Here’s how to make your writing easier, more productive, and fun with these 6 AI writing tools: Jasper, Wordtune, Grammarly, Rytr, Writer and Copy AI.
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AI tools help rather than replace writers
In recent years, AI writing tools have been improving by leaps and bounds. GPT-3, a language prediction model, can create text that sounds completely human. If you’re a UX writer or content designer (or any other kind of writer), that might make you a little anxious about being replaced by a robot. To be honest, I was a bit nervous myself. But I faced my fears and tested out a bunch of AI writing tools for this article. I found out two things that might seem contradictory: these AI writing tools work incredibly well, and they can help writers rather than replace them.
I wrote this article without AI assistance, but after playing around with the products, I’m beginning to wonder why. AI writing tools are shockingly good, but I no longer fear the robot apocalypse. Instead, I see how these tools could revolutionize my writing process by generating drafts, making editorial suggestions, correcting grammar, and more.
Not so smart after all
The thing for writers to remember is that AI writing tools are not actually intelligent, despite the name. They don’t know the things you do about your topic, product, or audience. So they can provide a starting point, but you’ll need to check everything to make sure it’s accurate and says what you want to say. AI writing tools are tools: they make your work faster and easier.
I can imagine regularly using AI writing tools to do my least favorite writing tasks: drafting, and structuring marketing copy. Starting with words already on the page would make my process much faster and reduce procrastination. If you’re hesitant about trying AI writing tools, think about your least favorite part of writing, and see if one of these tools can do it for you.
There are lots of AI writing tools out there. Whether you’re looking for a tool that can write blog posts from scratch, make your emails clearer, or help your team stay on the same page, you’ll find an AI writing tool for it on this list.
Best Overall: Jasper (Formerly Jarvis)
Our top AI writing tool, Jasper, used to have a different name: Jarvis. But as the AI writing assistant’s popularity grew, Disney took notice. Jarvis shared its name with Iron Man/Tony Stark’s own AI assistant (well, technically the Marvel character is J.A.R.V.I.S). They threatened legal action, and Jarvis is now Jasper.
By any name, the product’s popularity is well-deserved. I had read a lot about these tools, but I didn’t entirely believe what I had heard. Until I opened Jasper and typed the following prompt, the product description for a student project I had made called Cozy Box: “Quarterly subscription box packed with cozy, snuggly, relaxing treats. Wrap yourself up in hygge goodness and enjoy a night in.” I selected a tone of voice, and the marketing template PAS (Problem, Agitate Solution).
Jasper produced the following:
“Problem: Life can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be. Agitate: We all know that relaxing and unwinding is good for you, but it’s hard when the world keeps on spinning. Solution: Cozy box is a quarterly subscription box filled with cozy treats designed to help you relax and unwind from everyday life. Each box will include everything needed for an evening in including candles, snacks, bath products, books and more! Our boxes are perfect for nights in with friends or family or just curling up by yourself. You’ll love our selection of unique items hand-picked just for you! (we’re not kidding about this)”
From just a few words, Jasper generated usable, effective, human-sounding text. Jasper was the first tool I tried, and all of the GPT-3 powered AI writing tools are pretty astonishing at creating accurate, sensible, and even witty text from minimal inputs. But Jasper also boasts a clean and useful interface, and large template library – everything from marketing frameworks to Facebook ads. Jasper can even help you write creative stories, or adjust your text to make it understandable to people of any age or reading level.
Pricing tiers: Starter plan: $29/month for 20,000 words. Boss mode: $59/month for 50,000 words, plus support chat, longform writing assistant, document editor and more.
Free trial?: Yes, Jasper offers a 2-week free trial. Even if you’re not in the content business, check it out just to see what this tool can do.
The Takeaway: Jasper is a powerful tool for generating a wide range of short and long form content. Content creators, businesses, freelancers and more can use it to speed up their work and spark new ideas.
If you’re interested in Jasper, check out this article too.
Best Rewriting Plug-in: Wordtune
Most of us write every day, perhaps more than we realize: emails, Slack messages, social media posts, memos, and more. We may not even think of these small communications as writing, but they can have a real impact on how well we express ourselves at work or in our personal lives.
Enter Wordtune. This Chrome Plug-in works anywhere you write online. Simply write as you normally do, wherever you normally do, and Wordtune will offer multiple rewrites to choose from. It’s important to look through these carefully to make sure you choose one that reflects your original meaning, but this is a powerful tool for improving communication.
Pricing tiers:
Free: 20 rewrites a day.
Premium: $9.99/month (billed annually at $119.88; $24.99 if billed monthly) for unlimited rewrites as well as access to voice and tone tools, the ability to change the length of your text (useful if you are writing in many different formats), and access to customer support.
Teams: Contact Wordtune for custom pricing.
The Takeaway: Wordtune is a Chrome plug-in that helps with all the little things: emails, social media messages and more. Great for everyone who writes on the internet (so pretty much everyone).
Best for Editing: Grammarly
Not ready to wade into the waters of AI-assisted content creation? You can still benefit from AI tools. Grammarly is like a spell-checker on steroids. With the free version, you can check spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You can cut and paste your text into the website, or install a plug-in to use the tool wherever you are on the web.
The premium version offers many additional features and is a great option for use at work. You can receive suggestions to improve clarity, tone, engagement and more. Grammarly can even check for plagiarism.
Pricing tiers:
Free: Spelling, grammar, and punctuation checks.
Premium: $12/month (billed annually), $20/month(billed quarterly), $30/month (billed monthly) for sentence rewrites, tone adjustments, inclusive language assistance, word choice, fluency, and formality level.
The Takeaway: Grammarly is a spelling and grammar checker that works all over the internet. The premium version is a good choice if you’re looking for some help rewriting sentences for more than just grammatical correctness.
Best Value: Rytr
With over 30 use cases, a large library of tones to choose from, and SEO tools, Rytr is another great choice for creating text from scratch. While I found the user interface a bit less intuitive than some of the other tools, Rytr is fantastic at creating accurate and usable text for many different situations.
And the price cannot be beaten. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly way to get started with AI writing tools, Rytr is a great choice.
Pricing tiers:
Free plan: 5000 characters/month.
Saver plan: $9/month, for 50,000 characters.
Unlimited plan: $29/month, for unlimited characters, as well as access to a dedicated account manager. You can also create custom use cases with this plan.
The Takeaway: Content creators looking for a powerful AI writing assistant at a great price should check out Rytr.
Best for Teams: Writer
If you create content as part of a team, you know how important a style guide is. These documents allow multiple team members to write in one voice, providing guidance for the words, voice, and tone to use across a whole product or brand. The problem with style guides is that you have to use them. It’s easy for drift to occur, since no one wants to check every word they write.
Writer works like a style guide come to life. A spell-checker for your brand voice. A way to keep everyone on the same page, company-wide. You can enter all the terminology and style choices your brand uses into Writer and the tool will provide suggestions to writers as they work. You can also create shortcuts to automatically add text that appears in multiple places. Writer also offers collaboration tools, and helps you create a style guide that your team will actually use.
Pricing tiers: Free: basic suggestions.
Pro: $11/month for more advanced suggestions for individual users.
Team: $18/month per user, for the full suite of language and content consistency tools.
The Takeaway: Writer provides tools to keep your content team on the same page. Great for businesses and teams that have a lot of people writing for the same product or brand.
Best Templates: Copy AI
Copy AI is another tool that allows you to quickly and easily create copy from scratch – just enter a short description(less than 1000 words), select a tone (i.e friendly, luxury, professional, bold) and get shockingly good copy in seconds.
Businesses and content creators write a lot of different things, and Copy Al can write ’em all: ads, emails, all sorts of web copy, blog posts, social media, and more. These tools are easily accessible from the side menu of Copy Al’s user-friendly work space.
Pricing tiers: Free: Full access to copywriting tools, 10 credits per month. Pro: $35/month for unlimited credits and projects, customer support and community access. Copy AI offers plans for teams and companies as well, but you’ll need to contact them for custom pricing.
Free trial?: Your first month on the free plan comes with an extra 100 credits, so it’s a great way to try out the tool to see if you want to upgrade.
The Takeaway: Copy AI is an effective and easy to use tool for people who create a lot of different types of content. Great for marketers, small business owners, freelancers, bloggers, and more.
If you’re an anxious writer fearing the dreadful blank canvas, did reading about these tools ease your mind? AI writing tools have the potential to make writing easier, more productive, and fun. Far from being our replacements, AI writing tools can help us do our jobs better. So try these out; you might just make a new robot friend.
Dig deeper
The current state of AI copywriting (article)
What is conversation design? (article)
Top 10 no-code tools for designers (article)
AI for content design teams (podcast episode)
How creating chatbots can be a slam dunk (podcast episode)
Chatbot design at Robocopy (podcast episode)
