The 21 best generative AI tools in 2025

Have you ever wished you could instantly brainstorm creative ideas, generate realistic images, or write compelling marketing copy without the talent—uh, time loss or inspiration?

While I'd be hard-pressed to recommend relying on generative AI tools for everything, these innovative AI-powered solutions are revolutionizing the way we approach content creation, design, and problem-solving.

I thought it'd be a great idea to put together a list of which generative AI tools are the most horrible. But since no one accepted that pitch, here's a list of the best generative AI platforms.

I've selected the 21 tools below based on a combination of my own experiences and the thousands of hours of testing the Zapier team has done.

The 21 best generative AI tools

• Jasper for AI-powered marketing content

• Anyword for writing support

• Shortwave for email writing and management

• Notion AI for creating a second brain 

• Mem for organized notes

• Runway for freeform and creative videos

• Wondershare Filmora for polishing video 

• Midjourney for the best AI image results

• DALL·E 3 for easy-to-use AI image generation

• Adobe Photoshop for AI-generated image enhancement

• ElevenLabs for a comprehensive AI voice library

• Suno for easy-to-use AI music generation

• Beautiful.ai for automated presentation design elements

• Pitch for sales teams

• Wix for intuitive website-building 

• Framer for AI-centric website-building

• Microsoft Power Apps for in-depth app development 

• Pico for fully automated app-building

• ChatGPT for versatility

• Claude for great writing skills

• Zapier Chatbots for custom-made chatbots

What are generative AI tools?

The term "generative AI" can be a little vague in that it covers a wide range of tools and technologies. Here, I'm focusing on generative AI tools specifically designed to create entirely new assets or significantly enhance existing ones. The tools we'll explore below all excel at generating original content, such as text, images, audio, or a combination of all of those things.

Here's a breakdown of the key categories I'll be covering.

• AI writing and editing tools: These tools allow you to generate original written content, like blog posts, marketing copy, or even creative fiction. They can also assist with editing existing text, suggesting improvements for grammar, clarity, and overall flow. I've included AI email assistants in this category since they include a lot of generative AI.

• AI video generation tools: These tools create video content from scratch based on textual descriptions or prompts. Some tools specialize in generating photorealistic visuals, while others focus on creating more stylized or animated videos. Many of them can also be used to edit videos.

• AI image generation and editing tools: These tools help you generate entirely new images or manipulate existing ones. Some specialize in photorealistic creations, while others excel at creating artistic imagery. AI image editing tools offer functionalities like removing unwanted objects, enhancing resolution, or even generating entirely new image elements.

• AI voice and music generation tools: Some of these tools enable users to generate realistic-sounding human voices from text, offering a variety of voices with different accents and tones. Others let you generate music using natural language prompts.

• AI presentation apps: These tools leverage AI to streamline the presentation creation process. They can generate visually compelling slides based on your content, suggest improvements to structure and flow, and even provide data-driven insights to enhance audience engagement.

• AI website builders: These website creation platforms utilize AI to simplify the website-building process. They offer functionalities like automatic design generation, image resizing, and content suggestions, allowing users with no coding experience to build professional-looking websites.

• AI app builders: These tools create mobile or web applications without extensive (or, in some cases, any) coding knowledge. They leverage AI to automate various aspects of the development process, such as generating basic app layouts or implementing functionalities based on natural language instructions.

Given the ridiculous volume of generative AI apps available, there's no way my list of the top 21 is going to be the same as your list of the top 21. The goal here is to introduce you to some excellent apps—all of which have been put through the wringer by the Zapier team—and inspire you to explore the category even more.

What makes the best generative AI tool?

Not all generative AI tools are equally as powerful—the "Terminator" plots progressively reinforce that fact. Some generative AIs excel at specific tasks, while others offer a broader range of capabilities. I've leveraged insights from Zapier's team of app testers to bring you this analysis and explore the key features that define a truly great generative AI tool:

• Versatility: The most valuable tools offer a wide range of functionalities, allowing you to tackle diverse creative challenges, from crafting marketing copy to generating innovative product concepts.

• Output quality: Ultimately, the success of a generative AI tool hinges on the quality of its results. Look for tools that produce highly realistic images, informative text formats, or creative content that aligns with your specific needs.

• User-friendliness: A great generative AI tool should be intuitive and easy to use, even for those without extensive technical expertise.

• Control and customization: While AI automates tasks, you still need control. The best tools empower you to refine prompts, tailor outputs, and guide the creative process effectively.

• Underlying technology: Many generative AI tools are powered by large language models (LLMs) and large multimodal models (LMMs)—complex algorithms trained on massive datasets. Understanding the models behind a tool can provide insights into its capabilities and potential limitations.

The best generative AI tools at a glance

The best generative AI tools for writing and editing

Jasper for maintaining brand voice

Jasper pros:

• One of the most feature-rich AI writing generators

• Integrates with Grammarly, Surfer, and its own AI art generator

Jasper cons:

• Expensive given that all the apps use similar language models 

Jasper (formerly Jarvis) is a versatile AI writing assistant known for its user-friendly interface and extensive capabilities. From crafting blog posts and social media captions to generating creative sales copy and product descriptions, there's a lot that you can do with this tool. 

Its focus is on marketing campaigns, offering tools to craft high-converting copy, social media content, and blog outlines. But at $39/month (billed annually), it's not exactly the cheapest AI solution on the market, so it may be too pricey for marketing teams with a tight budget.

I found Jasper's Brand Voice tool particularly useful. If you upload samples of content, Jasper will analyze your style, capturing elements like humor, tone, and use of listicles. Granted, a lot of people already do that with ChatGPT, but Jasper's dedicated tool feels a bit more refined.

You can also use Zapier's Jasper integration to connect it to thousands of other apps to kick off Jasper's AI generation from wherever you spend your time. Learn more about how to automate Jasper, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Jasper pricing: Starts at $39/user/month (billed annually) for the Creator plan, which includes 1 seat, 1 brand voice, and SEO mode. 

Anyword for marketing efforts

Anyword pros:

• Integrates with various ad platforms 

• Engagement scores and other metrics are surprisingly accurate

Anyword cons:

• Pretty expensive for a relatively limited set of features

Anyword positions itself as a generative AI tool built to deliver marketing results. True to its word, it can help you generate marketing copy, product descriptions, website content, and even social media posts that convert. Plus, it integrates directly with Google Ads, Meta ads, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and all your social media accounts—including LinkedIn. Depending on the channel, it can use historical data or posts to help generate new content. 

A key differentiator for Anyword is its focus on data-driven optimization. The platform integrates with A/B testing tools, so you can compare different variations of your content and find out which ones resonate most effectively with your target audience. 

While Anyword isn't as broadly useful as other AI writing generators, if you're more focused on advertising and social content than anything else, it's well worth a look.

Anyword pricing: From $39/month (billed annually) for the Starter plan, which includes 1 seat, 1 brand voice, and 100+ marketing templates and prompts.

Shortwave for email assistance

Shortwave pros:

• Deep integration with Google Calendar

• AI assistant is very flexible

Shortwave cons:

• Interface feels cluttered at times

On the AI email assistance front, Shortwave takes the crown for the most comprehensive suite of AI features. These functionalities reside conveniently in the top-right corner of your screen, symbolized by a magic star icon. Clicking the icon reveals the Shortwave AI assistant, a docked chat window on the right side.

One of Shortwave's unique features is the AI-powered email search. I don't know what your inbox looks like, but mine routinely causes me anxiety. Imagine effortlessly surfacing old emails and conversations by asking your inbox questions, eliminating the need to sift through mountains of messages.  

Shortwave can extract key data from email threads, generate content based on your email exchanges (like crafting a tweet summarizing your productivity tips), and even answer your questions in a ChatGPT-style format. 

Shortwave pricing: Free plan includes basic AI assistant and 90-day search history; Personal plan for $7/user/month (billed annually) includes AI-powered search. 

The best generative AI tools for knowledge management 

Notion AI for creating a second brain

Notion pros:

• Flexible organization features

• Great collaboration tools

Notion cons:

• May take too much work to maintain

Notion is a strong workspace for jotting down notes and organizing your knowledge. You can do all of this manually, of course. Or you can use Notion AI to generate and edit text for you, adjusting the text's tone and structure to match your needs. And when your workspace is filled to the brim with useful information, you can turn to Notion AI Q&A to ask questions about anything and get generated answers grounded in your data.

As your Notion brain gets bigger, it's a good idea to use Zapier's Notion integration so you can start automating some of its actions—for example, turning data from other apps into new Notion pages. Learn more about how to automate Notion, or try one of these workflows.

Notion pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $10/user/month (billed annually). Add Notion AI to any plan for $8/month. 

Mem for organized notes 

Mem pros:

• Wide range of AI features

• Great chatbot for asking questions about your notes

Mem cons:

• No free plan

No one wants to spend time meticulously organizing their notes. Mem sorts that all out for you. 

Mem uses AI to tag and connect the notes you take, so you don't have to spend time organizing them. You can just gather bits and pieces of information, store them, and trust that Mem's AI features will keep everything connected and organized. When the time comes to search for those notes, you can browse the automatic tags and use the search bar to find all you wrote about each topic that matters to you.

Keep feeding your intelligent second brain by connecting Mem to Zapier, improving data transmission and opening up more automation opportunities. Here are a few examples to get you started. 

Mem pricing: $8.33/month (billed annually) for unlimited notes and 100 GB of storage; need to contact Sales for team pricing. 

The best generative AI tools for video generation 

Runway for freeform and creative videos 

Runway pros:

• Advanced AI tools for unique results

• Great help content

Runway cons:

• Steep learning curve

Runway takes a unique approach to AI video generation. Many generative AI tools that handle the video format tend to do so with pre-defined templates. But Runway lets you capture and generate unique videos from prompts. 

Getting the exact results you want will be difficult, especially when starting out, but Runway has an Academy with plenty of guides and videos to show you how the platform works. You can also keep this prompting guide handy to help you predict the results. These resources make the learning curve less curvy. 

But text-to-video isn't the only trick in the book. Runway has a large collection of AI-powered tools to remove backgrounds, create super-slow motion video, and generate subtitles—among many others that work with sound and static images. The platform has a serious video-editing vibe, but all the tools are surprisingly easy to use, even if it's hard to understand what's really going on behind the scenes.

Runway pricing: Free plan includes 125 one-time credits (you can't buy more); Standard plan for $12/user/month (billed annually) includes 625 monthly credits with the option to top up.

Wondershare Filmora for polishing video 

Wondershare Filmora pros:

• Traditional video editing tool with AI features

• Lots of learning resources

Wondershare Filmora cons:

• Runs slow on low-end computers

While Runway is living its creative exploration fantasy, Wondershare Filmora takes a more streamlined approach to AI video generation. It integrates a suite of AI editing tools designed to enhance and polish existing video footage. Features like background removal, noise reduction, and automatic object tracking streamline the editing process, saving you time to focus on storytelling.

Filmora also offers AI-powered text-to-video generation capabilities—the internet's AI video generation bread and butter. You can use a script or outline to automatically generate a video storyboard complete with royalty-free music and transitions. There are plenty of other creativity and productivity features, from a template library that quickly puts together a video based on your footage to auto beat sync, which helps you keep your cuts aligned with the music blasting on your audio track.

All of these features are easy to use. But if you need extra guidance, Wondershare offers tons of in-depth video guides and tutorials to help you along. 

Wondershare Filmora pricing: Free plan available with video watermark; Basic plan for $49.99/year includes 1 GB of cloud storage and no watermark. 

The best generative AI tools for image generation and editing

Midjourney for the best AI image results

Midjourney pros:

• Consistently produces the best looking AI-generated images

• The community is a great way to get inspiration

Midjourney cons:

• Images you generate are public by default

I've put a lot of time and prompts into Midjourney, and trying to get exactly what I need feels like a game of charades. Once you nail down your prompt, though, it's hands-down the best quality AI art generator. The images it creates have better textures and colors, and are generally just more interesting and visually appealing. 

Best of all, Midjourney now has an actual web app. You're no longer limited to using it through Discord—but you can if you want. Some of its most advanced features—like blending multiple images, preserving details across different generations, and matching styles—haven't made the jump to the web app yet, but you can still use its great editor and have a lot of control over how things look.

One key drawback: By default, every image you generate is posted publicly on Midjourney's Explore page and can be viewed on your profile. While not necessarily a problem for artists, this might be a dealbreaker if you're looking to use Midjourney to create assets for your business. 

Midjourney pricing: Basic plan from $8/month (billed annually) lets you generate ~200 images/month and provides commercial usage rights. 

DALL·E 3 for easy-to-use AI image generation

DALL·E 3 pros:

• Incredibly easy to use

• Included with ChatGPT Plus, so you get a lot of AI for your money

DALL·E 3 cons:

• ChatGPT controls can be hit or miss

DALL·E 3 stands at the forefront of AI image generation—and with good reason. For one thing, it consistently produces incredibly realistic and detailed visuals. For another, it's ridiculously simple to use. Since you can access it through ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, as well as a few other services that use its API, all you have to do is prompt ChatGPT or Bing the way you normally would, and within a few moments, you'll have two to four AI-generated variations to choose from. 

OpenAI lets free ChatGPT users create two images a day with DALL·E 3, while Microsoft gives you much more flexibility without paying. But the best way to use DALL·E 3 is with ChatGPT Plus, where you can use it as much as you like, subject to other messaging limits.

In addition to DALL·E 3 through ChatGPT, OpenAI offers an API, which allows developers to build apps that integrate with both DALL·E models. Because of that, you can connect DALL·E to Zapier to do things like automatically create images from any app. Learn more about how to automate AI image generation, or get started with one of these pre-built workflows.

DALL·E 3 pricing: Free through Microsoft Copilot; $20/month through ChatGPT Plus. API pricing is more complex, but starts at $0.016/image. 

Adobe Photoshop for AI-generated image enhancement

Adobe Photoshop pros:

• Some of the best AI-powered tools you can find in any app

• It's still Photoshop, with all the power and control that gives you

Adobe Photoshop cons:

• Steep learning curve 

Known for being the industry-standard image editing software, Adobe Photoshop wasn't immune to the AI effect. While not solely an AI image generation tool, Photoshop leverages Adobe's Sensei and Firefly AI with a range of generative features. 

You can easily remove unwanted objects from images, enhance resolutions for better clarity, and generate entirely new image elements using Adobe Firefly. There are also Neural Filters that can do things like intelligently adjust your subject's facial expression, transfer the color palette from one image to another, and remove compression artifacts. The automatic subject and background selection is excellent, and the automatic tone, color, and contrast adjustment all work as you'd expect.

For those of you already familiar with Photoshop's workflow, this integration of AI functionality significantly boosts your creative toolkit. It won't make Photoshop any easier to learn, but it'll help you create much better results.

Adobe Photoshop pricing: From $9.99/month as part of the Photography Plan, which includes Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and 500 generative credits to use generative features.

The best generative AI tools for voice and music generation

ElevenLabs for a comprehensive AI voice library

ElevenLabs pros: 

• Voice library includes 300+ voices, including licensable AI-powered versions of real people

• Good search and filtering tools 

ElevenLabs cons: 

• Controls aren't as powerful as other AI voice generators 

ElevenLabs takes a comprehensive approach to AI voice generation, making the tool useful for creators, businesses, and individuals alike. The platform is home to a library of ultra-realistic, human-sounding voices across various languages and accents (you can hear it in this example from ElevenLabs). 

This versatility allows you to tailor the voice perfectly to your project, whether it's a casual explainer video, a dramatic audiobook narration, or a professional-sounding podcast intro. 

Beyond voice selection, ElevenLabs provides users with granular control over speech parameters. Adjust the pace and pitch, and even add subtle emotional inflections to fine-tune the generated voice and ensure it aligns with your tone and message.

ElevenLabs pricing: Free plan includes 10 minutes of audio every month; Starter plan for $4.17/month (billed annually) gives you 30 minutes of audio. 

Suno for easy-to-use AI music generation

Suno pros: 

• Easy to use

• Delivers consistently impressive results 

Suno cons: 

• Free plan doesn't allow for credit top-ups 

Suno is a more streamlined and user-friendly generative AI tool. Most importantly, it's really fun to work with. 

Inputting only prompts and descriptions, Suno can generate songs, complete with lyrics, varied musical compositions, vocals, and theatrical effects. Suno has an intuitive interface, making it easy for even non-technical users to jump right in and start generating high-quality voiceovers.

While Suno doesn't offer the same level of granular control as ElevenLabs, its strength lies in its ease of use and focus on delivering consistently impressive results. This makes Suno a valuable tool for users who prioritize speed and simplicity without sacrificing quality.

Suno pricing: Free Basic plan includes 50 daily credits with no credit top-ups; Pro plan for $10/month (billed monthly) includes 2,500 monthly credits (~500 songs) with the option to add more credits. 

The best generative AI tools for presentations

Beautiful.ai for automated presentation design elements

Beautiful.ai pros:

• Solid collaboration features

• Simple and effective customization tools

Beautiful.ai cons:

• AI leans a lot on text and data slides

Beautiful.ai delivers a user-friendly interface that integrates seamlessly with popular design tools like Figma and Sketch. You can assign slides to each of your team members so they can update the ones related to their activity. Leave comments to let them know what's missing, and keep going until the deck is full of useful insights. And if your CEO can't make it to the call, you can record audio and video for each slide and share it with them.

Beyond collaboration features, Beautiful.ai stands out with its AI-powered design automation. Upload your text content, and Beautiful.ai will generate a visually cohesive presentation complete with layouts, fonts, and images. It also provides "smart" slide suggestions based on your content, helping you refine your message and structure your presentation for maximum impact.

Beautiful.ai pricing: Individual Pro plan for $12/month (billed annually); Team plan for $40/user/month (billed annually) includes shared asset library and collaborative workspaces. 

Pitch for sales teams 

Pitch pros:

• Great presentation design out of the box

• Lots of useful integrations

Pitch cons:

• Basic AI generation settings

If you're looking for an AI presentation maker to create a deck for your next PowerPoint party, you've scrolled too far. Pitch is more niche—it's geared towards sales teams. 

Enter the prompt, choose the fonts and color scheme, and you've got your initial deck. The generated presentation structure is designed to cover everything you have to talk about, from pain points your leads are experiencing to major industry-wide issues to positioning your solutions as the best in the market. After you generate the presentation, everything becomes a simple point-and-click: just find the stats and paste them where appropriate.

Pitch also integrates with data apps like Google Analytics and ChartMogul, meaning you can easily pull in deal-closing stats to up the ante. It also accepts data from Google Sheets or a CSV file, so if your data is on other platforms, you can still export it and put it to good use.

Pitch pricing: Free plan includes unlimited presentations; Pro plan for $17/month (billed annually) includes advanced settings and collaborative features.

You may not need to add a separate AI presentation app to your tech stack. If you're a Microsoft 365 user, check out Microsoft Copilot for PowerPoint; Google users can use Gemini for Google Slides.

The best generative AI tools for website building

Wix for intuitive website-building  

Wix pros:

• Effective, easy-to-use AI site designer

• Backed up by Wix's mature site builder ecosystem

Wix cons:

• Not the most futuristic-feeling AI around

Wix is a household name in the website-building space, and for good reason: it offers a perfect blend of ease of use and powerful features. Its AI capabilities are particularly noteworthy.

The Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) tool streamlines the website creation process from start to finish. Simply answer a few questions about your desired website type and functionality, and Wix ADI will generate a personalized website template complete with layouts, content suggestions, and even royalty-free images. This is a fantastic option for users who want a professional-looking website up and running quickly.

Beyond ADI, Wix integrates AI throughout its platform. Users can leverage AI-powered features like automatic image resizing, background removal for photos, and even a logo maker to create a cohesive brand identity for their website.

Wix also connects to Zapier, so you can automate all your website workflows. Learn more about how to automate Wix with Zapier, or get started with one of these templates.

Wix pricing: Light plan for $17/month includes 2 collaborators; plans from $29/month include more collaborator seats and basic marketing and eCommerce features. 

Framer for AI-centric website-building

Framer pros:

• It's a super impressive and fun generative AI tool 

• The rest of the app is great, so you can build a real site

Framer cons:

• Needs a lot of work to go from an AI draft to a great site

While Wix caters to a broad audience, Framer is the AI website builder for designers and creative professionals. The platform includes powerful AI design tools like Auto Layout, which automatically fine-tunes the spacing and arrangement of website elements. Get started using one of their free website templates. Or enter a prompt, and it will create a rough website, including some AI-generated draft copy.  It's the closest thing to the dream "type a prompt and get a website." 

You'll still need to do things like turn links and buttons that look clickable into truly interactive elements using Framer's suite builder. It's a great site builder—just keep in mind that it has a more code-centric approach Wix. 

Framer pricing: Free plan available for non-commercial use; individual paid plans start at $5/month (billed annually); business plans from $71/month (billed annually) include thousands of pages. 

The best generative AI tools for app building

Microsoft Power Apps for in-depth app development 

Microsoft PowerApps pros:

• Very flexible

• Accessible advanced logic for non-technical people

Microsoft PowerApps cons:

• Complicated first-time setup

Like most Microsoft tools, Power Apps uses Copilot for that AI touch. You can initiate the app creation process with a simple text prompt describing your desired functionality. Imagine outlining your vision for an app, like "an app for creating and sharing grocery lists," and letting Copilot translate that into a basic prototype.

Following your prompt, Copilot generates a starting point, including a database schema tailored to your app's needs. You can then interact with Copilot through a chat window on the right side of the Power Apps dashboard, so you can refine the database schema by adding, removing, or modifying fields using natural language instructions.

Microsoft PowerApps pricing: Free Developer plan available; Premium plan for $20/user/month includes 500 AI Builder credits. 

Pico for fully automated app-building

Pico pros:

• Step-by-step building process

• Includes a few advanced features, such as databases and APIs

Pico cons:

• Parts of the editor are difficult to understand

Pico turns app development into a straightforward, novice-friendly, prompt-based experience. As you enter your initial prompt describing the app's functionality, a line appears on the screen, showcasing the AI diligently generating the code in real time. You get to watch the seamless flow between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as your app comes to life before your eyes, line by line.

This isn't a one-shot deal. Once you have this foundational structure, Pico allows you to refine your app further through natural language prompts. Dictate changes to button labels, alter the app's background, or tweak the input fields displayed on the screen—all through simple commands.

For a more granular level of control, Pico offers additional settings that allow you to modify the app's visual style, properties, and even the data it connects to. The beauty lies in its accessibility—even if you lack coding expertise. 

Pico pricing: Free plan lets you create 1 app; Pro plan for $29/month (billed monthly) includes unlimited apps. 

The best generative AI chatbots

Chatbots stand on strange grounds as far as the definition of generative AI goes, but they are capable of generating content, interacting with users, answering questions, and simulating human interactions, making them part of the pack.

ChatGPT for versatility

ChatGPT pros:

• Easy to use and kind of fun

• Powerful

ChatGPT cons:

• You need to be on the paid plan to get the most from it

The original, the most known, the first of its kind—ChatGPT rose to the top of the AI chatbot food chain quickly. Since its initial domination of dinner-party conversations everywhere, it's turned from a party trick into a genuinely useful tool. Especially with the release of more powerful multimodal models, including GPT-4o and the o1 series, its versatility is unmatched. 

ChatGPT can answer questions, search the web,  translate across languages, visualize data, write code, and understand audio. You can even build your own custom bot with unique instructions and data using GPTs. These bots can carry out straightforward tasks, simplify processes, or just do zany things for the fun of it. If you're looking for one generative AI tool to do it all, this is the one.

You can also incorporate ChatGPT into your existing workflows with Zapier's ChatGPT integration. No matter where you are, you can use ChatGPT to summarize, generate replies, analyze images—the list goes on. Learn more about how to automate ChatGPT, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

ChatGPT pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $20/month (billed monthly) for ChatGPT Plus. 

Claude for great writing quality

Claude pros:

• Tends to respond more empathetically than ChatGPT

• Large context window

Claude cons:

• Context window and daily message limit vary based on demand for users on a free plan

As strong of an AI chatbot as ChatGPT is, folks tend to agree that Claude is the one to beat when it comes to quality writing. Conversations with Claude flow naturally, with responses that are straight to the point. Claude also operates with a much larger context window, allowing it to process a lot more data at a time.

But the best feature is Artifacts, hands down. With just a few prompts, you can create a dashboard page to display your data—like this personal budget planner. You can also create web apps and simple games (check out this physics game created with Claude). These creations are accessible as you chat, so you can change them with prompts and interact with them in real time. 

In addition to its API, Claude also integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to all the other apps you use. Here are some ideas for how to automate Claude, or you can try one of these templates.

Claude pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $18/month (billed annually) for the Pro plan. 

Zapier Chatbots for custom-made chatbots

Zapier Chatbots pros:

• Offers a no-code app builder, database tool, and chatbot builder all in one platform

• Built-in AI at every step 

Zapier Chatbots cons:

• If you aren't interested in automation features, it's a bit more limited than some other options

Zapier Chatbots allows you to design your own custom AI chatbots using an intuitive automation platform. Connect your knowledge sources (including web scraping), give your chatbot some basic instructions using natural language, and you're well on your way to a customized chatbot that your customers can interact with straight from your website. There are even pre-built templates for all sorts of use cases if you're not sure where to start.

And that's just scratching the surface of what's possible with Zapier. There's also AI built in to every part of the platform, allowing you to use generative AI to turn your ideas into solutions. Learn more about how to automate your entire workflow using Zapier. 

Zapier pricing: Free plan includes unlimited Zaps (automated workflows); paid plan starts at $20/month and includes more advanced features.

A final note on generative AI tools

The world of generative AI extends well beyond the tools I've listed here. While tools like AI writing assistants and video generation are impressive examples of content generation, plenty of other AI tools incorporate generative features. For example, AI sales assistant apps use generative AI to personalize outreach emails or craft follow-up messages. The only reason I didn't include apps like those here is because their core function isn't original content creation.

While I'm not shouting Skynet at my computer, I'm convinced that this rapid growth of generative AI is the beginning of something great (scary?). What started as basic chatbots has turned into an integration for every facet of business, from marketing and sales to product development and customer service. Who knows what generative AI will help us do next? (Please let it be filing taxes.) 

Related reading:

• The best AI marketing tools

• The best AI productivity tools

• How to adapt to AI at work

• The best AI search engines

• Using generative AI? Forget everything you know about computers

• The best free AI tools

This article was originally published in June 2024. The most recent update, with contributions from Jessica Lau, was published in December 2024.