16 AI Writing Tools for Research, Drafting, Editing, and More

Key takeaways

AI writing tools use generative AI to produce, refine, strengthen, and edit writing.

• AI writing tools can be used to address many different creative and proofreading needs.

• There are several AI writing tools available, many of which are tailored to specific use cases.

• It's important to be aware of the ethical issues relevant to AI, such as plagiarism, privacy, and content ownership.

Explore how you can use AI writing tools to become a stronger and more productive writer and 16 different apps to help you with your writing process. Afterward, build your AI skills with Vanderbilt University's Prompt Engineering Specialization, where you'll learn to augment and amplify your human creativity with GenAI.

What are AI writing tools?

Artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools are different applications you can use to accomplish writing tasks, such as brainstorming ideas, creating an outline, checking your spelling and grammar, and generating short-form and long-form drafts.

Most AI writing tools rely on GenAI, which can create unique and novel writing. While it’s important to carefully check over the work an AI writing tool provides you for accuracy, plagiarism, and other potential ethical concerns, you can use AI to supplement your writing process to become a more productive thinker, researcher, and writer. 

What can AI writing tools do?

Although you want your writing to be original, you can leverage AI writing tools as an assistant. These tools can help you complete many parts of the writing process, such as writing content or checking your grammar and spelling. A few of the tasks you can use AI for include: 

• Brainstorming ideas

• Researching or asking questions about the topic

• Writing short essays or blog posts

• Creating outlines

• Exploring different types of writing

• Simplifying complex topics

• Summarizing texts

• Editing and checking for errors

• Drafting cover letters or resumes

• Writing emails

• Creating sample test questions to study

• Translating from one language to another

There are AI writing tools that handle everything listed above or specialized AI writing tools that help you with one or two specific tasks. Depending on your focus—academic, marketing, communicating with shareholders, emailing employees—you may find tools that fit your specific purposes. 

16 AI writing tools 

Many different AI writing tools are available to help you write more, better, and faster. Explore a few options, including what each app offers and what you can do with them. 

1. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI writing tools available. This versatile AI writing assistant from OpenAI is particularly strong at generating different content types, including blog posts, emails, creative writing, academic papers, and marketing copy.

2. Claude

Claude is an advanced AI writing tool developed by Anthropic. It specializes in producing high-quality, nuanced content across multiple formats, and can be especially useful for research-heavy writing, technical documentation, and content that requires careful reasoning.

3. Google Gemini

Gemini is a multimodal AI writing tool that can be integrated across Google's products. This AI writing assistant can generate text, analyze images, process audio, and even work with video content.

4. Microsoft Copilot

Copilot is an AI assistant you can speak to in a conversational tone about any topic you can think of. You can use Microsoft Copilot as an AI writing tool or research assistant to learn more about topics, explore new ideas, and create an outline for your project. 

5. Canva Magic Write

Canva offers a generative AI called Magic Write, which can help you create a first draft of your content with a prompt. You can use this generator to analyze the tone of your writing and generate a paragraph or section that fits in with your writing style. 

6. Grammarly

Grammarly’s AI capabilities include generating full paragraphs and pieces of text, but it can also suggest better words to use, edit your writing for clarity and accuracy, and find other ways to strengthen your meaning.

7. Jenni AI

Jenni AI is a writing and researching AI tool that can help you organize your research, rephrase quotations, and generate sources for the links you want to cite. This tool also includes resources to help you manage your sources as you conduct your research. 

8. Paperpal

Paperpal is an academic writing tool that can help you use language relevant to your field and create peripheral writing, such as abstracts, summaries, and highlights. You can also use Paperpal as an AI submission checker to look for mistakes in your manuscript before you submit it for publication. 

9. Sudowrite

Sudowrite is an AI tool for writing fiction. You can use this tool to organize the outline and beat of a fiction story and generate writing in your style and tone. Sudowrite can also help you write descriptions and manage the pacing of your story. 

10. Wordtune

You can use Wordtune as an AI writing assistant to help you shorten or expand your text, generate alternative sentences, and improve the tone of your writing. One interesting feature of Wordtune is the ability to fact-check your work against sources available on the internet. 

11. Humata

Humata is an AI writing tool you can train on your own documents. This means that Humata is like a personal assistant who can view, understand, and answer questions about your files. You could use Humata to help you analyze and understand your research on a topic while speaking conversationally about your ideas. 

12. Buffer

Buffer offers AI writing tools for social media. You can use this tool to create new social media posts, repurpose posts you’ve already shared, develop new ideas for social media content, and find new ways to reach your audience. You can also use Buffer to edit the tone of your posts for a more fun or formal sound. 

13. Jasper

Jasper is an AI tool that specializes in marketing solutions, such as branded content written in your company’s voice and style. You can generate ideas, create a content schedule, and use tools, like translation services, to make your marketing more accessible to new markets. 

14. Copy.AI

Copy.AI is a tool you can use for a complete suite of services related to bringing a product or service to market. You can use Copy.AI for content creation, prospecting potential customers, processing inbound leads, marketing personalized to customer accounts, forecasting sales, and more. 

15. SEOWind

SEOWind is an AI writing tool that you can use for writing that will appear in search engines. SEOWind offers tools like SEO data and keyword analysis to help you create more impactful content. You can also use this tool to write content briefs and to update outdated web content automatically. 

16. Ahrefs

The marketing platform Ahrefs offers several free AI writing tools geared toward specific writing tasks and marketing needs. Users can generate a conclusion, blog post ideas and titles, Instagram captions, and more. The company promotes its tools as being able to generate natural, human-sounding writing.

Explore free AI resources on Coursera

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• Watch on YouTube: 5 Fun Facts About Generative AI

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