🤖 5 (AI) Tool Friday - August 11, 2023

Read time: 4 minutes

Hey everyone!

Welcome back to ‘5 (AI) Tool Friday,’ where we ditch the news, deep dive into trending AI tools, and give you actionable reviews so you know what AI tools work and which ones to stay away from.

Happy Friday, let’s get it.

Deep Dives

AI TOOLS
Your Friday Deep Dive
No sponsorships here, just facts.

1. HeyGen
HeyGen is a video platform that helps you create engaging business videos with generative AI,

Bottom Line: If you’re creating content at scale or don’t want to be on camera, this is the fastest way to generate usable content. It won’t necessarily fool anyone into thinking you’ve hired professional actors/actresses but is still a solid tool for generating unlimited video content, which could be great for a small local business. I’ll be diving much deeper into this in the coming weeks.

Cost: Try out the free plan for 1 credit or choose from the two paid plans, Creator starting at $29 or $89 for Business when billed monthly.

Key Features:

• Generative outfits

• Custom avatars

• Voice cloning

• Text-to-speech

• AI avatars

• Talking Photo

Pros:
A ridiculous amount of features and tools to play with. You can look into what they offer with the 2 free credits they give you at sign-up. Their dashboard looks to be almost a Canva clone, so it has a very clean UI and is very UX-friendly. The quality was good enough for professional use.

Cons:
Voice cloning isn’t part of the free trial, and only after a 3.5-minute recording session are you prompted for a $99 payment to process your voice. The talking photo looks very “AI-ish” and is good for a novelty, but people won’t think it’s you or a professional spokesperson.

➡️ Check out HeyGen’s Explainer Video here

2. Spinach
Spinach gives dev teams instant meeting summaries, documents action items, and keeps your board up-to-date with ticket suggestions.

Bottom Line: It’s free, easily integrates into your tech stack, and provides solid output. It’s a no-brainer to try.

Cost: The Starter Plan is free for unlimited users; no credit card is required. To unlock additional features such as customer support and customized access, the Pro plan starts at $99/mo.


Key Features:

• Meeting summaries

• Action items

• Ticket creation

• Many Integrations

Pros:
The integrations with your tech stack are remarkably easy. You can instantly connect your calendar, Slack, Asana, or other tools through the onboarding flow. Summaries for each meeting can be dropped right into your Notion, Google Drive, or Confluence knowledge base.

Cons:
I found a couple of summaries that didn’t quite make it into Slack or were incomplete, but that was the exception rather than the norm. There was once an instance where Spinach wasn’t in the room, but it turns out that it leaves if the meeting starts 5 minutes late. I’d say those two instances were minor bugs and not deal breakers.

➡️ Check out their FAQ page here

3. Qwokka
Movies and TV Show picks via Whatsapp, powered by ChatGPT

Bottom Line: I’ve seen this on TikTok twice this week and decided to try it. The app is clumsy, and I don’t see the point of only posting once every Thursday based on a pre-determined prompt. It seems like it’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

The /ask feature (pictured above) is limited by ChatGPT’s cut-off date, so the recent release it suggested was ‘Jungle Cruise.’

Cost: Free (Android)


Key Promises:

• Post your thoughts on Movies and TV Shows every Thursday

• Invite Whatsapp friends

• Create group chats

• Interact for up-to-the-minute recommendations

Pros:
It downloaded fairly quickly.

Cons:
Just about everything else

➡️ You can download it here, but why?

4. Vizard
Turn long videos into social-ready clips with one magical click. Get ready to grow on all channels.

Bottom Line: The free plan lets you get deep enough to get a good feel for it, and their three-step process automatically generates 10+ clips from an hour-long video, with shorter videos generating fewer clips. I may try this out on a new TikTok/Youtube Shorts account for a week and see what it can do at scale.

Cost: There’s a free plan with 300 minutes per month. Creator and Pro plans start at $30/$60 a month, respectively.


Key Features:

• Get 10+ viral clips from hour+-long videos

• Smart cut and autofocus

• Transcribe video in 15 languages, and translate to 29 languages

• Auto-generates descriptions and hashtags

Pros:
You can import from Zoom, upload from Youtube, or record from your dashboard. The dashboard is intuitive enough, but you’ll need to watch their tutorial videos to fine-tune the final product. There are enough customization features to get each video on-brand. Quality is good enough for solo or enterprise socials.

Cons:
The ‘background’ feature wasn’t working during the test, so be mindful that there are still bugs to work out. The transcription messed up several uncommon words and required additional editing to get it accurate enough to publish. It’s not as ‘automatic’ as you’re led to believe - but by no means a deal breaker.

➡️ Check out Vizard’s website here

5. Studdy
A tutor in your pocket. Snap, Ask, and Conquer with Your AI-Powered Studdy Buddy

Bottom Line: Simple, straightforward tutor for math subjects

Cost: Free download on App Store


Key Features:

• Get instant help on any problem

• Ask follow-up questions to gain a better understanding

• Learn with targeted practice

• Scored 800 on Math SATS

• 60% fewer errors than ChatGPT on word problems

Pros:
It works, and it works well. Perfect for helping a child through their homework or can be used to understand more complex financial analysis.

Cons:
I honestly didn’t see anything.

➡️ Check out Studdy here

That’s a Wrap

If you have anything interesting to share, question to ask, or want to reach out, shoot us an email at [email protected]

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