Updated 10/25/23
These are some of the most common tools to start with.
ChatGPT: One of the 'big players' and the most popular in headlines. There is a free model but many advanced features roll out to paid subscribers ($20/month). Know that your interactions will be used for training unless you enter private mode. Experiment with giving custom instructions. Trained on internet data through 2021.
Claude2: Founder of 'constitutional AI' which is a different approach to language modeling. Billed as the "ethical AI" and it does NOT save your information for training. Larger context window than ChatGPT and ability to input txt, csv, and pdf files is extremely useful.
Ideogram: Visual image creator (fascinating!)
Dall-E 3: OpenAI's newly updated powerful image generator. Can be used within Bing Chat.
Bard: Google's chat bot. Pulls from web in real time. Better for tasks related to travel (as is Bing from Microsoft). Has new features that allow you to check its confidence in responses and identify possible hallucinations.
PI (Personal Intelligence): A completely different AI tool. Designed to be conversational and offer social support. Can act as an advisor, critic, friend, coach, confidant. Listen to the Possible Podcast with Mustafa Sulyman to learn more about the development behind this tool.
Poe: AI Aggregator. This platform allows you to ask questions across a range of AI platforms all at once. Note that you'll want to pay attention to how it saves/stores/uses your data, in case its terms of service are different from the sites it connects you to.
Perplexity.AI: Excellent for research. Provides in-text citations and links to resources. Helps ask better questions through co-pilot feature.