps maintain an more and more helpful place in my coronary heart.
Further studying: I paid $200/mo for ChatGPT Pro. Was it worth it?