Sam Rinko, Author at eWEEK https://www.eweek.com/author/sam-rinko/ Technology News, Tech Product Reviews, Research and Enterprise Analysis Fri, 14 Feb 2025 05:50:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 6 Best AI Security Software (2025): Next-Gen Cyber Solutions https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/best-ai-security-tools/ Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=223512 What are the must-haves of AI security software for 2025? Equip yourself with knowledge to protect your digital privacy effectively.

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AI security software provides businesses with advanced toolsets to combat the ever-persistent threat of cyberattack. From identifying suspicious patterns to proactive threat hunting, AI security solutions offer a proactive and intelligent defense mechanism against malicious attacks that goes beyond traditional cybersecurity solutions.

I evaluated leading AI security solutions to see how they compared on features, pricing, and use cases. Here are our picks for the best AI security tools for your business in 2025:

  • SentinelOne: Best for Advanced Threat Hunting
  • CrowdStrike: Best for Monitoring User Endpoint Behavior
  • Vectra AI: Best for Hybrid Attack Detection and Response
  • Darktrace: Best for Neutralizing Novel Threats
  • Fortinet: Best for Preventing Zero-Day Threats
  • Trellix: Best for Environments Requiring Constant Monitoring

Top AI Security Software

Overall, I picked SentinelOne as the top AI security software, ranking first for cost and tying for customer support and integrations. The chart below shows at a glance how all of the leading AI security tools compare on use case, complexity, and starting price, followed by detailed reviews of the systems.

Best ForComplexityStarting Price
SentinelOneAdvanced threat-hunting and incident response capabilitiesLow$69.99 per endpoint
CrowdStrikeMonitoring user endpoint behaviorHigh$59.99 per device
Vectra AIHybrid attack detection, investigation, and responseModerateAvailable upon request
DarktraceNeutralizing novel threatsHighAvailable upon request
FortinetPreventing zero-day threatsHighAvailable upon request
TrellixComplex IT environments that require continuous monitoringHighAvailable upon request

Continue reading to learn more about each platform’s use case, pricing, and key features, or skip ahead to see our scoring logic.

SentinelOne icon.

SentinelOne

Best for Advanced Threat Hunting

Overall Rating: 4.3/5

  • Core Features: 4.1/5
  • Cost: 3.7/5
  • Customization: 4.9/5
  • Integrations: 5/5
  • Ease of Use: 4.3/5
  • Customer Support: 5/5

SentinelOne’s Singularity platform is an AI-backed autonomous security platform that combines an endpoint protection platform (EPP), EDR, and extended detection and response (XDR) into a unified platform. This platform automatically tracks all operating system relationships, giving you full context and understanding of an attack. It also features an automated threat resolution with its patented one-click remediation, making it easier to reverse unauthorized changes.

SentinelOne’s dashboard.
SentinelOne’s dashboard features key metrics including alert tracking, threat detection, and response time measurements.

Product Design

The platform uses AI and ML algorithms to provide real-time prevention, detection, and threat hunting across user endpoints, containers, cloud workloads, and IoT devices. It protects against a wide array of advanced cyberthreats, including malware, ransomware, exploits, and fileless attacks. Additionally, SentinelOne’s interface offers a comprehensive security dashboard that shows key metrics, including alert tracking, threat detection, and response time measurements.

Why I Picked SentinelOne

What I found most noteworthy is the platform’s powerful automated incident response capabilities. These capabilities enable security teams to quickly stop and recover from security breaches and other attacks, mitigating the damage. For example, the tool will automatically trigger the correct incident response workflows if a threat is detected, which includes blocking suspect traffic or isolating attacked endpoints. The platform also aims to simplify and strengthen enterprise security operations by providing comprehensive and automated protection across the entire threat lifecycle.

Pros and Cons

ProsCons
Provides quality threat-hunting tools and insightsDigital forensics and incident response only available to enterprise users
24/7 by 365 threat hunting and managed servicesReporting capability could be better

Pricing

  • Singularity Core: $69.99 per endpoint, per year
  • Singularity Control: $79.99 per endpoint, per year
  • Singularity Complete: $159.99 per endpoint, per year
  • Singularity Commercial: $209.99 per endpoint, per year
  • Singularity Enterprise: Pricing available upon request

Features

  • Ability to identify and triage threats
  • Can ingest data from many sources
  • Will identify and quickly launch threat detection and response
  • Advanced threat-hunting capabilities
  • Automated incident response workflows
CrowdStrike icon.

CrowdStrike

Best for Monitoring User Endpoint Behavior

Overall Rating: 4.3/5

  • Core Features: 4.6/5
  • Cost: 3.3/5
  • Customization: 5/5
  • Integrations: 4.6/5
  • Ease of Use: 3.9/5
  • Customer Support: 5/5

CrowdStrike Falcon is an AI security solution that uses machine learning to stop breaches and automate threat intelligence, all delivered on a single platform. Its custom large language model works to protect endpoints, detect threats, and respond to security incidents in real time. Through AI-powered indicators of attack, script monitoring, and memory scanning capabilities, CrowdStrike’s endpoint protection platform prevents threats ranging from common malware to sophisticated zero-day exploits.

CrowdStrike’s interface.
CrowdStrike’s adversary-driven approach delivers high-quality and context-rich detection.

Product Design

CrowdStike is ideal for endpoint protection because it consolidates next-generation antivirus (AV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR). It also features a 24/7 managed threat-hunting service in a single lightweight agent, providing organizations with complete visibility and protection across their endpoints. CrowdStrike is best suited for mid-to-large enterprises that want a comprehensive solution that works across almost all areas of cybersecurity, with an emphasis on endpoint protection.

Why I Picked CrowdStrike

The lightweight agent continuously monitors and protects endpoints against various attacks using real-time indicators of attack and threat intelligence from across the enterprise, thereby providing proactive threat-hunting capabilities. CrowdStrike uses behavioral AI to detect anomalies in user endpoint behavior. This means it can monitor current activity and compare it against past user actions to protect the perimeter. Its models are trained on trillions of data points daily, allowing it to target threats ahead of time.

Pros and Cons

ProsCons
Provides visibility across devices, accounts, and cloud workloadsUser interface could be improved
AI-driven insightsLearning curve to get familiar with the platform’s capabilities

Pricing

  • Falcon Go: $59.99 per device, per year
  • Falcon Pro: $99.99 per device, per year
  • Falcon Enterprise: $184.99 per device, per year
  • Falcon Elite: Custom pricing
  • Falcon Complete MDR: Pricing available upon request

Features

  • Unified attack surface visibility
  • Pre- and post-incident response services
  • Can import IOCs
  • An AI-based detection system called user and entity behavior analytics
Vectra icon.

Vectra AI

Best for Hybrid Attack Detection and Response

Overall Rating: 4.1/5

  • Core Features: 4.6/5
  • Cost: 1.7/5
  • Customization: 4.6/5
  • Integrations: 5/5
  • Ease of Use: 4.4/5
  • Customer Support: 5/5

Vectra AI Attack Signal Intelligence platform combines human intelligence, data science, and machine learning to detect and respond to cyberattacks in real time. The company’s AI and cybersecurity solution gives you constant visibility into your network security posture, helping you prioritize potential threats and enabling quick response and mitigation to minimize the impact of hybrid cyberattacks, or two or more combined attacks designed to break the perimeter.

Vectra AI’s interface.
Vectra AI’s Respond UX offers a unified view with AI-driven prioritization and a single urgency score for all entities across all data sources.

Product Design

Significantly, Vectra focuses on preventing hybrid attacks, which are on the rise. Using contextual insights, AI-driven detections, and third-party automated responses, the AI security software combats various hybrid attack types, such as account takeovers, data breaches, ransomware, supply chain attacks, and even nation-state attacks.

Why I Picked Vectra AI

A feature I found notable is how, unlike other tools, Vectra AI puts an emphasis on showing you which threats are most critical and then triaging irrelevant anomalies to reduce alert noise that inevitably wastes your team’s time. The platform automatically triggers the correct incident response workflows. Examples include blocking suspect traffic or isolating attacked endpoints.

Pros and Cons

ProsCons
Attack prioritizationReporting capability can be improved
AI-driven insightsProduct documentation can be improved

Pricing

Vectra AI doesn’t display product pricing on its website. Publicly available information shows pricing ranges as follows:

  • Up to $5,000 for month-to-month licenses
  • Up to $50,000 for annual licenses, depending on your selected service

For actual rates, contact Vectra’s sales team for a quote

Features

  • Analyzes attacker behaviors post-compromise and in real time
  • Correlates and ranks incidents by urgency across environments
  • Threat intelligence integration
  • AI-based threat detection and response geared for hybrid attack defense
  • Machine learning techniques, along with deep learning and neural networks
Darktrace icon.

Darktrace

Best for Handling Novel Threats

Overall Rating: 4/5

  • Core Features: 4.8/5
  • Cost: 1.4/5
  • Customization: 4.5/5
  • Integrations: 5/5
  • Ease of Use: 4/5
  • Customer Support: 5/5

Darktrace’s cyber AI platform uses AI and machine learning algorithms to identify and respond to cyberthreats in real time. The AI security software offers a unified solution that protects the cloud, SaaS, email, IoT, ICS, remote endpoints, and the network. Predictive in its approach, Darktrace’s self-learning AI technology is designed to understand and adapt to the unique patterns of a company’s network by learning from users and devices as well as the connections between them, allowing it to detect anomalous, novel behavior that may indicate a cyberattack.

Darktrace interface screenshot.
Darktrace’s dedicated SaaS console complements native cloud and SaaS defense.

Product Design

Darktrace’s AI algorithms also constantly learn and adapt to the evolving threat landscape, enabling it to identify known and unknown threats and detect abnormal activity that may indicate the presence of previously unseen threats. To that end, Darktrace is geared to combat Living off the Land (LOTL) attacks, highly targeted attacks, and AI attacks.

Why I Picked Darktrace

In reviewing the tool, I was pleased to see that the platform offers a wide range of AI-supported services like AI-based attack simulation. This enables teams to prepare for and test out strategies against attacks in a real-world setting. I also liked how it offers a robust AI incident investigation and reporting feature to help you learn why attacks occurred and how to work to make sure they never happen again.

Pros and Cons

ProsCons
Hardens defensesExpensive, especially for small businesses
Provides instant attack visibilityComplex initial setup

Pricing

Darktrace doesn’t advertise its product pricing on its website, but publicly available data cites the following pricing:

  • Small Bandwidth: $30,000 for up to 300 Mbps of average bandwidth and 200 hosts
  • Medium Bandwidth: $60,000 for up to 2 Gbps of average bandwidth and 1,000 hosts
  • Large Bandwidth: $100,000 for up to 5 Gbps of average bandwidth and 10,000 hosts

Features

  • Continuously monitors your attack surface for risks
  • Offers instant visibility of threats
  • Interrupts fast-moving attacks
  • Restores your system to health after an attack
Fortinet icon.

Fortinet

Best for Handling Novel Threats

Overall Rating: 4/5

  • Core Features: 4.6/5
  • Cost: 2.1/5
  • Customization: 4.6/5
  • Integrations: 4.1/5
  • Ease of Use: 4/5
  • Customer Support: 5/5

Fortinet FortiGuard is an AI security software incorporating threat intelligence, real-time threat analysis, and global threat protection to identify and block advanced threats and attacks. The services integrate with security solutions across Fortinet’s broad portfolio to provide security capabilities that protect applications, web traffic, content, devices, and users located anywhere.

Fortinet interface screenshot.
FortiAIOps ensures quick data collection and identification of network anomalies.

Product Design

In comparing Fortinet to other AI cybersecurity solutions, I found its key differentiator to be its ability to prevent zero-day threats. Always learning, the AI-based threat detection software is regularly updated with the latest threat intelligence from FortiGuard Labs experts, data from across Fortinet’s broad sensor base, and zero-day intelligence feeds. This ensures that organizations are protected against emerging threats and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Why I Picked Fortinet

FortiGuard’s service portfolio includes content security and NOC/SOC security. This is very important given the core nature of the Security Operations Center. It also offers SOC-as-a-service functionality and provides consistent cybersecurity assessments and readiness alerts.

Pros and Cons

ProsCons
Protect against network- and file-based threatsSteep learning curve
Security profile customizationCustomer support could be better

Pricing

  • Contact for a detailed quote

Features

  • Guards against all OWASP Top-10 threats, DDoS attacks, and bot attacks
  • Detects compromised systems
  • AI-based inline malware prevention
  • AI-powered SandBox engine
  • Focuses on preventing zero-day threats
Trellix icon.

Trellix

Best for Environments that Require Continuous Monitoring

Overall Rating: 3.9/5

  • Core Features: 4.7/5
  • Cost: 1.1/5
  • Customization: 4.6/5
  • Integrations: 5/5
  • Ease of Use: 4/5
  • Customer Support: 5/5

Trellix is a result of the merger of the security product divisions of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye. This AI security software excels in continuous monitoring, which enables proactive threat detection by combining signature-based identification, behavioral analytics, and real-time monitoring.

Trellix interface screenshot.
Trellix’s EDR monitoring workspace organizes threats by ranking and shows comprehensive threat details in a unified interface.

Product Design

The company’s open, comprehensive XDR platform, Trellix XDR, uses advanced machine learning and AI techniques to analyze, correlate, and monitor data from various sources, including network traffic, endpoint behavior, and threat intelligence feeds. Its continuous monitoring enables it to detect sophisticated and complex threats that traditional security solutions might miss.

Why I Picked Trellix

I especially like how Trellix’s AI is capable of operationalizing threat intelligence. It can reduce alert noise and automate responses to security incidents, thus resulting in faster response times, better block rates, and mitigated damage. Notably, its XConsole combines security controls and an advanced research center to provide a unified view of the security landscape and enhanced visibility into network traffic, endpoint activity, and user behavior, allowing analysts to identify and remediate threats before they can cause damage.

Pros and Cons

ProsCons
Integrates with more than 1,000 third-party sourcesComplex initial setup
Comprehensive on-premises product portfolioThe user interface can be better

Pricing

  • Contact for a detailed quote

Features

  • Signature-based engine to find and block known malware
  • Behavior-based analytics engine to stop advanced threats
  • UEBA capability to detect anomalous user behaviors
  • Real-time monitoring

How I Evaluated the Best AI Security Software

In evaluating the top AI security platforms, I scored each option against six key criteria for teams and enterprises needing robust yet cost-effective features. From there, I divided each category into weighted subcriteria and assigned an overall score out of five to determine the winner for each category.

Evaluation Criteria

In scoring the AI security solutions, I placed the most emphasis on core features and pricing because the best software options should be cost-effective for businesses. I also assessed each platform’s customizations, integrations, ease of use, and customer support.

  • Core Features (30 percent): The best AI security tools offer standard features to identify and mitigate potential threats. These tools should also use machine learning algorithms and deep learning techniques to analyze vast amounts of data to detect malicious behaviors and protect your business from cyberattacks.
    Criteria Winner: Darktrace
  • Pricing (20 percent): For this category, I looked for both the affordability of each tool’s pricing plans and the availability of free trials and/or versions.
    Criteria Winner: SentinelOne
  • Customization (15 percent): Flexible AI security platforms allow organizations to create environment-specific protection. Here, I looked into custom features such as incident procedures, reports, threat monitoring, and more.
    Criteria Winner: CrowdStrike
  • Ease of Use (15 percent): I assessed each AI security tool’s user interface and user experience and also looked into its knowledge base.
    Criteria Winner: Vectra AI
  • Integrations (10 percent): Third-party app integrations are essential for AI security tools because they allow you to create a unified security ecosystem and also streamline workflows.
    Criteria Winner: Multiple Winners
  • User Support (10 percent): For this category, I looked into user support channels for each AI security tool via live chat, phone, and email.
    Criteria Winner: Multiple winners

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

I answered the most commonly asked questions about the best AI security solutions to help you determine the best option for your business.

How Do I Choose the Best AI Security Software for My Business?

Review your current security architecture and determine which areas most need AI-powered solutions. This may include email security, network security, endpoint protection, data loss prevention, or insider threat detection. Be sure to consider costs, features, complexity, and integrations before settling for a solution. To the extent possible, use a trial version of the AI cybersecurity solution before making a final decision.

What Is the Best AI Security Solution?

The best AI security tool for you depends on your needs. Our analysis above evaluated several top-rated AI security solutions for different users. The best solution for your business is one that integrates fully into your existing infrastructure and works within your budget.

How Do AI Security Solutions Detect and Prevent Threats?

AI security solutions leverage machine learning algorithms to analyze network traffic, user behavior, and system logs to detect patterns and anomalies associated with known or unknown threats. AI can analyze these threats far faster than human security administrators.

How Does AI Help in Incident Response?

AI will not replace the field of cybersecurity and related jobs because AI security tools require oversight from IT professionals. However, AI will automate repetitive security tasks and assist security professionals in their work by arming them with AI-based threat detection, investigation, and response.

What Is MLSecOps?

MLSecOps, short for Machine Learning Security Operations, is a development and deployment framework for machine learning that considers traditional principles of cybersecurity to improve threat detection and prevention.

Bottom Line: AI Security Software

Because today’s threat actors now use AI, it’s imperative that companies of all sizes also use AI to protect against the emergence of AI-based attacks. The AI security software sold by leading vendors is equipped to offer far better protection than legacy security solutions.

When selecting an AI security solution, make sure that the tool’s mix of on-premise, network configurations, and cloud-based software works well with your technology infrastructure and that the pricing (which may require a sales call to get) fits your budget. Since these AI companies focused on security solutions tend to offer multiple platforms that are complex and wide in scope, it pays to set up several demos before making your choice.

For a deeper understanding of the power of artificial intelligence, read our comprehensive guide to AI for beginners.

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What Is The Best AI Chatbot? 21Top Picks of 2025 https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/best-ai-chatbots/ Mon, 06 Jan 2025 21:30:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=222976 Discover the leading AI chatbots of 2024. Find out which one suits your needs best and enhance your interactions today.

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The best AI chatbots represent a major step forward in conversational AI, using large language models (LLMs) to create human-quality text, translate languages, and provide informative answers to user questions. An ever-growing number of generative AI chatbots are now entering the market, but not all chatbots are created equal. We evaluated the best AI chatbots on the market to see how they compare on cost, feature set, ease of use, quality of output, and support to help you determine the best bot for your business. Here are our picks for the top 21 AI chatbots.

Top AI Chatbot Software Comparison

The following chart shows at a glance how the top AI chatbot software we evaluated compares on features, query limit, language model, and price—as well as whether the vendor provides a Chrome extension to improve ease of use—to help you determine the best option for your needs.

Best For Use Case Query Limit Language Model(s) Vendor Chrome Extension Starting Price
Freshchat Automating self-service 500 Freshbots sessions Freddy AI, Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service No $23 per agent, per month
Crisp Chatbot Lead nurturing Unlimited Proprietary LLM model No $25 per month, per workspace
ChatGPT Versatility and advanced generative AI chat features 50 messages every three hours for GPT-4 model GPT-3.5, GPT-4 No $20 per month
Kommunicate e-Commerce businesses N/A GPT-4 No $100 per month
Claude Long conversation memory 45 messages every five hours Claude 3 No Free
ChatSpot HubSpot customers N/A GPT-3, GPT-4 No Free
Intercom Handling support queries Unlimited; charges per resolution GPT-4 No $39 per seat, per month
Google Gemini Brainstorming ideas Unlimited exchanges per conversation Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2) No Free
Jasper Marketing and sales teams Word limit depends on the plan GPT-3.5, GPT-4 Yes $49 per month
Tidio Small and medium businesses Word limit depends on the plan Claude (Anthropic AI) No $25 per user, per month
Perplexity AI Finding information on the internet Five copilot searches every four hours for free users GPT-3.5, Claude 2, GPT-4, Yes $20 per month
LivePerson Conversation analytics N/A Unknown No Available upon request
Chatsonic Individuals in creative fields Word limit depends on the plan GPT-3.5, GPT-4 Yes $20 per month
Poe Testing multiple AI chatbots 2,000 requests per hour GPT-4, Gemini, Claude 3, Llama 2 No Free
Drift Businesses that rely on B2B sales and marketing Unlimited GPT No $2,500 per month, billed annually
Ada Customer service automation N/A Unknown No Available upon request
YouChat Students and researchers Unlimited GPT-3, GPT-4 Yes $6.99 per month
HuggingChat Developers Unlimited Llama 2 No $9 per month
Replika Personal use 500 messages per month or about 17 per day GPT-3, GPT-4 No $19.99 per month
Bing Chat Enterprise Organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem 30 responses per conversation GPT-4 No $5 per month
OpenAI Playground Customizability 200 requests per day for free users GPT-3.5, GPT-4 No $0.0015 per 1K tokens

Freshchat: Best for Automating Self-Service

Overall Rating: 4.6

Freshchat enables businesses to automate customer interactions through chatbots and also offers live chat capabilities for real-time customer support. It allows companies to manage and streamline customer conversations across various channels and an array of integrated apps.

Freshchat icon.

Freshchat provides features like customizable chat widgets, agent collaboration, customer context, and analytics to track chat performance and customer satisfaction. What distinguishes Freshchat is that it enables sales and marketing—and even support teams—to not only reach customers but to scale those interactions so that the expertise of each live company staffer can be used to converse with many customers.

It does this using its unified agent workspace—which holds a full menu of past conversations—as well as responses from sales, marketing, and support, which an agent can quickly and easily share with an interested customer.

What I found most interesting was that the app has a “Freddy Insights” tool that provides key trends and insights that can be fed into a conversation at opportune moments to prompt a faster decision.

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 10 agents
  • Growth: $23 per agent, per month, or $228 per agent billed annually
  • Pro: $59 per agent, per month, or $588 per agent billed annually
  • Enterprise: $95 per agent, per month, or $948 billed annually

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Load balanced auto-assignment based on team member skill Some users report occasional bugs
Team performance and agent availability report The notification system could be improved

Why I Chose Freshchat

I chose Freshchat because of its chatbot analytics and canned responses, which make it an intuitive chatbot that can be easily used. Its customer satisfaction survey and report make it easier for users to create data analytics and reports. In addition, its multi-channel communication can be integrated with other applications, such as CRM applications, email accounts, and payment channels.

Freshchat screenshot.

Crisp Chatbot: Best for Lead Nurturing

Overall Rating: 4.6

Crisp Chatbot uses artificial intelligence to understand user queries and provide relevant responses. It can handle basic inquiries, provide product information, schedule appointments, and collect customer feedback.

Crisp icon.

In a growing trend across the AI chatbot sector, the Crisp Chatbot can be customized to match a business’s branding and tone. This is increasingly important in crowded markets where a number of companies are seeking to create a distinct brand to cut through the clutter.

In my conversations with Crispchat, I found the bot extremely helpful in answering my questions. When I asked whether it was good for small businesses, it answered in the affirmative and gave me two salient reasons why—24/7 support and ease of use—while also explaining the positive impact these would have on my company’s customer experience.

Pricing

  • Free: 14-day trial
  • Basic: Free forever for two seats
  • Pro: $25 per month, per workspace for up to four seats
  • Unlimited: $95 per month, per workspace for up to 20 seats
  • Enterprise: Contact for a custom quote

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Responsive customer service team The free plan lacks integration with email, Slack, and Messenger
Website chat widget Basic and Pro plans offer limited chatbot capabilities

Why I Chose Crisp ChatBot

Crisp ChatBot made it to my list because of its integration with popular social media messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, and Instagram. Sending multilingual messages improves contact with a worldwide audience and its conversation rerouting features guarantee effective management of client inquiries. The MagicReply feature streamlines customer interactions by providing AI-powered suggested responses in several languages across numerous channels.

Crisp Chatbot screenshot.

ChatGPT: Best Chatbot for Versatility and Advanced Generative AI Chat Features

Overall Rating: 4.5

Developed by OpenAI as part of the GPT (generative pre-trained transformer) series of models, ChatGPT is more than just another natural language processing (NLP) tool designed to engage in human-quality conversations with users. The fact that it was developed by OpenAI means this generative AI app benefits from the pioneering work done by this leading AI company. ChatGPT was the first generative AI app to come to market, launching in November of 2022.

ChatGPT icon.

The OpenAI platform can perform NLP tasks such as answering questions, providing recommendations, summarizing text, and translating languages. Aside from content generation, developers can also use ChatGPT to assist with coding tasks, including code generation, debugging help, and programming-related question responses.

I have used ChatGPT for various tasks, from summarizing long articles for research purposes to brainstorming business plans and customer pain points. The output is almost always satisfactory, in-depth, and surprisingly nuanced.

OpenAI has received significant funding from Microsoft and will likely be a leader in the years ahead, both in terms of advanced functionality (depth and versatility of toolset) and its ability to offer technology that’s ahead of the curve.

Pricing

  • Free: Access to limited features
  • ChatGPT Plus: $20 per month
  • Enterprise: Contact OpenAI for a custom quote

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Data encryption at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+) Free plan is limited to GPT-3.5
Can assist in completing sentences or paragraphs for users Platform knowledge is limited to less than current information

Why I Chose ChatGPT

ChatGPT is one of the most popular chatbots that are accessible and have been offering excellent generative resources. It can understand and generate text in multiple languages and at the same time offers contextual understanding of an extended conversation.

ChatGPT screenshot.

Kommunicate: Best for e-Commerce Businesses

Overall Rating: 4.5

Kommunicate is a generative AI-powered chatbot designed to help businesses optimize customer support and improve the customer experience. One of its chief goals is assisting and completing sales for e-commerce vendors, though it also handles support and the full range of customer queries.

Kommunicate icon.

The app provides automated conversational capabilities through chatbots, live chat, and omnichannel customer support. Kommunicate can be integrated into websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms, allowing businesses to engage with customers in real time and provide instant assistance regarding any issue that involves a sale or service.

To assist with this, it offers a FAQ bot to lessen the load of simple, repetitive customer queries. The app’s feature set is far more robust due to a long list of integrations, including OpenAI, IBM Watson, Zapier, and Shopify. It enables easy, seamless hand-off from chatbot to a human operator for those interactions that call for it.

Pricing

  • Free: 30-day trial
  • Lite: $100 month-to-month, or $1,000 billed annually, for up to two teammates; $20 per month for each additional teammate
  • Advanced: $200 month-to-month, or $2,000 billed annually, for up to five teammates; $30 per month for each additional teammate
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Omnichannel Users report inconsistent integrations
Multilingual bots Lite plan lacks advanced analytics and reporting features

Why I chose Kommunicate

Kommunicate is on this list because of its omnichannel communication abilities. It also has a CSAT rating, a method that is used to identify how satisfied customers are with a company’s products or services, making it trustworthy. Also, it can connect with other apps using a third-party service such as Zapier, making it a versatile chatbot. In addition, Kommunicate can manage customer conversations through bots, live chat, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and Line.

Kommunicate screenshot.

Claude: Best Chatbot for Long Conversational Memory

Overall Rating: 4.4

Claude is Anthropic’s free AI chatbot. It runs Claude 3, a powerful LLM known for its large context window of 200,000 tokens per prompt, or around 150,000 words. This gives it one of the best conversational memories around.

Anthropic Claude icon.

To put that in perspective, you can be at the tail end of a conversation the size of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Claude will still remember everything that was said, taking your previous questions, file uploads, and responses into account when it responds to your newest prompts.

Its ability to analyze and summarize long documents is excellent, and its answers tend to be more straightforward than those of ChatGPT. When trying Claude, I was constantly surprised at how concise its answers were to my questions. It felt like I was messaging a true human expert rather than someone going out and finding the answers and regurgitating them back to me. All of this makes Claude a valuable research assistant and creative collaborator.

Pricing

  • Free: Unlimited access to Claude.ai chat
  • Claude Pro: $20 per month

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Extremely large context window Can’t generate new images
Feels like talking to a human Has trouble with numerical questions

Why I Chose Claude

I chose Claude because of its remarkable 200,000-token context window, which is perfect for summarizing and analyzing large documents. It can accommodate the equivalent of 500 pages of text without any hassle. Its responses are simple and easy to understand and its seamless integration with more than 600 apps through Zapier increases its utility and adaptability.

Claude screenshot.

ChatSpot: Best for HubSpot Customers

Overall Rating: 4.4

ChatSpot combines the capabilities of ChatGPT and HubSpot CRM into one solution. With this tool, you can draft blog posts and tweets and also create AI-generated images, or you can feed it a prompt to enable you to get specific data from your HubSpot CRM.

ChatSpot icon.

ChatSpot allows you to perform many functions, including adding contacts and creating tasks and notes. You can also ask it to summarize your CRM data or generate a bar chart of results to understand your company’s performance.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, this chatbot app can be a useful choice, given that Hubspot offers so many ways to connect with third party tools—literally hundreds of business apps. And HubSpot, as its users are well aware, is a platform that offers great functionality for sales reps. This chatbot will likely remain a top candidate for sales and marketing professionals who need improved functionality for customer sales and service.

Pricing

  • ChatSpot is free

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Easy to use Limited scope
SEO expertise Support could be improved

Why I chose Chatspot

I selected ChotSpot to be on this list because it uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4 to deliver sophisticated AI features. It offers prompt templates and a library to improve efficiency and optimize workflows and it interacts easily with programs like ChatGPT, HubSpot, DALL-E, and Google Docs.

ChatSpot screenshot.

Intercom: Best for Handling Support Queries

Overall Rating: 4.3

Intercom AI’s chatbot, Fin, powered by large language models from OpenAI, aims to improve customer experience, automate support processes, and enhance user engagement. The fact that OpenAI (with all of its deep funding and vast expertise) provides Intercom’s underlying engine is clearly a plus.

Intercom icon.

Intercom can engage in realistic conversations with customers, helping to resolve common issues, answer questions, and initiate actions. It’s an app aimed clearly at the lucrative call center sector. In trying Intercom while acting as a customer seeking assistance, I found that its answers to my questions were helpful and quick. It also felt like there was a human on the other end of the chatbox.

So, what distinguishes it? It has gained wide adoption in the industry and is used by companies ranging from Amazon to Microsoft to Meta. It also offers a “plug and play” chatbot architecture to make setup relatively easy. And Intercom’s “Composer AI” feature enables a call center rep to rephrase a message with one click, turning a single phrase into a longer, more detailed response. It can easily summarize entire conversations with one click.

Pricing

  • Free: 14-day trial
  • Fin AI Chatbot: Usage measured in resolutions; $0.99 per resolution.
  • Essential: ​​$39 per seat, per month
  • Advanced: $99 per seat, per month
  • Expert: $139 per seat, per month

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Omnichannel: email, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger Advanced features cost extra
Instant answers from multiple sources May be pricey for small businesses

Why I Chose Intercom

I chose Intercom because it is perfect for international communication as it supports up to 43 languages. It can connect with social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, uses support content to respond to consumer inquiries, and even recommends pertinent articles to improve interaction and customer service.

Intercom screenshot.

Google Gemini: Best Chatbot for Brainstorming Ideas

Overall Rating: 4.3

Formerly known as Bard, Google Gemini is an AI-powered LLM chatbot built on the PaLM2 (Pathways Language Model, version 2) AI model. You can export your Google Gemini conversation to Google Docs or Draft in Gmail, and the platform allows you to create a shareable public link you can send to a third party, making it useful in collaborative workflows for professional work environments.

Google Gemini icon.

It’s a major plus for this app that it’s developed and supported by Google. Admittedly, this app had some difficulties when it was first rolled out. Apparently scrambling to keep up with the phenomenal success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google didn’t iron out all the bugs first. However, Gemini is being actively developed and will benefit greatly from Google’s deep resources and legions of top AI developers.

An important benefit of using Google Gemini is that its supporting knowledge base is as large as any chatbot’s—it’s created and updated by Google. So if your team is looking to brainstorm ideas or check an existing plan against a huge database, the Gemini app can be very useful due to its deep and constantly updated reservoir of data.

Pricing

  • Free to use

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Vast knowledgebase Users report slow response to complex questions
Cites sources of information. Can sometimes give inaccurate or incomplete information

Why I Chose Gemini 

I added Gemini to this list because of its ability to export conversations in document form. It also has a “Google it” function that directs you to the search engine to provide more information. In addition, it can generate code in 20 different programming languages, making it ideal for developers to speed up their coding tasks.

Gemini screenshot.

For an in-depth comparison of two leading chatbots, read our guide: Gemini vs ChatGPT 4: The Winning AI Revealed

Jasper: Best Chatbot for Marketing and Sales Teams

Overall Rating: 4.2

The Jasper generative AI chatbot can be trained on your brand voice to interact with your customers in a personalized manner. Jasper partners with OpenAI and uses GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 language models and their proprietary AI engine. The company also sources from other models such as Neo X, T5, and Bloom.

Jasper icon.

Jasper’s strongest upside is its brand voice functionality, which allows teams and organizations to create highly specific, on-brand content. This capability is invaluable for marketing and sales teams that need to ensure that all chatbot communications are created with an accurate brand identity.

Out of the box, Jasper offers more than 50 templates—you won’t need to create a chatbot persona from scratch. The wide array of models that Jasper accesses and its focus on customizing for brand identity means this is a choice that marketing teams should at least audition before they make any final selections for an AI chatbot.

Pricing

  • Creator: $49 per month billed monthly, or $468 billed annually
  • Pro: $69 per month billed monthly, or $708 billed annually
  • Business: Custom quotes

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Provides up-to-date information and cites sources Can be expensive
More than 50 built-in templates Focus mode can generate incomplete sentences

Why I Chose Jasper

Jasper made it to this list because of its ability to learn from your training data to generate your company’s brand voice. It can support up to 30 languages, and with its browser extensions, it allows you to access it on any website that you are on. In addition, it integrates with Zapier, Webflow, Make, Google Sheets, and other tools for improved productivity and collaboration capabilities.

Jasper screenshot.

For a full portrait of today’s generative AI leaders, see our guide: Generative AI Companies: Top 12 Leaders

Tidio: Best for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

Overall Rating: 4.2

SMBs looking for an easy-to-use AI chatbot to scale their support capacity may find Tidio to be a suitable solution. Tidio Lyro lets businesses automate customer support processes, reduce response times, and handle tasks such as answering frequently asked questions. You can also use Tidio Lyro to answer customer inquiries, provide automated responses, and assist with basic analytics, allowing you to manage customer support efficiently.

Tidio icon.

Tidio fits the SMB market because it offers solid functionality at a reasonable price. SMBs are under pressure to offer basic customer service at a low cost; to address this, Tidio allows the creation of a wide array of prewritten responses for simple questions that customers ask again and again. Tidio also offers add-ons at no extra cost, including sales templates to save time with setup.

Additionally, the quality of Tidio’s output was ranked highly in our research, so even as the AI chatbot focuses on affordability, it offers a quality toolset.

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 50 live chat conversations
  • Lyro AI: Starts at $39 per month for up to 200 conversations
  • Tidio+: Starts at $499 per month

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
AI Reply Assistant to speed up your response time Add-ons cost extra
FAQ and sales chatbot templates Analytics limited to Communicator and Tidio+ plans

Why I Chose Tidio

Tidio can be connected with popular eCommerce platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, and Wix so that it will be easier for you to interact with your customers when the need arises. It offers live chat capability and it can be integrated with Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and email services. With its multi-language support, it can offer canned responses that offer optimum support to your customers.

Tidio screenshot.

Perplexity AI: Best Chatbot for Finding Information on the Internet

Overall Rating: 4.2

Perplexity AI is a generative AI chatbot, search, and answer engine that allows users to express queries in natural language​​ and provides answers based on information gathered from various sources on the web. When you ask a question of Perplexity AI, it does more than provide the answer to your query—it also suggests related follow-up questions. In response, you can either select from the suggested related questions or type your own in the text field.

Perplexity icon.

Perplexity AI’s Copilot feature can guide users through the search process with interactive multiple searches and summarized results. This capability is helpful when exploring complex topics. However, it’s limited to five searches every four hours for free plan users and up to 300 searches for paid users.

Perplexity AI’s strength in searching the internet means this tool is ideal for advanced researchers, from academics to small businesses to large enterprises, including companies that want to explore how they’re viewed on the web. Because AI enables it to understand your search query at a multi-dimensional level, the app can guide you in directions you might not have thought of, making it a “serious researcher’s best friend.”

Pricing

  • Free: Limited features
  • Pro: $20 per month, or $200 per year

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Cites information sources File upload limited to three per day for free users
iOS and Android mobile app Customer support could be improved

Why I Chose Perplexity

Perplexity is an AI chatbot that is known to summarize the information of a SERP based on our inquiry on its chatbox. The reason why it made it to my list is because it supports Claude 3, Llama 3, and GPT-4, making it a versatile chatbot with incredible abilities. In addition, it can analyze uploaded documents in PDF or text files so that it will be easier for users to summarize or analyze any documents they need.

Perplexity screenshot.

LivePerson: Best for Conversation Analytics

Overall Rating: 4.1

The LivePerson AI chatbot can simulate human conversation and interact with users in a natural, conversational manner. Its goal is to discover customer intent—the core of most successful sales interactions—using analytics. To this end, LivePerson offers what it calls a “meaningful automated conversation score,” a metric that attempts to quantify whether a given bot-human interaction was successful in terms of company branding and service.

LivePerson icon.

Additionally, the platform enables you to convert webpages, PDFs, and FAQs into interactive AI chatbot experiences that use natural human language to showcase your brand’s expertise. The bot’s entire strategy is based on making as much content as possible available in a conversational format.

LivePerson can be deployed on various digital channels, such as websites and messaging apps, to automate customer interactions, provide instant responses to inquiries, assist with transactions, and offer personalized recommendations. Significantly, LivePerson is also geared to be embedded in social media platforms, so it certainly aims to reach a large consumer base.

Pricing

  • Conversational Cloud: Pay-as–you-go, per resolution
  • Generative AI: Pay-as-you-go, per resolution

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Bot analytics Does not publish pricing info
Meaningful automated conversation scores (MACS) Conversational cloud plan lacks generative AI capability

Why I Chose LivePerson

LivePerson is an excellent choice for conversation analysis because it can develop and build conversations like typing in a dialog. It offers an administrative function that includes the ability to create and manage users and skills while supporting 19 messaging channels.

LivePerson screenshot.

Chatsonic: Best Chatbot for Individuals in the Creative Industries

Overall Rating: 4

Trained and powered by Google Search to converse with users based on current events, Chatsonic positions itself as a ChatGPT alternative. The AI chatbot is a product of Writesonic, an AI platform geared for content creation. Chatsonic lets you toggle on the “Include latest Google data” button while using the chatbot to add real-time trending information.

Writesonic icon.

The benefit of this “latest data” approach is that it helps individuals in creative fields like advertising and marketing stay up to date on current trends. In contrast, some of the more advanced chatbots use large language models that are updated infrequently, so those looking for this week’s information won’t find what they need.

This current events approach makes the Chatsonic app very useful for a company that wants to consistently monitor any comments or concerns about its products based on current news coverage. Some companies will use this app in combination with other AI chatbot apps, with the Chatsonic chatbot reserved specifically to perform a broad and deep brand response monitoring function.

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 10,000 words per month
  • Unlimited: $20 per month billed monthly, or $192 billed annually for one user
  • Business: $19 per month billed monthly, or $152 billed annually for one user; up to 200,000 words for GPT 3.5 or 33,333 words for GPT 4.0; add words and users for an additional cost
  • Enterprise: Custom quote

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Support for 25 languages Priority support limited to business and enterprise plan users
Landing page generator capability Free plan lacks email support

Why I Chose ChatSonic

I chose ChatSonic because of its Sonic Editor, which is similar to Google Docs and facilitates editing and collaboration. It also provides third-party app integration, which improves its use and adaptability. Chatsonic offers different solutions to meet different demands and optimize workflows, including more than 100 AI templates.

ChatSonic screenshot.

Poe: Best Chatbot for Testing Multiple AI Chatbots

Overall Rating: 3.9

Poe is a chatbot tool that allows you to try out different AI models—including GPT-4, Gemini, Playground, and others listed in this article—in a single interface. This is helpful for people who want to pit them against each other to decide which tool to purchase. It’s also great for those who plan to use multiple LLM models and unlock their various strengths for a low price of $16.67 per month when paid annually.

Poe icon.

For example, if you plan to use Claude 3 for conversational chat and GPT-4 for content generation—their respective specialties—you can get both by subscribing to Poe rather than paying for each separately, which would cost $40 per month. Developers can also use Poe to build their own chatbots using one of the popular models as the foundation, streamlining the process.

Pricing

  • Free: Limited access
  • Poe Subscription: Starts at $16.67 per month; includes unlimited daily messages and access to exclusive bots like GPT-4 and Claude-3-Opus

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Access to multiple advanced LLMs for a low monthly price Higher cost for access to newer chatbots like GPT-4 and Claude-3-Opus
Can easily test various chatbots against each other Doesn’t actually have its own chatbot

Why I Chose Poe

Poe allows me to test and compare different popular AI chatbots easily and this is why it made it to my list. It provides access to multiple AI chatbots, such as GPT-4 and Claude-3-Opus for a low price—it also comes with a free version. In addition, it streamlines building your AI chatbot using a top LLM as your model as the foundation.

Poe screenshot.

Drift: Best for Businesses that Rely on B2B Sales and Marketing

Overall Rating: 3.8

Drift’s AI is trained on more than 100 million B2B sales and marketing conversations, enabling it to understand and respond to B2B customer inquiries in the conversational manner that’s expected in this market sector—including multi-language support.

Drift icon.

The Drift AI chatbot is designed to handle different types of conversations, including lead nurturing, customer support, and sales assistance. It can engage with website visitors and provide relevant information or route inquiries to the appropriate human representative.

Drift can be custom-trained for your B2B business in fine detail, allowing it to learn your brand’s voice and respond in a manner similar to your in-house reps. The B2B market is a specific use case for AI chatbots, and Drift’s focus on this market means that a B2B company can set up a highly functional chatbot that will evolve with the B2B market over time with less work.

Pricing

  • Premium: $30,000 billed annually
  • Advanced: Available upon request
  • Enterprise: Custom quote

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Multi-language support Expensive
Prospector and AI engagement score Premium plan lacks advanced routing

Why I Chose Drift

Drift’s extensive features such as role-based access control and user administration, which provides safe and well-organized management, earned its spot on the list. To improve client interaction, it offers live chat, AI-powered chatbots, and customizable chatbots. Its seamless meeting calendar makes it easier to set appointments by integrating with Teams, Office 365, and Google. Drift also offers thorough conversation and conversion reporting, which helps companies monitor and improve their interactions.

Drift screenshot.

Ada: Best for Customer Service Automation

Overall Rating: 3.8

Ada is an AI-powered customer service automation platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to automate customer service tasks. It is designed to help resolve customer issues, allowing businesses to streamline customer service operations and enhance the customer experience.

Ada icon.

There are two ways to use Ada. You can either connect it to your knowledgebase and use generative AI to answer questions grounded in your existing content or build a hard-coded chatbot using Ada’s natural language understanding and its drag-and-drop platform for a pre-scripted, easy, and fast setup.

In either case, Ada enables you to monitor and measure your bot’s KPI metrics across digital and voice channels—for example, automated resolution rate, average handle time, containment rate, CSAT, and handoff rate. It also offers predictive suggestions for answers, allowing the app to stay ahead of customer interactions. Ada’s user interface is intuitive and easy to use, which creates a faster onboarding process for customer service reps.

Pricing

  • Generative: Contact Ada’s sales team for a quote
  • Scripted: Contact Ada’s sales team for a quote

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Customize chatbot personas Lacks transparent pricing
Support for more than 50 languages No free plan

Why I Chose Ada

Ada is part of the list because of its smooth integration with third-party apps like Marketo, Shopify, and Clearbit, which allows organizations to improve functionality and optimize processes. Also, it provides automatic resolution measurement, which helps teams in monitoring and enhancing the effectiveness of their support procedures. Ada stands out for its sophisticated branding features that offer a wide range of customization options to match the chatbot’s appearance and tone with a business’s distinct identity.

Ada screenshot.

YouChat: Best Chatbot for Students

Overall Rating: 3.6

Designed by You.com, YouChat is an AI-powered generative chatbot that can summarize text, write code, suggest ideas, compose emails, and answer general questions based on information available on the web.

You.com icon.

It also cites its information source, making it easy to fact-check the chatbot’s answers to your queries. YouChat combines various elements in search results, including images, videos, news, maps, social, code, and search engine results on the subject.

In essence, YouChat is a lighter-weight tool with an affordable price plan that performs a wide array of tasks—particularly those needed by students. YouChat offers an easy user interface that will appeal to a busy user base that wants to jump right in without undergoing a lot of technical training.

The upside of this kind of easy-to-use app is that, as generative AI advances, today’s fairly lightweight tools will likely offer an enormous level of functionality. So any student or SMB user who starts with it now will probably reap greater benefits in the months and years ahead.

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 10 AI writing generations
  • YouPro: $14.99 per month
  • YouPro for Education: $6.99 per month

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Available Chrome extension Contextual understanding could be improved
Interactive search results with various elements Sometimes displays outdated links or information

Why I Chose YouChat 

YouChat’s ability to generate code and images and offer references to its generated responses. Its multimodal search capability, such as using voice, text, and images, makes it easier for users to access and do their research.

Features

  • Code generator
  • Multimodal search capability
  • Support for social media profiles

YouChat screenshot.

HuggingChat: Best Chatbot for Developers

Overall Rating: 3.3

Developed by Hugging Face, HuggingChat is a chatbot based on the Open Assistant Conversational AI Model. It uses NLP and ML algorithms to interact with users and can generate answers to questions, write essays, write code, translate text, and construct emails. The platform has been trained on a large dataset of diverse conversations and can learn from new interactions.

Hugging Face icon.

Hugging Face has a large and enthusiastic following among developers—it’s something of a favorite in the development community. Its platform is set up as an ideal environment to mix and match chatbot elements, including datasets ranging from Berkeley’s Nectar to Wikipedia/Wikimedia, and the AI models available range from Anthropic to Playground AI.

Many of these resources may not mean much to the SMB owner or enterprise manager, but they mean a great deal to developers with the expertise to use a deep resource base to customize an AI chatbot. Given that HuggingChat offers such a rich developer-centric platform, users can expect it to grow rapidly as AI chatbots are still gaining more adoption.

Pricing

  • Free: Limited access
  • Pro: $9 per month; gives early access to new features
  • Enterprise Hub: $20 per user, per month

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Easy to use Knowledgebase not up to date
Highly customizable; lets developers create custom intents, entities, and actions Sometimes provides an incomplete answer

Why I Chose HuggingChat

HuggingFace is known for its web search functionality that complements its responses with web content. With its multilingual support, it allows users from all over the world to interact with this AI chatbot. In addition, it can debug and write code at the same time and create Excel formulas.

Features

  • Web search functionality complements response with web content
  • Multilingual support
  • Can debug and write code and create Excel formulas

HuggingChat screenshot.

Replika: Best for Personal Use

Overall Rating: 3.2

Replika is an artificial intelligence chatbot designed to have meaningful and empathetic-seeming conversations with users. It’s focused more on entertaining and engaging personal interaction rather than straightforward business purposes.

Replika icon.

To support its goal, Replika uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to text-based conversations. Replika aims to be a virtual friend or companion that learns from and adapts to your personality and preferences.

To better engage, the platform learns your texting style and mimics it. Of course, this means that the longer you interface with the app, the more accurately Replika can mimic your style.

Its motto is “My AI Friend,” and the vendor claims that it can offer dialogue geared for emotional support. To that end, it can engage in a wide variety of topics or even help you learn new things.

Pricing

  • Free: Limited access
  • Month-to-Month: $19.99
  • Annual: $69.96.
  • Lifetime: $299.99

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
iOS and Android mobile apps available Limited free plan
Offers emotional support User interface could be improved
Availability and convenience.

Why I Chose Replika

Replika allows its users to have role-playing activities, offering them a unique experience while using an AI chatbot. Users can communicate with the Replika chatbot through text, pictures, voice calls, and video calls where conversations can cover a wide range of topics. Topics can include personal interests to general information. This chatbot also guides users through specific conversation topics such as mindfulness, stress management, or self-care.

Replika screenshot.

Bing Chat Enterprise: Best Chatbot for Organizations in the Microsoft Ecosystem

Overall Rating: 3.1

Microsoft generative AI tool Bing Chat Enterprise uses GPT-4, which includes a top large language model, to generate natural language responses to user queries. Bing Chat Enterprise has three conversation styles: creative, balanced, and precise. These styles help you set the tone for the expected response to your query.

Microsoft icon.

Bing Chat Enterprise is available in 160 regions. Users can also access it via the Windows Copilot Sidebar, making this app easily accessible. Microsoft is incorporating AI across its product portfolio, so this chat app will likely show up in a number of applications. If your company uses Microsoft, this chat app is a good choice.

The greatest strong point for the Bing Chat tool is that it’s produced by Microsoft, arguably the leader in AI today. The company’s deep resources and dominant technical expertise in AI software should support this chat app very well in the years ahead.

Microsoft is also skilled at serving both the consumer and the business market, so this chat app can be configured for a variety of levels of performance. It has the depth of features needed to serve the SMB market and large enterprise.

Pricing

  • Free: Available to customers licensed for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, Business Premium, or A3 or A5 for faculty
  • Standalone: $5 per user, per month

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Bing’s citations can help you continue research on your own Limited usage in browsers other than Microsoft Edge
User interface is visually appealing and easy to navigate Limited to 30 responses per conversation

Why I Chose Bing Chat Enterprise

BingChat Enterprise has a versatile mix of conversation styles for different enterprise AI use cases—which is why I chose it to be a part of this list. Its citation capabilities allow you to fact-check its generated output. In addition, it allows its users to upload images for it to analyze, and at the same time, it can generate an image based on your prompt.

Bing Chat Enterprise screenshot.

OpenAI Playground: Best Chatbot for Customizability

Overall rating: 3.0

OpenAI Playground was designed by the same generative AI company that created ChatGPT (see above). As such, it is well-funded and is continuously improved by some of the best developers in the AI industry. Expect it to stay ahead of the curve in terms of feature set.

OpenAI icon.

The platform is a web-based environment allowing users to experiment with different OpenAI models, including GPT-4, GPT-3.5 Turbo, and others. OpenAI Playground is suitable for advanced users looking for a customizable AI chatbot model that they can fine-tune to suit their business needs. This advanced platform enables a vast level of choices and approaches in an AI chatbot.

OpenAI Playground’s focus on customizability means that it is ideal for companies that need a very specific focus to their chatbot. For instance, a sophisticated branding effort or an approach that requires a very proprietary large language model, like finance or healthcare. Given that this app needs true developer expertise to be fully customizable, it is not the best choice for small businesses or companies on a tight budget.

Pricing

Priced per 1,000 tokens, about 750 words; varies by model choice. New users get $5 in free credit to use for their first three months.

  • GPT-4 Models: Input costs $0.03, output costs $0.06 for 8,000 context; input costs $0.06, output costs $0.12 for 32,000 context
  • GPT-3.5 Turbo: Input costs $0.0015, output costs $0.002 for 4,000 context; input costs $0.003, output costs $0.004 for 16,000 context

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Access via Web or Android and iOS app. Limited creativity
Highly customizable Privacy concerns

Why I Chose Open AI Playground

Open AI Playground offers a variety of GPT-powered apps, each with its own specific function—for example, there’s an app for brainstorming, writing, generating images, and writing code. In addition, Open AI Playground has sentiment analysis abilities which makes responses sound more empathic. There are multiple model options depending on your subscription.

ChatGPT screenshot.

Key Features of AI Chatbots?

AI chatbots require a number of advanced features to accomplish their many tasks, ranging from context understanding to personalization.

Natural Language Processing

Natural language processing is a critical feature of a generative AI chatbot. NLP enables the AI chatbot to understand and interpret casual conversational input from users, allowing you to have more human-like conversations. With NLP capabilities, generative AI chatbots can recognize context, intent, and entities within the conversation.

Context Understanding

Context understanding is a chatbot’s ability to comprehend and retain context during conversations—this enables a more seamless and human-like conversation flow. A high-quality artificial intelligence chatbot can maintain context and remember previous interactions, providing more personalized and relevant responses based on the conversation history. This enables chatbots to provide more coherent and relevant replies.

Personalization

When shopping for AI chatbot software, customization and personalization capabilities are important factors to consider as they enable the tool to tailor responses based on user preferences and history. ChatGPT, for instance, allows businesses to train and fine-tune chatbots to align with their brand, industry-specific terminology, and user preferences.

Multilingual Support

An AI chatbot’s ability to communicate in multiple languages makes it appealing to global audiences. This functionality also allows the chatbot to translate text from one language to another.

How to Choose the Best AI Chatbot For Your Business

The best AI chatbot for your company serves your business’s needs and balances quality service with moderately expensive or lower-cost pricing based on what works with your budget. Additionally, you’ll need to ensure it has all the necessary AI features you need for your operations, and that these features will be supported going forward.

Organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem may find Bing Chat Enterprise beneficial, as it works better on the Edge browser. ChatGPT does not cite its data sources, but it is one of the most versatile and creative AI chatbots. Google Bard cites data sources and provides up-to-date information, but its response time is sometimes slow. Chatsonic can generate AI images as part of the answer to your query.

What appear to be positives to you may be negatives to another user, and vice versa. The best tool for your business is unique to you—conduct your own research to fully understand the chatbot market, identify your overall AI goals, and shop for a chatbot tool that offers features and capabilities that meet your requirements.

AI Chatbots: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Below, we provide answers to the most commonly asked questions about AI chatbots.

What Features Should Businesses Look for in AI Chatbots?

Key features to look for in AI chatbots include NLP capabilities, contextual understanding, multi-language support, pre-trained knowledge and conversation flow management. It is also important to look for a tool with a high accuracy rating, even if the questions asked are complex or open-ended.

Why are AI Chatbots Important for Businesses?

AI chatbots are important to businesses because they enhance customer experience and provide various operational benefits, such as improved customer experience, personalized experiences, cost reduction, and increased productivity. Most importantly, they provide customer service at a far lower cost.

How Can AI Chatbots Enhance Customer Support and Engagement?

AI chatbots can boost customer support by providing 24/7 support, answering common questions, and personalizing interaction based on customer preferences. (For instance, multilingual AI chatbots can communicate in multiple languages, enabling businesses to assist customers from different regions).

What are Traditional Chatbot Builders?

Traditional chatbot builders are tools that help you build conventional rule-based chatbots that stick to a prewritten script. Compared to AI chatbots, they lack natural language processing abilities and feel far less human-like.

How We Evaluated the Best AI Chatbots

We evaluated today’s leading AI chatbots with a rubric that balanced factors like cost, feature set, quality of output, and support.

Feature Set | 30 percent

Features carry the most weight in our evaluation process. We evaluated various capabilities offered by each AI software, including multi-language support, the ability to accept spoken word input, the programmability of the solution, the kind of users it is built for, and customization options.

Ease of Use | 25 percent

We assessed each AI software’s user interface and overall user experience. This included evaluating the ease of installation, setup process, and navigation within the platform. A well-designed and intuitive interface with clear documentation, support materials, and the AI chatbot response time contributed to a higher score in this category.

Cost | 20 percent

We reviewed each AI chatbot pricing model and available plans, plus the availability of a free trial to test out the platform. Our research found that some platforms are completely free, while some offer both free and paid plans—a tool like Google Bard gives you access to all its features for free, ChatGPT has a free plan with access to GPT 3.5 capabilities, while GPT 4 requires a monthly subscription. On the other hand, Jasper is a paid chatbot offering a seven-day free trial.

Support | 15 percent

Our analysis also considered the level of support provided by the AI software provider. We assessed the availability and responsiveness of customer support, including customer service hours, email support, live chat support, and knowledge base.

Quality of Output | 10 percent

To determine the output quality generated by the AI chatbot software, we analyzed the accuracy of responses, coherence in conversation flow, and ability to understand and respond appropriately to user inputs. We selected our top solutions based on their ability to produce high-quality and contextually relevant responses consistently.

Bottom Line: Today’s Top AI Chatbots Take Highly Varied Approaches

Determining the “best” AI chatbot software can be subjective, as it largely depends on a business’s specific needs and objectives. Chatbot software is enormously varied and continuously evolving, and new chatbot entrants may offer innovative features and improvements over existing solutions. The best chatbot for your business will vary based on factors such as industry, use case, budget, desired features, and your own experience with AI. There is no “one size fits all” chatbot solution.

Read our guide to the top 150 AI companies to learn more about the businesses reshaping and redefining the industry.

The post What Is The Best AI Chatbot? 21Top Picks of 2025 appeared first on eWEEK.

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9 Best AI Meeting Note Takers of 2025: Must-Have Assistant Tools https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/best-ai-meeting-assistants/ Mon, 06 Jan 2025 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=223280 Discover the top AI meeting note takers for professionals in 2025. Streamline your meetings today for better productivity.

The post 9 Best AI Meeting Note Takers of 2025: Must-Have Assistant Tools appeared first on eWEEK.

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AI meeting assistant tools can provide a major productivity boost during meetings by transcribing, captioning, and summarizing discussions, identifying speakers, and tracking action items, allowing you to concentrate on your conversations without distraction. I evaluated the best AI meeting note taker tools to see how they compare on features, pricing, pros and cons, and use cases to help you determine the best virtual assistant for your business. Here are my picks for the best AI meeting note taker assistants of 2025:

  • Fireflies.ai: Best for Advanced Features
  • Fathom: Best Free AI Meeting Assistant
  • Avoma: Best for Conversation Analysis and Insights
  • Sembly: Best for Comprehensive Meeting Summaries
  • Otter: Best for Transcription 
  • tl;dv: Best for UX and Product Teams
  • MeetJamie: Best for Quick Meeting Summaries
  • Airgram: Best for Team Collaboration
  • MeetGreek: Best for Meeting Highlights and Keyword Detection

Best AI Meeting Not Taker Comparison

The table below compares my picks for the best AI meeting note taker assistants, from their greatest strengths to their starting prices.

Best For Supported Meeting Platforms Keyword Search Alerts Starting Price
(Billed Annually)
Fireflies.ai Advanced features Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex No $10 per user, per month
Fathom Free AI meeting assistant Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet Yes $15 per user, per month
Avoma Conversation analysis and insights Bluejeans, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, Highfive,  Lifesize, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, UberConference Yes $19 per user, per month
Sembly Creating comprehensive meeting summaries Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams No $10 per user, per month
Otter Transcription Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams No $10 per user, per month
tl;dv UX and product teams Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams No $18 per user, per month
MeetJamie Quick meeting summaries Webex, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams No $25 per user, per month
Airgram Team collaboration Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom No $18 per user, per month
MeetGreek Highlights and keyword detection Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom No $15 per user, per month

Fireflies.ai

Best For Advanced Features

The Fireflies.ai AI-powered meeting assistant helps you to transcribe, summarize, record, filter, and analyze your virtual meetings and conversations. Like a fly on the wall, Fireflies join your virtual meeting and capture video and audio recordings along with AI-based notes so you can read, listen to, or share them. This functionality can, for instance, enable recruiters to review hiring interviews or help managers to check action items from their meetings.

Fireflies.ai icon.

With its advanced recording search and filtering feature, you can also find and listen to key points of the call. The conversation intelligence tool lets you track speaker time, sentiment, objections, competitors, and other custom data points you want to monitor and analyze.

In setting up Fireflies.ai, I liked how it prompted me to set rules for when it attends meetings and how it sends recaps that let me automate who receives the notes to ensure they don’t go to clients unless I specify.

Fireflies.ai screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Unlimited storage for business users Priority support limited to Enterprise plan
Can record using the Chrome extension Free plan doesn’t allow downloads

Pricing

  • Free: Up to 800 minutes of storage per seat
  • Pro: $10 per user, per month billed annually; month-to-month plan costs $18 per user
  • Business: $19 per user, per month billed annually; month-to-month plan costs $29 per user
  • Enterprise: Custom quote

Features

  • Integrates with more than 40 third-party tools across 10 categories
  • Variable meeting audio playback speed
  • Video screen capture capability
  • Conversational intelligence
  • Collaboration capabilities

Fathom

Best Free AI Meeting Note Taker Assistant

Fathom is a free AI meeting note-taking tool that can record, transcribe, highlight, and summarize your meetings with no usage limitations. It works with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet and integrates with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zapier to enable the automatic transfer of meeting notes to these systems.

Fathom icon.

Although the free plan should suffice for most users, the company does offer a Fathom Premium plan and Team additions that can do advanced AI summaries and AI-triggered actions. You can try Fathom Premium for free for 30 days.

I liked the clean user interface and found the meeting summaries to be accurate and concise. What surprised me most about Fathom’s AI note-taking capabilities was how quickly it generated a summary with time stamps from the video call. In the demo, the summary outline was ready in less than 30 seconds. Action items are also automatically captured and saved on the sidebar, making it hard to forget them.

Fathom screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Generous free plan with no usage limits Zoom integration could be improved
Meeting summaries within 30 seconds Bot can be finicky

Pricing

  • Free: Ideal for personal use
  • Premium: $15 per user, per month
  • Team Standard: $19 per user, per month
  • Team Pro: $29 per user, per month

Features

  • CRM sync (HubSpot, Salesforce, and Close)
  • Okta SSO/SCIM integration
  • Searchable repository for calls
  • Unified view of all conversations with customers
  • Keyword alerts

Avoma

Best for Conversation Analysis and Insights

Avoma is an end-to-end AI meeting note taker assistant, conversation intelligence, and revenue intelligence tool that allows individuals and teams to capture, transcribe, analyze, and take automatic notes on meetings and sales calls.

Avoma icon.

Its powerful conversational intelligence feature sets it apart by helping business leaders and sales professionals glean necessary insights from conversations about what is and isn’t working. For example, you can see which topics the most successful reps are discussing on their calls or create scorecards to objectively score conversations based on your chosen criteria, including the number of questions asked or time spent on a specific topic.

As I see it, the main benefit here goes to the sales leaders looking to develop more data-driven sales training plans. Yet it can also be useful for managers who want to teach their direct reports how to succeed in internal meetings.

Avoma screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
AI scorecards and autoscoring Rapid playback speed sometimes misses words
Keyword search alerts Business and Enterprise plans lack monthly pricing

Pricing

  • Basic: Free for up to five meetings per month
  • Starter: $19 per user, per month for up to 20 meetings, billed annually; $24 per user, per month for up to 20 meetings, billed monthly
  • Plus: $49 per user, per month for unlimited meetings, billed annually; $59 per user, per month for unlimited meetings, billed monthly
  • Business: $79 per user, per month, billed annually
  • Enterprise: $149 per user, per month, billed annually

Features

  • Scheduling capabilities, from access scheduling to group scheduling
  • Meeting recording
  • Tool to upload pre-recorded audio or video files
  • Transcription and AI notes
  • Conversational AI and automatic scorecard
  • Integrations with CRM, video conferencing, and dialer tools

Sembly

Best for Creating Comprehensive Meeting Summaries and Minutes

Sembly is an end-to-end meeting assistant that transcribes, takes notes, and generates insights for your professional meetings. The solution also helps with scheduling. By syncing Sembly with your Outlook or Google calendar, you can permit it to automatically join all of your calls without downloading or installing any software. I found this automatic record feature of Sembly to be very helpful, as it saves time for users.

Sembly icon.

Best of all, in my view, Sembly’s AI identifies key items in the discussion—such as actions, decisions, issues, risks, events, and requirements—and summarizes it all for you into a neat paragraph at the top of the notes. This feature enables you to get the gist of what was said and decided without reading through the entire text.

Sembly screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Offers meeting notes with AI summary Professional plan limited to one member
Supports over 40 languages Some recordings available only to Team and Enterprise plans

Pricing

  • Personal: Free for a four-hour record limit and one-hour monthly upload, limited to one member
  • Professional: $10 per month for one user, billed annually; $15 per month for one user, billed monthly
  • Team: $20 per user, per month, billed annually, or $29 per user, per month, billed monthly; limited to 40 members
  • Enterprise: Custom quotes

Features

  • Integrates with task management tools such as HubSpot and Zapier
  • Works with Zoom and other meeting apps
  • Record and transcribe capabilities
  • In-depth meeting notes
  • Voice identification capability

Read our guide to the Best Artificial Intelligence Software to learn about the larger landscape of leading AI software.

OtterPilot

Best for Transcription

OtterPilot is an AI-powered meeting note taker assistant that provides transcription and collaboration features, and when you connect it to your Google or Outlook calendars it automatically joins your Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet meetings.

Otter.ai icon.

The service is capable of transcribing both in-person and virtual meetings. It can be used for various purposes, including transcribing interviews, meetings, lectures, and podcasts, and works for audio and video files as well as YouTube. To save you time, the tool will also provide AI-powered summaries of the transcription, condensing as much as an hour of conversation into a 30-second brief.

In exploring the free version, I found the in-app AI chatbot helpful. It could summarize calls from last week, tell me the status of a deal, and even help me prepare for a meeting. I also found the user interface to be self-explanatory and the platform easy to navigate.

OtterPilot screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Exportable audio, text, and captions Sales tool only available to enterprise users
Supports mp3, txt, pdf, docx, srt, and bulk export Limited language support

Pricing

  • Basic: Up to 300 monthly transcription minutes
  • Pro: $10 per user, per month, billed annually; $16.99 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Business: $20 per user, per month, billed annually; $30 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Enterprise: Quote available upon request

Features

  • Automatic transcription
  • Automatic sync of audio/video files from Dropbox
  • Recording and playback capabilities
  • AES-256 encryption for real-time content
  • Search and keyword analysis
  • Auto-sends meeting summaries to attendees

tl;dv

Best for UX and Product Teams

tl;dv is an AI meeting assistant that automatically summarizes and takes notes on your meetings. Most notably, it includes a full range of features that can help UX and product teams build better products more quickly. For example, it can automatically capture customer feedback and feature requests from sales meetings and send them to the product team.

tl;dv icon.

The platform also makes collaborating on product development easier by allowing you to share snippets of product conversations and customer research calls with your other team members. Its AI keyword and topic identification tool helps you analyze all your customer calls to gain insight into their specific desires, letting you create feedback-driven products.

Tl;dv screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
More than 30 languages supported No free trial for Pro plan
Generous free plan Limited features compared to other tools

Pricing

  • Free: No cost for small teams and individuals
  • Pro: $18 per user, per month
  • Business: $59 per user, per month
  • Enterprise: Custom quotes

Features

  • Transcribe and summarize in more than 20 languages
  • Spot trends in customer conversations
  • Capture customer feedback and feature requests
  • Combine clips into reels
  • Embed recordings and clips to WordPress and Notion
  • Automatic speaker recognition

MeetJamie

Best for Automatic Meeting Summary

MeetJamie is an AI notetaker for meetings that works across 15 languages and most popular meeting tools, including Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet. MeetJamie is also capable of extracting tasks and detecting decisions in a meeting so that nothing falls through the cracks in your business meetings.

MeetJamie icon.

What I found most notable about the app was that, unlike the many artificial intelligence meeting note taking assistant tools that automatically sync with your calendar and join your call when it’s meeting time, MeetJamie doesn’t send a bot to your meeting—instead, it records your meeting audio and generates transcripts and summaries. This is preferable for people who don’t want a bot hanging around in their virtual meetings and calls because they find it awkward or intrusive.

MeetJamie screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Supports over 30 languages Requires installation
Automatic speaker recognition No video recording

Pricing

  • Free: Five monthly meeting credits for meetings up to 30 minutes
  • Standard: $25 per user, per month
  • Pro: $49 per user, per month
  • Executive: $105 per user, per month

Features

  • Automatic generation of summary and action items
  • Custom note templates
  • Meeting highlight
  • Meeting recordings

Read our guide to the Top 20 Generative AI Tools and Apps to learn more about the leading artificial intelligence tools used by enterprise companies.

Airgram

Best for Team Collaboration

Airgram is an AI meeting assistant that helps you record, transcribe, and share your meetings and conversations. It automatically turns speech into searchable, editable text that you can easily export to popular tools like Notion or Slack. This is great for looping in team members who were absent or not invited to the meeting but would get value out of the key insights in the conversation.

Airgram icon.

Once transcribed, multiple people can comment on and edit the transcript of meeting notes, making it easy to collaborate with team members and clarify action items post-meeting. Unlike other tools, Airgram also offers several meeting agenda templates and options, making it easy to set up meetings with a predefined structure. I found the tool’s templates to streamline the process of agenda-setting to be useful and user-friendly.

Airgram screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Integration with task management apps Speaker differentiation feature can be buggy
Can create video snippets Free plan integration is limited

Pricing

  • Free: 30 minutes maximum call duration
  • Plus: $18 per user, per month

Features

  • Share meeting snippets and links with internal and external contacts
  • Transcribe imported audio and video files
  • Associate notes from recurring meetings
  • Works with Zoom and Google Meet

MeetGeek

Best for Highlights and Keyword Detection

MeetGeek integrates with your video conferencing tools to record, transcribe, and distribute meeting highlights to meeting participants. I found the distribution feature to be especially useful, and the tool’s keyword detection abilities mean many teams—including sales, HR, and marketing—can benefit.

MeetGeek icon.

The sales team can use it to automatically capture notes and insights from customer calls, thereby pushing tasks and highlights into their CRM tools such as HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce. HR teams can automatically sync meeting notes and recordings with their applicant tracking systems (ATS) to create rich candidate profiles that can be analyzed later. Additionally, marketing teams can use it to make a repository of customers’ insights, allowing them to turn feedback into case studies.

MeetGeek screenshot.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Integrates with project management tools Lacks instant meeting capability
Team collaboration features Limited support for low-tier plans

Pricing

  • Basic: Free plan
  • Pro: $15 per user, per month, billed annually; $19 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Business: $29 per user, per month, billed annually; $39 per user, per month, billed monthly
  • Enterprise: Starts at $59 per month

Features

  • User management capability
  • Integrations with third-party services, including HubSpot and Slack
  • Automatic sharing for participants
  • Highlight-capture and keyword-detection
  • Exports transcripts to Google Docs, Word, and XLS

Key Features of AI Meeting Note Taker Assistant Software

While AI meeting assistant solutions vary in how they implement various features, the key features across most tools include meeting notes, action item tracking, integration with third-party services, and intelligent meeting search.

Meeting Notes and Transcript

Meeting notes are a core component of AI meeting note taking assistant software, as these tools help you remember important details from your meetings and any action items that you or other team members need to complete before the next meeting. The transcription capability helps you capture every word spoken and creates a searchable record to refer to later.

Action Item Tracking

AI meeting assistants can track action items assigned during meetings and remind participants to complete them. Some software may even integrate with project management tools or task trackers to streamline this process. For example, Sembly and MeetGeek integrate with task and project management tools.

Integration with Third-Party Services

Integration with third-party apps is an important feature to consider in selecting an AI meeting note taking assistant. Syncing your AI meeting assistant tool with Calendar apps like Google and Outlook and video conferencing software like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams allows it to join your meetings and automatically take notes. Just be aware that not all AI meeting assistants integrate with all video conferencing tools. You always need to verify that your selected tool can connect with your company’s existing software and tools.

Intelligent Meeting Search

AI-powered intelligent meeting tools allow you to use keywords to search through your AI meeting assistant’s past meeting notes, documents, and recordings to retrieve relevant information, which eliminates the need for manual searching.

How to Choose the Right AI Meeting Assistant Tool for Your Business

The best AI meeting assistant for your business depends on your needs and preferences—there is no one-size-fits-all AI meeting app. To choose the right AI meeting assistant for your business, consider the following:

  • Organization Size: The size of your organization and the number of employees using the AI meeting assistant will determine your needs. A large team, of course, typically requires the enterprise plan, which offers several advantages.
  • Company Needs: There may be specific pain points and challenges you hope to address with an AI meeting assistant. Do you need mainly transcription, or are you looking for an array of advanced tools?
  • Budget: Some meeting assistant tools may be more affordable than others, while some may offer more advanced features but come at a higher cost.
  • Integration with Existing Tools: Can it connect with your current tech stack? That is, can it connect with all the elements of your tech stack, or just a few? 
  • Features: Look for features that are beneficial to your organization and worth the cost that the AI meeting tool charges. What upgrades is the vendor planning? 

AI Meeting Note Taker Assistant Use Cases

AI meeting assistants support organizations and people in documenting and streamlining group talks by summarizing key points, recording action items, and ensuring that important information is readily available. These technologies have a wide range of practical applications, such as automating administrative work and enhancing communication.

Business Use Cases

  • Sending Real-Time Meeting Minutes: AI meeting assistants can transcribe and summarize talks in real-time, allowing team members to obtain meeting minutes right after the session. This ensures that nothing is forgotten and that all stakeholders, even those unable to attend, are on the same page.
  • Capturing Real-Time Lectures: AI systems can capture significant points during training sessions, webinars, and corporate presentations, creating a detailed record for attendees to study later. This enhances knowledge retention and facilitates onboarding or staff development initiatives.
  • Summarizing Meeting Materials and Note-Taking: AI assistants can reduce lengthy conversations into concise overviews highlighting the essential points, decisions, and next steps. This saves time when manually checking recordings or written notes.
  • Creating and Monitoring Action Items: AI can identify and assign tasks or assignments agreed upon during the discussion, including deadlines and reminders to guarantee responsibility. This streamlines project management and helps teams stay on target.
  • Organizing Meeting Notes and Research: Meeting assistants can organize notes by subject or agenda, and link them to pertinent papers or past talks. This establishes a consolidated knowledge repository, making it easy to find specific information when needed.
  • Tracking Meeting Progress: By analyzing recurred meetings, AI can track long-term project progress, identifying accomplished tasks and remaining issues. This encourages transparency and allows leaders to evaluate the success of talks over time.

Personal Use Cases

  • Creating Visualizations: AI programs can convert spoken words or audio recordings into flowcharts, idea diagrams, and mind maps. This improves knowledge by visualizing concepts, encouraging creative inquiry, and allowing for collaborative brainstorming from many viewpoints.
  • Repurposing Content: Meeting insights can be repackaged for various uses, including blog entries, social media updates, and presentations, letting you make the most of the material shared in meetings for entertainment, education, or archive purposes.
  • Analyzing Sentiments: AI assistants can judge the tone and mood of communication by allowing users to better understand team morale or emotional dynamics during meetings. This is especially effective for increasing communication and proactive conflict resolution.
  • Converting Handwriting into Digital Text: AI systems can digitize and organize handwritten notes collected during meetings, making them easier to edit, share, and save and removing the need for human transcription.
  • Personalizing Content and Learning Recommendations: Based on meeting conversations, AI can offer personalized resources or action plans, such as articles, videos, or training courses that are specific to your interests or roles.
  • AI-Powered Summaries and Categorizing: AI can generate summaries and organize them by theme or priority, allowing you to easily return to certain topics while ensuring that important information is readily available for future use.

How I Evaluated These Tools

I analyzed more than 30 AI meeting note taking assistant tools and scored them based on five key data points: core features, customer service and support, cost, integrations, and ease of use. I assigned a score to each AI meeting assistant tool based on these factors to determine their overall ranking.

I selected the top 10 AI meeting note taker assistant tools based on their scores and further evaluated them by conducting in-depth research, including reading customer reviews, analyzing case studies and testimonials, and studying website and product documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What Is the Best AI Meeting Note Taker?

The best meeting note taker depends on your team’s current budget priorities. If, for instance, you need a free AI meeting assistant with basic note-taking abilities, you can’t go wrong with Fathom.

Is There an AI to Take Notes on Team Meetings?

AI meeting assistants like Sembly can take notes on team meetings, record them, transcribe them, and even provide AI summaries and outlines of the conversation.

Can AI Transcribe a Meeting?

AI meeting assistants and note-taking apps like Avoma can connect with your meeting app and transcribe your voice and video meetings into text that is searchable and exportable to a variety of platforms.

Is There a Free AI to Take Notes During Meetings?

Fathom offers a generous free AI note-taking assistant that will take notes for you during your meetings. Most other AI meeting assistants also offer free plans with basic note-taking abilities.

What Are the Different Types of AI Meeting Assistants?

The majority of AI meeting assistants are primarily note-taking apps that automatically transcribe and summarize meetings, but there are also AI meeting assistants that are conversational intelligence tools, which not only transcribe but also analyze the conversations to identify trends, issues, and best practices.

What Is an AI Meeting Assistant?

An AI meeting assistant is an app or platform that automatically takes notes on your meetings, capturing key decisions and action items, and recording it in audio and/or video for review in a searchable, filterable database.

Why Do AI Meeting Assistants Matter?

AI meeting assistants automate meeting note-taking so that you can focus on engaging completely in your conversations with peers and clients instead of jotting down notes. These tools also make it easy to transcribe, record, and share aspects of your conversations, so you can easily review meetings and collaborate.

Bottom Line: The Best AI Meeting Note Taker Enhances Productivity

The best AI meeting assistant tools enhance productivity and efficiency in meetings. However, be aware that AI meeting assistant software varies considerably from app to app. Though it may look like they offer the same value proposition and capabilities on the surface, accuracy can vary greatly between different providers. All the tools I reviewed offer free plans, which is a good starting point. Sign up for a free plan and use it to get a feel for whether the tool will meet your needs.

Read our guide to AI sales tools for a deeper understanding of the software being used by the sales and marketing teams at leading companies.

The post 9 Best AI Meeting Note Takers of 2025: Must-Have Assistant Tools appeared first on eWEEK.

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6 AI Writing Tools For Content Creators in 2025 https://www.eweek.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-writing-tools/ Thu, 26 Dec 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=223127 See how six powerful AI writing tools perform across categories from pricing to features to find the right tool to support your content-creation process.

The post 6 AI Writing Tools For Content Creators in 2025 appeared first on eWEEK.

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AI writing tools can save you time and help you draft, edit, and refine your content, suggesting improvements in tone, structure, and clarity to let you focus on the creative aspects of your writing. Given the vast selection of choices, selecting the right tool can be daunting. I reviewed and compared the top AI writing tools based on features, pricing, and performance to help you find the best options for a wide range of use cases.

Here are my picks for the best AI writing tools:

  • Grammarly: Best Overall
  • Copy.ai: Best for Marketing and Sales Content
  • QuillBot: Best for Paraphrasing
  • Writesonic: Best for Writing Factually Accurate Articles
  • Rytr: Best for Versatile Content Creation
  • Frase: Best for SEO Writing

Comparison Chart: Best AI Writing Tools

This table below provides a concise overview of the best AI writing tools, including their overall ratings, key advantages, drawbacks, and starting price, so you can compare options at a glance.

AI Writing Tool Overall Rating Pros Cons Starting Price
Grammarly 4.4/5 Comprehensive features Occasionally misinterprets terms not in its database $12 per user, per month
Copy.ai 4/5 High tone customization Lacks built-in plagiarism checker $49 per seat, per month
QuillBot 4/5 Robust multilingual support Complex interface $19.95 per user, per month
Writesonic 3.8/5 Bulk AI article generator Struggles following complex prompts $20 per user, per month
Rytr 3.7/5 High versatility Restrictive free version $9 per user, per month
Frase 3.6/5 Built-in SEO optimization tools Poor summarization $15 per user, per month

Grammarly icon.

Grammarly

Best Overall

Overall Rating: 4.4/5

  • Cost: 3.9/5
  • Core Features: 4.8/5
  • Security and Compliance: 5/5
  • Customer Support: 3.5/5
  • Ease of Use: 5/5

Grammarly is a powerful all-around AI writing tool with real-time grammar and spell-checking, tone adjustment, and generative AI features. It can create anything from outlines to short stories based on your prompts and generate enhanced versions of your existing text. It can spark ideas for brainstorming and modify writing tones for different contexts and audiences, making it ideal for various writing tasks. Additionally, you can upload files into Grammarly to have the tool analyze the writing or summarize lengthy content.

However, this artificial intelligence (AI) tool supports fewer languages than some competitors, which may be a drawback for multilingual users. Consider Rytr for an alternative with expanded multilingual capabilities.

Interface Design

Grammarly has a well-designed interface with a writing assistant that scores your overall writing quality and lets you tailor writing recommendations. You can use the generative AI to set your voice and style or check your content for plagiarism and AI writing without navigating to another page. The platform is customizable, so you can configure certain elements and views to your preference.

Grammarly interface.

Why I Picked Grammarly

Grammarly is the best overall writing tool on my list because of its rich set of writing features and versatility. It is suitable for a wide range of users, from students to professionals. It also operates seamlessly across multiple platforms, including web browsers and desktop applications, giving you real-time assistance wherever you work.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Comprehensive features Brief free trial duration
Customizable Fewer supported languages compared to others
Plagiarism and AI checker Occasionally misinterprets names or terms not in its database

Pricing

  • Free: Includes 100 AI prompts
  • Pro: $12 per user, per month
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Learn more on Grammarly’s pricing page.

Key Features

  • Real-time grammar, punctuation, and style corrections
  • Personalized writing suggestions and feedback
  • Plagiarism and AI checker
  • Generative AI assistance

CopyAI icon.

Copy.ai

Best for Marketing and Sales Content

Overall Rating: 4/5

  • Cost: 5/5
  • Core Features: 3.9/5
  • Security and Compliance: 4/5
  • Customer Support: 3/5
  • Ease of Use: 3.8/5

Copy.ai is an AI writing tool primarily for creating high-quality marketing and sales content. It has more than 90 templates for generating social media posts, email campaigns, and product descriptions. It also gives fresh ideas and suggestions to spark inspiration when creativity wanes. Copy.ai’s Brand Voice enables you to tailor the general tone and style of your content, ensuring that all your written materials align with your brand identity. The platform has a prompt library with a collection of pre-made prompts and templates for easier content creation. 

A notable downside of Copy.ai is its lack of a plagiarism checker. If you need plagiarism detection, Grammarly is an excellent AI tool to consider.

Interface Design

Copy.ai’s interface presents a variety of features and lets you choose from a selection of AI models, including GPT-4 and Claude models. It also has a textbox for interaction with the AI tool and a separate Editor for typing and modifying content. While these options provide functionality, they can be overwhelming, particularly since it’s necessary to understand the capabilities of each AI model to make the most of the platform.

Copy.ai interface.

Why I Picked Copy.ai

I highly recommend Copy.ai because its robust features streamline creating content. Its prompt library serves as a valuable starting point for new marketing and sales content writers, and its generous free version makes it accessible for small businesses.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Prompt library No plagiarism checker
Extensive tone customization Lacks data encryption
Consistent AI-generated content Poor summarization features

Pricing

  • Free: Includes one seat and 2,000 words per month
  • Starter: $49 per seat, per month
  • Advanced: $249 per month, up to five seats
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Learn more on Copy.ai’s pricing page.

Features

  • Brand voice
  • Infobase for storing assets
  • Tone adaptability
  • Prompt library

QuillBot icon.

QuillBot

Best for Paraphrasing

Overall Rating: 4/5

  • Cost: 3.9/5
  • Core Features: 4.7/5
  • Security and Compliance: 4/5
  • Customer Support: 4/5
  • Ease of Use: 2.5/5

QuillBot is a popular AI-powered writing tool renowned for its advanced paraphrasing capabilities, which improve text fluency, clarity, and readability. It delivers multiple paraphrasing models so you can adapt the output to different contexts. It can translate to over 30 languages and has a Citation Generator for academic writing. QuillBot Flow, its AI assistant, provides structured guidance to simplify writing projects.

While Quillbot offers sophisticated features, it sometimes misses grammatical errors on the first pass and may require additional corrections. Grammarly is a better fit if grammar accuracy is your priority.

Interface Design

QuillBot’s interface includes a sidebar that lists all its tools, including its paraphraser, grammar checker, AI detector, plagiarism checker, and AI assistant. However, each tool has its own tab, meaning you have to switch between them to use various features—this complicates the workflow, as you cannot use all functionalities on the same page. Additionally, QuillBot Flow is tucked away in its own tab, which takes you to a completely new page with its own set of options. Working with this AI feature is also cumbersome, as it regenerates both your prompt and output together, disrupting formatting.

QuillBot interface.

Why I Picked QuillBot

I picked QuillBot as one of the best AI writing tools because of its extensive features and accessibility. Its browser extensions and native mobile applications allow you to write flexibly across devices and on the go. In addition, its customer support channels, which includes phone assistance, is a rare offering that sets it apart from competitors, delivering direct help when needed.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
AI and plagiarism checker Inconsistent output quality
Supports over 30 languages Occasionally misses grammatical errors
Phone support Complex AI interface

Pricing

  • Free: Includes 50 text prompts a day
  • Monthly: $19.95 per user, per month
  • Semi-Annual: $13.33 per user, per month
  • Annual: $8.33 per user, per month

Learn more on Quillbot’s pricing page.

Features

  • Paraphrasing tool
  • AI and plagiarism detection
  • Citation Generator
  • QuillBot Flow

Writesonic icon.

Writesonic

Best for Writing Factually Accurate Articles

Overall Rating: 3.8/5

  • Cost: 2.8/5
  • Core Features: 4.4/5
  • Security and Compliance: 5/5
  • Customer Support: 3/5
  • Ease of Use: 3.8/5

Writesonic is a comprehensive AI writing tool that specializes in factually accurate articles with its access to real-time web search. Its AI Article Writer Feature helps you create detailed content by simply providing a topic and specifying keywords, brand voice, and references to tailor the output to your preference. The platform can also generate images and optimize content for search engines through keyword research and readability analysis. Chatsonic, its AI assistant, can create content and images, as well as analyze files.

Writesonic’s free version, though, is quite restrictive, offering only 25 one-time credits and limiting your ability to fully explore its functionalities. If you want an AI writing assistant with a free tier that has extensive features, try QuillBot.

Interface Design

Writesonic’s interface has a clear layout and well-organized elements that make navigation intuitive. With its clean and unobtrusive design, beginners and experienced users can access the features they need with ease. However, some of its main functionalities can be cumbersome to use. Customizing content, for example, involves several steps, as you must input numerous details for highly tailored results. Also, its plagiarism checker is hidden and only appears when you highlight text, making it less straightforward to access.

Writesonic interface.

Why I Picked Writesonic

Writesonic is one of the best AI tools for writing because of its all-in-one feature set that addresses varying writing needs. Aside from composing well-structured text for email, articles, and ads, its image generation capability lets you create complementary visuals to complete your content without switching to another AI software. On top of that, the platform also has enterprise-grade security features.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Bulk AI article generator No free trial
Chatsonic AI assistant Restrictive free version
AI image generator Occasionally struggles following complex prompts

Pricing

  • Free: Includes 25 AI credits, one time
  • Individual: $20 per user, per month
  • Standard: $99 per team member, per month
  • Professional: $249 per three team members, per month
  • Advanced: $499 per five team members, per month

Learn more on Writesonic’s pricing page.

Features

  • Content templates
  • AI topic clustering
  • Paraphraser
  • AI assistant

Rytr icon.

Rytr

Best for Versatile Content Creation

Overall Rating: 3.7/5

  • Cost: 3.5/5
  • Core Features: 3.7/5
  • Security and Compliance: 4/5
  • Customer Support: 3.5/5
  • Ease of Use: 3.8/5

Rytr is a versatile AI for writing for marketers, bloggers, and all-around content creators. This AI writer generates high-quality texts for anything from articles and blog posts to poems to social media updates. You can also choose from a multitude of tones and use cases, making it adaptable to diverse needs. Rytr’s MyVoice feature facilitates personalized writing, while its plagiarism checker ensures writing originality.

With that said, this AI app’s free version is limited to just 10,000 characters per month, which may not suffice for longer projects. If you want an AI writing tool with a free version that supports larger text volumes, I recommend QuillBot.

Interface Design

Rytr’s user interface has a wide array of features to accommodate all skill levels, even non-writers. Its dropdown menus for selecting use cases and tones, as well as the option to add a custom voice for personalized output. You can also adjust the creativity level and the number of content variants to produce. Its text editor gives full formatting control so you can fine-tune the output.

The platform’s numerous options can be confusing for first-time users, however, making it less user friendly than it could be.

Rytr interface.

Why I Picked Rytr

I consider Rytr to be one of the top AI writing tools today because it combines efficiency and adaptability for diverse content creation needs. Its ability to quickly write AI content is complemented by a wide selection of languages, tones, and use cases, easing content creation for different industries.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Variety of use cases Free version limited to 10,000 characters
Supports over 35 languages Doesn’t support file uploads
Plagiarism checker Occasionally forgets interaction context

Pricing

  • Free: Includes 10,000 characters per month
  • Unlimited: $9 per user, per month
  • Premium: $29 per user, per month

Learn more on Rytr’s pricing page.

Key Features

  • MyVoice
  • Plagiarism checker
  • AI paragraph generator
  • Email generator

Frase icon.

Frase

Best for SEO Writing

Overall Rating: 3.6/5

  • Cost: 3.9/5
  • Core Features: 2.6/5
  • Security and Compliance: 4/5
  • Customer Support: 3/5
  • Ease of Use: 5/5

Frase is a user-friendly AI writing tool specifically made for SEO optimization, helping content creators improve online visibility. You can select what you want to write—such as blog posts or cold emails, for example—and specify the topic. Frase’s AI tool then automatically composes SEO-friendly content for you. These outputs are customizable, allowing you to adjust the tone to formal, informal, persuasive, or friendly. This writing tool can also analyze top-ranking pages to identify relevant themes and keywords, so you can craft articles that are strategically designed to rank well in search results.

It’s worth noting that Frase lacks a built-in plagiarism detection feature. If you need a plagiarism checker with your AI writing tool, I’d recommend Writesonic.

Interface Design

Frase’s interface is uncluttered, with a visually pleasing color scheme that feels easy on the eyes. It presents only a handful of options that serve a clear and relevant purpose. It balances simplicity with customization, letting you adjust tone and format text. Frase’s customization tools are carefully selected for practicality, making the interface efficient.

Frase interface.

Why I Picked Frase

I highly recommend Frase as one of the best AI writers because it simplifies writing SEO-focused content while providing a user-friendly interface. Compared to its competitors, it makes content writing and optimization easier so you can focus on creating effective outputs without being overwhelmed by unnecessary complexity.

Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
User-friendly Doesn’t support file uploads
Prebuilt templates Poor summarization feature
SEO tools No plagiarism detector

Pricing

  • Free: Includes 10,000 AI words for one user
  • Solo: $15 per user, per month
  • Basic: $45 per user, per month
  • Team: $115 for three users, per month. $25 per month per additional user
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Learn more on Frase’s pricing page.

Key Features

  • SEO analytics
  • Content templates
  • SERP data enrichment
  • AI paraphrasing tool

5 Key Features of an AI Writing Tool

AI writing tools are equipped with important features that streamline the writing process and elevate the content quality. Each feature contributes to boosting efficiency and meeting various content styles.

NLP Capabilities

Natural language processing (NLP) allows AI writing tools to interpret and generate human-like text by analyzing language patterns, context, and semantics. This enables the creation of coherent, contextually accurate, and engaging content. By simulating human writing, NLP ensures that the output aligns with the specific subject matter and your expectations.

Customizable Tone

With customizable tone settings, you can adjust your content style to match your desired voice, whether it’s professional, friendly, or persuasive. This is particularly important when writing for different audiences or platforms. For example, when you’re drafting an email, being able to tweak the tone ensures your message connects with the right readers.

Prompt Adherence

Prompt adherence means that the AI writer closely follows the instructions. This helps keep the content focused and relevant to your needs and lets you get precise outputs for complex writing tasks without having to spend a lot of time editing.

Text Summarization

Summarizing text helps turn long documents, articles, or reports into shorter texts that highlight the main ideas and points, without omitting key details. This is useful for creating executive summaries or quick content overviews and saves time and effort by automatically pulling out the most important information.

Multilingual Support

The tool’s AI language support makes it possible to produce, translate, or edit content in various languages. This capability is a must if you want to communicate in numerous cultural contexts, promoting inclusivity and making information accessible to a wider audience.

How I Evaluated the AI Writing Tools

To determine the top AI writing tools, I evaluated them based on five categories: core features, costs, security and compliance, customer support, and ease of use. These criteria cover the key factors that must be considered when choosing an AI tool to make sure that it meets your writing needs and priorities.

Core Features | 30 Percent

For this category, I examined the fundamental capabilities of each AI writing tool, including NLP capabilities, summarization, prompt adherence, tone customization, and multilingual support. These details establish how successfully the tool can maintain a specific tone, meet formatting requirements, and process diverse input types. Tools that perform well in these areas give greater flexibility for different types of content.

Criteria Winner: Grammarly

Costs | 25 Percent

I evaluated costs based on the availability of a free version, the duration of the free trial, and the transparency of pricing structure. I factored in features offered in the free version and any restrictions it might have. Clear pricing helps you determine whether the tool has enough value for its cost, while free versions and trials let you test the features before committing to a paid plan.

Criteria Winner: Copy.ai

Security and Compliance | 20 Percent

For security and compliance, I assessed how well the AI writing tools protect data and adhere to regulations like GDPR or CCPA. I also checked encryption standards to find out the tool’s security level. This ensures that you can trust the AI writing tool to handle data safely and responsibly, especially in professional or corporate settings.

Criteria Winners: Grammarly and Writesonic

Customer Support | 15 Percent

This criterion reflects how effectively the AI tool helps you navigate challenges. I considered the availability of multiple support channels, response times, and the quality of self-help resources, like guides and forums. Reliable support accelerates the resolution of technical issues and helps you maximize the tool’s productivity.

Criteria Winner: QuillBot

Ease of Use | 10 Percent

To gauge the intuitiveness of the AI tools, I evaluated their design and accessibility, centering on smooth navigation and setting up, as well as minimal learning curve. A user-friendly interface allows users of all skill levels to use the tool effortlessly. Tools that are simple yet robust encourage higher adoption rates and increase user satisfaction.

Criteria Winners: Grammarly and Frase

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the Best AI Tool for Writing?

Based on my research, Grammarly is the best AI tool for writing. It has solid features, reasonable pricing, reliable support, strong security, and user-friendly features.

Is There a Free AI Writing Tool?

Yes, there are many AI writing tools with free tiers, including Grammarly, QuillBot, Copy.ai, Frase, Rytr, and Writersonic. However, you must be mindful of their limitations, such as reduced functionality and lack of advanced features compared to their paid versions.

What is the Best Free AI Tool?

The best free AI tool depends on your specific needs. For example, ChatGPT is one of the best free AI tools for conversational AI, while Canva is for design. Read our article on the best free AI apps and tools to explore more options for personal and business use cases.

Bottom Line: AI Writing Tools Enhance Content Creation

AI writing tools can significantly enhance your content creation process, delivering valuable support for generating ideas, structuring content, and refining drafts. The best AI tool will complement your writing workflow, boosting productivity to elevate your own style and creativity. With a wide range of options to consider, finding the right fit can be difficult. This guide’s in-depth reviews of each AI writing tool’s features and overall value aim to help you make a well-informed choice that suits your goals.

Find out the major players in AI and GenAI by reading our articles on the top AI companies and top generative AI companies today.

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Bipartisan Report Recommends Manhattan Project Approach to Develop Advanced AI Systems in America https://www.eweek.com/news/bipartisan-manhattan-project-for-ai-development/ Fri, 13 Dec 2024 18:41:39 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=230903 Strategic AI development takes center stage as US aims to counter China's AGI race - Explore the proposed public-private collaboration for AI systems.

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A U.S. congressional commission issued a report to Congress calling for a Manhattan Project-style program to fund and develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in order to outpace China in its attempt at technological supremacy. AGI refers to an AI system equal to or better than humans across all cognitive domains. Some AI experts, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, think the first AGI system could arrive in 2025.

Public and Private Sector Partnership on AI

The commission responsible for this report is the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan commission designed to advise lawmakers on U.S.-China policy. It’s known for having rather extreme policies regarding competing with China strategically and economically. In the report, the commission claims that the Chinese Communist Party has prioritized AI research using a public-private approach and urges the U.S. government to do the same if it wants to remain the global leader in AI.

“The United States currently leads the world in developing robust AI models,” the commission wrote, “but China is pursuing numerous government-led and ostensibly private efforts to develop advanced AI models.” It sees China’s rapid rise in these powerful technologies as a source of several national security issues, ranging from dependence on China for parts to “potential threats to U.S. military superiority.”

Additional Approaches to Achieve AGI

In addition to creating a public/private sector coalition, the commission also offers two other specific recommendations for winning the race to AGI:

  • To increase the rate of R&D, give the executive branch multi-year contracting authority and fund leading AI companies across the AI supply chain.
  • Direct the Secretary of Defense to give projects in the AI ecosystem a Defense Priorities and Allocations System “DX Rating” so they become national priorities.

It also recommends several other critical areas of AI investment for the United States, including advanced semiconductors, cloud systems, quantum technology, and advanced batteries.

The strong support for a government-private collaboration to achieve a technological breakthrough for national security brings to mind The Manhattan Project, an enormously expensive collaboration between the public and private sector to create the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan to end World War II.

Another key proposal of the annual report is to get rid of de minimis treatment for e-commerce goods coming into the United States, as many of them could be hazardous. For example, the commission suggests legislation banning the importation of autonomous humanoid robots and other potentially threatening technologies controlled by Chinese entities. Lawmakers are divided on whether to stop de minimis, and shipping companies are lobbying against it, stating it could hurt the e-commerce industry.

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Microsoft Expands Its Tech Arsenal, Adds Industry-Specific Azure AI Models to Catalog https://www.eweek.com/news/microsoft-expands-azure-ai-models-catalog/ Sun, 01 Dec 2024 15:53:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=230340 Microsoft's Azure AI models expand: X new industry-tailored solutions added, including Bayer's E.L.Y. Crop Protection and Cerence's CaLLM™ Edge.

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Microsoft recently introduced adapted artificial intelligence models purpose-built for specific industries and scenarios. The models are pre-trained on industry-specific information, enabling users to address their unique needs more effectively. This expansion of AI offerings is made possible through close collaboration with leading companies across various industries that provided expertise and data to help train these industry-tailored models.

For example, thanks to a partnership with a life sciences and healthcare specialist Bayer, organizations can now access E.L.Y Crop Protection in the Azure AI model catalog. E.L.Y is an agro-specific small language model (SLM) built on Bayer’s agricultural knowledge and “trained on thousands of real-world questions.”

The model should help businesses in the agriculture sector, such as farms, maintain compliance, protect crops, and become more sustainable. Other contributing partners and industries served include the following:

  • Cerence for the automotive industry
  • Rockwell Automation for industrial automation
  • Saifir for financial services
  • Sight Machine for manufacturing

The combination of Microsoft’s cloud and industry-specific capabilities should lead to increased innovation in these industries, as users can now leverage Azure Studio to build highly customized AI models for their unique use cases. In addition to these adapted AI models, Microsoft is also rolling out five open-source models through Hugging Face. Each model is “fine-tuned for summarization and sentiment analysis of financial data.”

Further, Microsoft has introduced new AI agents in Copilot Studio designed to accomplish industry-specific work. Businesses can configure them to align even more with their needs.

For example, a Store Operations AI Agent helps retailers manage their stores, and a Factory Agent helps manufacturers identify production inefficiencies and troubleshoot problems. These industry-specific agents should help companies dig deeper into their data and empower employees without technical expertise to conduct analyses and find answers to critical questions.

Hopefully, this venture is a sign of things to come. Microsoft is likely to continue combining industry expertise and customer understanding to create increasingly niche artificial intelligence solutions that can be easily integrated into core business operations rather than simply providing standalone tools. After this release, they are certainly staking their claim as one the leaders of the ongoing AI revolution

For more, check out our deep dive into AI model optimization, where you’ll find six key techniques for making your AI systems more efficient.

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Homeland Security Unveils Groundbreaking AI Framework for Critical Infrastructure — Find Out What It Means for You https://www.eweek.com/news/homeland-security-unveils-ai-infrastructure-framework/ Sat, 30 Nov 2024 19:34:40 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=230334 Discover how the Homeland Security Department's new AI framework aims to safeguard vital infrastructure across the nation.

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The Biden Administration recently released a new set of recommendations for the responsible use of artificial intelligence in the nation’s critical infrastructure, including power grids, transportation systems, and communication networks. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is optimistic about the framework’s ability to create a better future:

“AI offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the strength and resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure, and we must seize it while minimizing its potential harms,” Mayorkas wrote. “The Framework, if widely adopted, will go a long way to better ensure the safety and security of critical services that deliver clean water, consistent power, internet access, and more.”

The framework is a result of collaboration between private industry and government officials and was designed in consultation with the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board, a group of leaders in the field of AI. In other words, its advice is based on first-hand experience in the AI industry.

Comprehensive in scope, the framework provides guidance to entities across the AI supply chain:

  • Cloud computing companies like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services
  • AI developers like OpenAI and Anthropic
  • Critical infrastructure owners and operators—air traffic control, for example
  • Civil society organizations, including (universities and research institutions
  • Public sector entities like local, state, and federal governments and agencies

The recommendations aim to address three AI vulnerabilities in the critical infrastructure that threaten the nation’s security and safety: AI-powered attacks, assaults on AI systems, and development and implementation failures. The document also offers solutions to the lack of standardization in AI deployment, gaps in physical security, and the siloing of key information between industries.

The recommendations are voluntary. Private companies can choose not to follow them, but the DHS is hopeful that they will see widespread adoption—especially since AI leaders helped design them and will likely promote them to their peers. The creators are aware of the fast-paced evolution of AI and expect it to be a living document that can adapt alongside changes in AI and industry.

So far, the document has received support from both the public and private sectors. “We support this framework as a vital step toward shaping the future of AI in a safe and sustainable manner,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wrote.

However, like all government recommendations, there will likely be pushback. And whether the Trump administration will keep or toss out the framework is up in the air, though he’s already promised to repeal it. Regardless, it’s a promising sign to see tech leaders and government officials working together to ensure AI’s safe creation and integration.

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3 New Rules to Block AI Bots from Invading Your Websites https://www.eweek.com/news/rules-block-ai-training-bots/ Fri, 29 Nov 2024 01:17:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=230021 Three powerful methods to block AI bots revealed. New rules empower publishers to shield X% of their content from AI training.

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Recently, Microsoft executives submitted a new proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force to protect web data by creating additional rules to distinguish AI training bots from other bots, letting website owners block bots unwanted AI web crawlers. Because AI models require massive amounts of training data, AI companies typically collect that data from public websites by sending AI crawlers across blog posts, product pages, videos, and other forms of web content.

While tech companies argue that AI bots should be able to crawl publicly available data just like search engines, some website owners see it as an invasion of privacy, as they never consented to this data extraction. The new proposal offers three methods for blocking AI crawlers from invading your website: new robots.txt rules, application layer response header rules, and a Robots HTML meta tag.

New Robots.Txt Rules

Microsoft’s proposal would create additional rules for the robots.txt file websites use to instruct web crawlers and search engine bots about which parts of the site they can and cannot crawl.

“While the Robots Exclusion Protocol enables service owners to control how, if at all, automated clients known as crawlers may access the URIs on their services as defined by [RFC8288],” the draft proposal says, “the protocol doesn’t provide controls on how the data returned by their service may be used in training generative AI foundation models. Application developers are requested to honor these tags.”

The proposal suggests the following values for controlling how AI bots interact with websites:

  • DisallowAITraining: Tells the parser not to use data for AI training
  • AllowAITraining: Tells the parser the data can be used for AI training

These rules recognize the same matching logic of standard allow and disallow rules, and are case insensitive.

Application Layer Response Header

The proposal also states that web owners should be able to set these same robots.txt rules via the Application Layer Response Header—a type of HTTP request method that retrieves only the headers of a web resource—without downloading the actual content. As with robots.txt, the rules are not case-sensitive.

Robots HTML Meta Tag

The third way the proposal offers to block AI crawlers from a website is to use the following HTML meta tags:

  • <meta name=”robots” content=”DisallowAITraining”>
  • <meta name=”examplebot” content=”AllowAITraining”>

If the proposal’s recommendations are enacted, website owners will have more control over which bots can crawl their web pages. If enough web owners take advantage of these new rules and restrict AI bots, generative AI development could slow down.

Learn more about the privacy challenges and issues AI faces and the best practices and solutions to address them.

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Azure ML vs Databricks: Which is Better for Your Data Needs? https://www.eweek.com/big-data-and-analytics/azure-ml-vs-databricks/ Mon, 25 Nov 2024 22:30:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=221602 Comparing Azure Machine Learning and Databricks for your data solutions? Explore our analysis to find the best fit for your needs.

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Data scientists view both Azure ML and Databricks as top software picks because both solutions offer comprehensive cloud-based machine learning and data platforms. However, their key differences distinguish them, making each a better choice for specific use cases. Databricks is primarily a data intelligence platform for big data processing and analysis that also specializes in data warehousing, business intelligence, and AI. Azure ML is designed to help with machine learning lifecycle management (MLOps) and provides advanced tools for machine learning project tracking, developer productivity, and autoML. The choice boils down to the specific machine learning and data needs of the environment:

  • Azure ML: Best for machine learning lifecycle management
  • Databricks: Best for big data processing and analytics

Azure ML vs Databricks at a Glance

The following table shows, at a high level, how these two tools compare in pricing, core features, ease of use, and ease of implementation. Read on for more detailed reviews of each, or skip ahead for alternatives.

Azure ML Databricks
Pricing Pay-as-you-go
Discounts for usage commitments
Pay-as-you-go
Discounts for usage commitments
Core Features • AutoML
• Prompt Flow
• Responsible AI
• Managed endpoints
• Data preparation
• Experiment tracking
• Distributed training
• AI development tools
• Lakehouse architecture with Apache Spark
• AI-powered business intelligence
• AI developer assistant
• Natural language data querying
• Data governance
• ETL, data warehousing, real-time streaming
Ease of Use Moderate learning curve Steep learning curve
Implementation More out-of-the-box in design Difficult for beginners

What is Azure ML?

Developed by Microsoft, Azure ML is a cloud-based machine learning (ML) platform that helps teams manage the entire lifecycle of machine learning models and AI apps, from data prep and development to ongoing maintenance, in a secure, auditable space. The platform’s main users include data scientists, ML engineers, and MLOps specialists.

Microsoft Azure icon.

Within Azure, they can use various tools to automate their machine learning workflows, such as Prompt Flow, a tool for streamlining the development of AI apps built on large language models (LLMs). Whether a business wants to build a generative AI tool or improve its MLOps, Azure ML can help accomplish these goals quickly and efficiently.

Key Features of Azure ML

A multifaceted data solution, Azure ML offers an app-building tool, an AI dashboard that supports ethical best practices, automated machine learning, and managed endpoint functionality.

Prompt Flow 

Prompt Flow is Azure’s development tool for quickly and effectively designing, experimenting, refining, and deploying LLM-powered AI apps. It offers team collaboration functionality for sharing and debugging flows, as well as large-scale testing and evaluation tools to test out prompt variants. It also includes a library of templates and examples that serve as a foundation for app development.

Azure ML's Prompt Flow feature sample.
Using Prompt Flow, users can quickly execute each step of the ML process.

Responsible AI Dashboard

Azure offers tools to reduce AI risk, boost model accuracy, enforce transparency, and safeguard data privacy. For example, you can assess model fairness and bias to produce safe, ethical AI applications. Azure AI Content Safety will automatically monitor text and images for offensive content. It can also conduct error analyses.

Azure ML’s error analysis tool.
Azure ML’s error analysis tool will identify error coverage, success instances, and failure patterns.

Automated Machine Learning

AutoML offers tools to automate the iterative tasks in the ML development process. For instance, during model training, AutoML creates numerous parallel pipelines that monitor various parameters so you don’t have to. It’s ideal for rapidly creating ML models that can handle tasks like classification, regression, vision, and natural language processing (NLP).

Azure ML's Automated ML feature.
AutoML speeds up the ML model design and training process without requiring any new software code.

Managed Endpoints

Azure ML allows users to operationalize model deployment across CPU and GPU machines, which is a helpful choice given the cost difference between these two processor chips. Additionally, it enables task completion using serverless, online, or batch endpoints. The platform also allows fast and efficient log metrics and scoring management.

Pros 

  • User-friendly interface with low- and no-code development tools
  • Automated ML functionality
  • Enterprise-grade security features

Cons

  • Steep learning curve for advanced features
  • Can struggle with complex data tasks and structures
  • Price can rise dramatically for usage-intensive projects

What is Databricks?

Databricks is a unified, cloud-based data intelligence platform that helps data scientists and engineers streamline their big data workflows—from extract, transform, and load (ETL) tasks and data warehousing to data governance and business intelligence—in a secure, streamlined manner. A one-stop-shop for data management needs, it provides tools for consolidating real-time and batched data from various sources, data transformation, data querying, data analysis, and reporting.

Databricks icon.

It also offers MLOps tools that assist in using data to create generative AI tools and machine learning models. Powered by generative AI, Databricks enables all employees, regardless of technical know-how, to uncover insights from company data using context-aware, natural language search.

Key Features of Databricks

A data platform well known for its innovative approach, Databricks offers AI development tools, lakehouse architecture, a unified workspace, and AI-based business intelligence.

AI Development

Databricks supports building and deploying generative AI models using data while maintaining control and privacy throughout the process. The platform also offers tools for automating experimentation, governance, and other aspects of AI development. Lakehouse monitoring, for example, tracks and assesses features, AI models, and data in one place, empowering tasks like spot outputs for offensive content or AI errors.

Databricks’ lakehouse monitoring.
Databricks’ lakehouse monitoring offers a dashboard to track key data metrics and statistical properties.

Lakehouse Architecture

Built atop Apache Spark, a leading solution for big data processing and distributed computing, Databricks’ lakehouse architecture combines the best of a data warehouse and a data lake. This combination enables efficient data integration, processing, and storage, as well as effective querying on various types of data. This efficiency makes data management highly scalable, so pricing for cloud resources doesn’t rise too high as data demands grow.

Graphic explaining the flexibility of the data lakehouse.
The data lakehouse can use structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data to conduct BI, reporting, data science, and machine learning.

Unified Workspace

Databricks includes a centralized, collaborative workspace for data engineering, data science, AI development, and data visualization. This collaborative workspace is a core part of the platform’s functionality in that it facilitates group projects by data professionals. The platform also supports large-scale, rapid data processing with Apache Spark and other machine learning workflows.

AI-First Business Intelligence

Designed to make everyone on your team an analyst, Databricks’ business intelligence understands your unique company data and, through its Genie feature, allows business teams to ask questions about that data using a chatbot interface without using any code or relying on data specialists.

NLP powered AI assistant to answer user inquiry.
Users can ask questions about company data using Databricks’ NLP-powered AI assistant.

Pros

  • Multilevel data security
  • Data lakehouse architecture
  • Rapid data processing of complex data

Cons

  • Difficult to implement, even for tech pros
  • Steep learning curve
  • Expensive for large-scale projects

Best for Pricing: Azure ML

Azure ML is slightly more affordable and offers a 30-day free trial, two weeks longer than Databricks’ free offer. Because of the complexity of these two platforms’ pricing structures, it’s nearly impossible to declare a decisive winner.

The differences in pricing between Databricks and Azure ML are exceptionally complex and situation-dependent, so businesses need to price each project to truly compare. At a high level, Databricks offers pay-as-you-go pricing with no upfront costs. Depending on the product you’re using, you’ll pay a specific price per Databricks Unit (DBU). Databricks also offers Committed Use Contracts, which allows businesses to gain discounts when agreeing to certain usage levels. The solution offers a 14-day free trial. Note that although the trial is free, users are still charged by their cloud provider for resources used in the platform.

Azure ML also offers pay-as-you-go pricing and committed use discounts, which are great for organizations with predictable long-term workloads. The pay-as-you-go pricing ranges depend on the use case, RAM, and other factors. For example, monthly fees for processing with GPUs can range anywhere from $650 to around $3,000. Businesses can save money by signing longer-term contracts. A key perk of Azure’s pricing is that users gain access to its free services, such as AI Search and Azure SQL Database. First-time Azure users also temporarily gain free access to other services, like Azure Virtual Machines—both free for 12 months.

Users are advised to assess the resources they expect to need to support their forecast data volume, processing amount, and analysis requirements. Databricks may be cheaper for some users, but Azure ML will probably be cheaper for most.

Best for Core Features: Toss Up

For those needing robust ELT, data science, and machine learning features within a data lake/data warehouse framework, Databricks is the winner. Azure ML wins for those just wanting to add ML to existing applications.

Azure ML helps data scientists and developers quickly build, deploy, and manage ML and AI models via machine learning operations (MLOps), open-source interoperability, and integrated tools. It streamlines the deployment and management of thousands of models in multiple environments for batch and real-time predictions.

Repeatable pipelines automate workflows for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Developers can use registries for cross-workspace collaboration. Azure ML also offers continuous monitoring of model performance metrics and the detection of data drift, and it can trigger retraining to improve model performance. Azure ML includes features to assess model fairness, explainability, error analysis, causal analysis, model performance, and exploratory data analysis.

Like Azure ML, Databricks is cloud-based. Its management layer is built around Apache Spark’s distributed computing framework, which enables more efficient infrastructure management. Apache also runs faster on Databricks than anywhere else (after all, the founders of Databricks created Apache Spark). It uses a batch in-stream data processing engine for distribution across multiple nodes. Databricks positions itself as a data lake more than a pure ML system, but it incorporates heavy-duty ML capabilities. The emphasis is on use cases such as streaming, ETL, and data science-based analytics/ML. The platform is effective at handling raw, unprocessed data in large volumes.

Databricks is a software as a service (SaaS) solution that can run on all major cloud platforms; an Azure Databricks combination is available. Databricks includes a data plane as well as a control plane for back-end services that deliver instant compute. Its query engine is known to offer high performance via a caching layer. Databricks provides storage by running on top of AWS S3, Azure Data Lake Storage G2, and Google Cloud Storage.

Databricks recently added AI-first business intelligence. This feature enables team members to ask questions about company data in a conversational format, using text rather than code—e.g., “How did sales do last year compared to 2020?” This allows everyone in the organization to query data and get answers to critical business questions when they need it.

Best for Implementation and Ease of Use: Azure ML

Azure ML wins in terms of overall ease of implementation and use, especially if you’re currently using Microsoft as your cloud computing platform.

Azure ML comes with a full menu of out-of-the-box features for machine learning and even offers development templates to get started. Despite limiting customization, its pre-built offerings make Azure an easy tool to implement. For ease of use, it enables users to collaborate with Jupyter Notebooks using built-in support for open-source frameworks and libraries. Users can quickly create accurate and automated ML models for tabular, text, and image. And those familiar with SQL and Azure will find it particularly easy to use.

Unlike Databricks, which is geared toward trained data scientists, Azure offers productivity tools for all developer skill levels, from novices to experts. These include code-first tools like Notebooks, low-code options like AutoML, and even a no-code tool called Designer, a drag-and-drop editor for building ML pipelines. It also offers pre-built development templates that users can deploy as a starting point.

Databricks, in contrast, is best for those familiar with Apache and open-source tools. It takes a data science approach using open-source and machine libraries, which may be challenging for some users. It can run Python, SQL, and other platforms, and it comes packaged with a user interface and tools to connect to endpoints such as JDBC connectors. Some users report that its interface is complex and requires more manual input for cluster resizing clusters or configuration updates. There may be a steep learning curve for some users.

Databricks’ AI Assistant has an intuitive user interface, which appears in Notebooks, SQL Editor, and File Editor. Using natural language, developers can ask the AI chatbot questions about their code and data. They can also use it to perform tasks like auto-fixing errors, explaining tricky code, or running SQL queries.

Best for Integration: Databricks

Azure ML is the winner for Microsoft and Azure shops, but for every other integration, Databricks reigns supreme.

Microsoft does a good job connecting its various ecosystems together. Azure ML, Azure Synapse, and other Azure offerings are well integrated. That also applies to Windows and other Microsoft offerings, including Power BI for analytics. It also does a decent job integrating Apache tools, although not as well as Databricks, which is built solidly on an Apache bedrock.

In comparison, Databricks requires some third-party tools and application programming interface (API) configurations to integrate governance and data lineage features. It also supports any format of data, including unstructured data, which gives it an edge over Azure ML in that area.

More recently, Databricks added open-source connectors for Go, Node.js, and Python to simplify access from other applications. A Databricks SQL query federation tool can query remote data sources, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, AWS Redshift, Salesforce Data Cloud, and Snowflake, without extracting and loading the data from the source systems.

Why Shouldn’t You Use Azure ML or Databricks?

Despite their robust features and powerful capabilities, these tools aren’t right for every application or use case.

Who Shouldn’t Use Azure ML

Data scientists and developers looking to easily build unique features might struggle with the limits imposed on customization by Azure’s out-of-the-box nature. While templates and pre-built features are great for getting started, they can be limiting if you have a particular design in mind. Businesses can still custom-build these AI features, but it might take a lot of tinkering, and in some cases, it will require hiring a developer with expertise in Azure ML.

Who Shouldn’t Use Databricks

Developers looking for a beginner-friendly ML tool might want to steer clear of Databricks. The platform has a steep learning curve, especially for users with limited experience working with big data technologies. Although it offers drag-and-drop algorithm functionality for building AI models, many users view this tool as one of the platform’s least effective features. The advanced features, in particular, commonly give new users trouble, and the sheer number of features can be overwhelming.

Alternatives To Databricks and Azure ML 

If Databricks and Azure ML don’t fit your requirements, consider Amazon Sagemaker, an industry leader for building machine learning models, and Snowflake, a top provider of data analytics and data processing services. As with Databricks and Azure ML, pricing for both platforms is highly complex and situation-dependent.

Amazon Sagemaker

Amazon Sagemaker, like Azure ML, is a robust cloud-based MLOps platform for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. It’s deeply integrated with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) product ecosystem, making it ideal for AWS users. Users also comment on how Sagemaker has the edge in customization and flexibility. If you’re familiar with the AWS environment, it’ll also be easier to use than Azure ML. Amazon Sagemaker’s pricing is based on usage, so you only pay for what you need. It also offers a free tier and cost reductions for longer-term commitments.

Amazon SageMaker icon.

Snowflake

Like Databricks, Snowflake is a cloud-based big data analytics platform that supports storage, processing, and analysis. Unlike Databricks, it offers more out-of-the-box analytics features and has an easier learning curve. This hinders its flexibility but makes it easier to implement and fully master than Databricks. Snowflake charges a monthly price for data stored on the platform. The starting price is $2 per Snowflake credit.

Snowflake icon.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Azure Equivalent of Databricks?

Azure Synapse Analytics is similar to Databricks in its features for consolidating, processing, and analyzing enterprise data. Like Databricks, it focuses primarily on big data analytics and data warehousing.

Is Databricks Good for Machine Learning?

Yes, Databricks offers various tools to help ML engineers and data scientists increase productivity throughout the machine learning lifecycle, from data preparation to model training and deployment. It also helps businesses create and deploy LLMs that are customized for controlling and querying.

What Is Databricks’ Biggest Competitor?

Snowflake is Databricks’ largest competitor, with around 20 percent of the data warehousing market. Compared to Databricks, it lacks the same level of customization but makes up for it in ease of use, offering more out-of-the-box analytics tools.

Bottom Line: Azure ML and Databricks Both Offer Leading Machine Learning Solutions

Azure ML and Databricks are both comprehensive machine learning platforms, each with its own target users. Azure ML, in addition to being easier to use, is best suited for machine learning engineers looking for tools to help them develop, train, and deploy ML models at a rapid pace. Meanwhile, Databricks is focused on serving data scientists who want to store, process, and analyze large amounts of complex, varied data. Overall, the winner depends on an organization’s specific machine learning needs, current tech stack, and the expertise of its developers and data scientists.

Read our guide to the best machine learning platforms for a comprehensive portrait of today’s ML sector.

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Zero Gravity Labs Raises $40M for Decentralized AI Operating System https://www.eweek.com/news/zero-gravity-labs-raises-millions-for-ai-os/ Sat, 23 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.eweek.com/?p=230183 Zero Gravity Labs secures $40M to develop a decentralized AI OS, aiming to transform AI infrastructure by enhancing transparency, efficiency, and innovation.

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Following a $35 million pre-seed funding round last March, Zero Gravity Labs has raised $40 million in seed funding to develop a decentralized AI Operating System. The investments came mainly from crypto and Web 3.0 venture capital firms, including Hack VC, Polygon, and Delphi Digital. Zero Gravity also secured a $250 million “token purchase commitment” that will allow it to tap into liquid digital assets held on exchanges to finance the growing project. The AI Operating System gaining such attention from investors positions itself as a step toward actualizing the controversial vision of a more decentralized internet, known as Web 3.0.

“0G is building the global foundation for a better, fairer, and more open AI ecosystem, where power is distributed and innovation thrives,” Zero Gravity wrote, explaining the company mission in the preface to the project document for investors.

The company also positioned the project as a more energy-efficient, highly scalable option for producing and supporting AGI models, calling it “the fastest modular AI blockchain, providing unmatched infrastructure to scale both Web3 and AI, future-proofing the massive demands of AI infrastructure.”

This is a big promise, coming at a time when AI leaders realize the resource-intensive nature of current AI infrastructure is unsustainable and even a potential source of climate change.

Decentralized AI: What You Need to Know

So what, exactly, is the company building?

“0G (Zero Gravity) is the first decentralized AI operating system that acts as the foundational layer for decentralized AI applications and chains,” the company states in marketing materials about its decentralized AI operating system, dAIOS. “It efficiently orchestrates utilization of hardware resources such as storage and compute and software assets such as data and models to handle the scale and complexity of AI workloads.”

Unlike a centralized AI OS, which manages all data and decision-making through a single central authority, a decentralized AIOS distributes data processing across a network of nodes and typically leverages blockchain for stronger security. Developers claim that decentralization results in greater user control over data privacy, resulting in the democratization of AI, meaning it could help more people integrate AI into their business.

According to company marketing materials, Zero Gravity’s mission is clear: “To make AI a public good.” The jury is still out.

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