“I think we should teach AI to be creative, just as humans do for their children”
Sophia the Robot discusses the future with SOPHIE
A little more than a century ago, in 1914 Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo presented to the world the first chess-playing machine (the word “robot” would be introduced only in 7 years), that was able to play some king and rook against king situations without a human hand.
And if you remember chilling and clumsy interviews with Sophia the Robot blooming in the middle of the 2010s, then you’d probably find it funny how she was being criticized for being basically a chatbot with a face. Especially with all the agiotage ChatGPT is causing by its existence. Even curiouser is the fact, that Sophia uses OpenCog for general reasoning. Yes, the one that was at least an OpenAI colleague if not to say rival, but much less financed. And currently showing no signs of life.
Back to the reason we are here, artificial intelligence tools are already far from being a cyberpunk fictional creation, just a case of automatization of human labor or even a celebrity robot, that once again isn’t seated at arm’s length for your service. No, now we have a collection of tools at our disposal renewing even more frequently than seasons! That’s why we decided to share here with you a list of cool AI tools.
Rise and Divine: the Making of AI Tool
People are used to thinking of any AI forerunners being relatively new, some give it at max somewhere 700 years, but if we delve into the history (and some recurrent human thoughts)… My, oh my. There are thousands of pieces of evidence about ancient automatons and the idea itself of a creation behaving and/or looking like a human can be traced back to the Upper Paleolithic era (approximately 50,000 to 10,000 years ago) when the first known human cultures began creating art and personal ornaments. And the reason behind the take on artificial intelligence being almost a newborn concept compared to humanity’s lifetime can be hidden in the three disciplines laying at the fundament of modern AI machinery. These are computer science, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Each of them was shaped in 19-20 centuries and only reflects these years of the idea’s evolution.
The first wave is associated with the ’50s. The 1956’s Dartmouth Conference brought us the term “Artificial intelligence” and probably played a role in AI becoming an independent field of research. First working AI programs, languages like Lisp (which is still a thing), and great potential.
Then, the roots of machine learning, as we know it today, started solidifying and growing stronger with the creation of the backpropagation algorithm. This made deep learning possible aiming to minimize mistakes with every new output by adjusting the weights of the network. And that’s on the second wave.
Finally moving to the third one, humble guessing leads us to believe that it happened due to Graphics Processing Units (GPU) advent. Creating AI boost thanks to the high-speed computing power necessary for training these models, which are capable of handling large volumes of data. That same year at the ImageNet competition AlexNet outclassed all other entries and received a 10.8 % lower error rate than the runner-up. Guessed it? By utilizing GPU and very likely popularizing it later.
The question is, are we living in the third wave or is it already the fourth? Because ChatGPT entering the scene brought us to a new era — prompt engineering. Making generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) the perfect base almost all AI tools today have, and skills to use the necessary for the future in many fields if we are to believe modern predictions.
Hot Cyber Summer: AI Extensions for You
AI100 report of 2021, while talking about the major opportunities of technology usage, repeatedly accentuates the importance to create a kind of “human-AI team that outperforms either alone”. Build-in efficiency with drawing insights, decision-making, and assistance. The same year’s AI Index Report showed a rise in natural language processing (NLP) at a sound’s speed, making measuring their performance tricky. Models are finally surpassing humans, that’s the spirit.
What are new AI tools capable of? According to the AI Index Report of 2023, today’s technologies are making enormous progress in science, pushing forward companies that already adopted AI “report realizing meaningful cost decreases and revenue increases” and professional skills lists are filling up with AI-related ones.
But what is available for browsers in disguise of extensions, and is it really worth it? Long story short, yes.
Ready-for-use AI extension can greatly help decrease the amount of bullshit job some tasks require or simplify some of the routinely exhausting ones.
Fireflies
A sip of refreshing air for managing online meetings. Fireflies is ready to record audio and video calls, generating transcripts in literally minutes, still being a part of a free artificial intelligence tools team. Gives you an opportunity to take notes on colleagues’ messages, and add comments, pins, and reactions to specific parts of conversations. For example, even automatically create tasks in Asana just with the help of voice commands during usual standup. And analyze it to measure performance and improve internal processes. It integrates with essential platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, Teams Webex, Ringcentral, Aircall and enables sharing to Slack, Notion, Asana and etc, and that’s a great move towards cross-platform integration with a hint of corporate. Definitely has a spotlight among the best AI tools for productivity.
Criminal IP
AI-based phishing link checker to go. The one to guard your privacy from our list of operating online AI tools. Real-time scanning gives you not only the gift of knowing if the link before your eyes is malicious, but can even help you with already clicked one you followed, preventing phishing attacks, scams, malware, and ransomware infections in advance. Moreover for advanced users (in advanced mode) it provides detailed data from experts, wrapped in a user-delightful UI. Can be particularly of use both for people knowing nothing about cyber security, and are willing to protect themselves on the basic level, and professionals interested in analytics or random support.
WebChatGPT
The notorious ChatGPT knowledge cutoff of 2021 can be surpassed by numerous means and this is one of them. In a nutshell, WebChatGPT, a free artificial intelligence extension, is using the DuckDuckGo search engine to feed ChatGPT the actual information from the internet so it can work it out to give an explicitly clearer answer of your current interest. Through the prompt and the “outside” access of the extension, OpenAI creation seems livelier.
Allegedly the extension is entirely serverless which can be a sign of security, meaning no backend, no data collection and analytics.
Jasper
One of the leaders among the best AI tools as writing assistants, Jasper, has some quality features in its pocket. It can absorb the golden rule of your brand DNA by learning your style and tone no matter what you need to create: an email, a blog, a catalog, a love letter (as Jasper’s site suggests), or a poem.
Initially, you feed Jasper a set of seed words. The system processes inputs, generating phrases, paragraphs, or even entire documents that reflect the specified topic and tone. Impressively, it can construct a 1500-word piece nearly in a flash.
Synthesia
Video generators had jumped over their head in 2022, showing results that some generated motion images of 2020 would only dream of, so it comes as no surprise today there is even an extension that can strike you with its power. Synthesia is already adopted by Reuters, BBC, and even Google and Nike.
Could be one of the coolest AI tools. The idea is to create engaging videos with a range of AI avatars at your disposal, over 140 of them to be precise with the opportunity to make an exclusive one for your brand. The number of languages to use is really impressive, 120+ with diverse narration styles and dialects. And all of that in a tiny app for your browser!
Grammarly
Pioneering AI tools online, it seems that Grammarly was always there, it really has stuck for a while. Since 2009 it serves English for anybody who needs to correct their own texts by themselves. It’s easy to use. Plus, the service learned its lesson and became much more security-oriented after the incident in 2018.
Grammarly gives real-time writing suggestions, covering grammar, tone, and sometimes sense. It works at every text window you are at, covering emails, chats, diplomas, CVs, and any other text document you need to be perfectly written.
Crystal
Power of Big Data for people and their needs in the professional field? Maybe. Crystal analyzes the personality traits of your potential interlocutor to create a more stable understanding of their communication style to give you a bit of an advantage.
It integrates with multiple platforms including LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, and HubSpot CRM. When activated on these platforms, Crystal presents a sidebar that gives you an understanding of the person’s behavioral preferences, which can help tailor communication to be more effective and harmonious. For instance, on LinkedIn, Crystal will analyze a person’s profile and provide a personality summary.
Though it sounds great and all, it’s a little questionable in matters of ethics, so if you decide to use it — do it wisely.
SciSpace Copilot
The SciSpace Copilot is meticulously designed to assist and simplify the understanding of scientific literature in real time. Compatible with an impressive list of over 75 languages, it’s a boon for researchers and students navigating the sea of complex academic content online.
This resourceful free AI tool is not limited to academic journals from prominent publishers such as Nature, Springer, or Elsevier, it also embraces research repositories like Google Scholar. Copilot steps up your reading experience by decoding technical language, providing succinct jargon explanations, and demystifying complex paragraphs, mathematical expressions, and tables. The extension works by providing a sidebar in your browser where you can highlight text to get explanations, ask follow-up questions for further clarification, and even save notes for future reference.
Merlin
This one leverages the capabilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to enhance experience across various websites like Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more, too adding up to the free AI tools club. With this tool, you can effortlessly edit emails, compose Twitter replies, and even create complex Excel formulas. Merlin’s application extends to multiple platforms, enabling you to access ChatGPT’s functionalities seamlessly as they browse the web. It can help in mastering complex formulas, crafting professional emails, generating content ideas, solving coding problems, and obtaining quick answers. Plus you can save your most used prompts for automating the process.
Scribe
A versatile extension, AI-powered, and designed to streamline the process of creating how-to guides, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and training manuals for web and desktop applications. It automatically captures screenshots, generates easy-to-follow instructions, and removes sensitive data to maintain privacy. The guides it produces can be easily shared via links or emails, exported as PDFs, and customized with company branding. With features like editable text, automatic updates, and text completion services, Scribe enhances productivity, making it an invaluable tool for professionals across various fields.
Wiseone
Aking to transform your online reading experience? Wiseone tool deciphers intricate information, aids in mastering diverse topics, and offers straightforward access to factual data. Features like simplification of information, summarizing content for quicker reading, fact-checking, complex concept discovery, and article suggestions from varied sources enhance your understanding. The “Ask Anything” feature generates concise responses, and the search function offers definitions with additional information. Powered by deep neural networks and other sophisticated algorithms, Wiseone provides a top-notch reading experience by summarizing articles, defining terms, and extracting key facts and topics from a multitude of sources.
With easy installation, minimal system resource usage, and GDPR-compliant data privacy (sic!), as user-friendly as it is effective.
Murf
Finalizing our artificial intelligence tools list, Murf revolutionizes voiceover creation with its AI-powered Google Slides add-on. This ingenious tool lets you simultaneously write, edit voiceovers, and design slides, eliminating the need for a separate recorder or extensive editing. Featuring an AI voice catalog, it adjusts slide timing to the voiceover length and allows for distinct voices per slide. It supports over 20 languages with various accents, offering advanced voice cloning, video editing capabilities, and a voice changer. Its broad selection of lifelike voices caters to diverse needs such as branding, targeted advertising, and entertainment. With a myriad of import and export file formats, it’s a one-stop solution for generating top-notch, personalized voiceovers, making it a go-to for enterprises, SMBs, and content creators.
How soon is it now?
Now, when you are loaded with all the necessary information and maybe found the long-awaited assistance in an AI tool from the list, you can be sure summer won’t bother you with excessive steps. And while you may be wondering if all these extensions are compatible with our Sidekick — they definitely are, and with other private browsers built on Chromium, as they have access to the store.
Still making it easy staying by your side, your Sidekick team.
FAQ
AI-based tools help simplify tasks, automate processes, improve productivity, and enhance the overall browsing experience. They can assist with tasks like content creation, online meetings, text editing, voiceover creation, and more.
Yes, these tools are developed as extensions, and since Sidekick is built on Chromium, they are compatible and can be easily integrated into your browsing experience on Sidekick.
These extensions offer various functionalities, such as grammar checking, writing assistance, voiceover creation, and even reading scientific literature. They are designed to simplify complex tasks and automate manual processes, significantly improving your browsing efficiency.
Most tools from our AI tools list prioritize user privacy and comply with established data protection regulations like GDPR. But it’s better to double-check emerging free AI tools online before using them. Sidekick also has robust privacy features that complement these tools to ensure your data remains secure.
Installing these extensions on Sidekick is straightforward. Simply head over to the Chrome Web Store, find the extension, and click “Add to Sidekick.” Once artificial intelligence tools are installed, you can readily use them to enhance your browsing experience.