The Rise of AI Productivity Tools: A Comprehensive Look at Top Free Options

From ChatGPT to NotebookLM, these are the 10 best free AI productivity tools to help you get things done

AI-powered assistants are evolving. With Apple set to roll out a major Siri upgrade later this year and Samsung going all in on its Galaxy AI strategy with the S25, AI assistants are becoming more capable, integrated, and, hopefully, useful. But they aren't the only ones shaping the future of digital assistance. The rise of AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini, has introduced a new era of digital assistants that go beyond the voice commands we're used to. These tools can engage in complex conversations, generate text, analyze information, and even help with coding, research, and content creation. Unlike traditional voice assistants, they're designed to be interactive and adaptable, making them valuable productivity partners in a wide range of tasks, too. But are any of these AI tools actually making us more productive? AI-generated art and content have sparked debate about plagiarism and creativity. But many people seem to be getting the most value from AI when it takes the role of an assistant rather than a replacement. When used as a productivity partner to streamline tasks, provide insights, and organize work, AI can make a big difference in your day. If you're looking for an AI tool to boost your productivity, there are plenty of options to choose from. Some act as chatbots and help with a range of tasks, others serve as search engine replacements, and some focus on organization, scheduling, and workflow automation. Below, we'll explore the best AI assistants available today, including a mixture of different types and use cases. One of the most well-known AI assistants, ChatGPT (created by OpenAI) is an extremely versatile chatbot that can help with all sorts of tasks. Think summarizing articles and brainstorming ideas through to drafting emails, generating code, and even providing explanations on complex topics. Available in both free and paid tiers, the premium version offers access to more advanced capabilities, including faster responses and enhanced reasoning skills. Claude is an AI assistant created by Anthropic, a company focused on AI safety and research. It's similar to ChatGPT in that it's a chatbot that's designed to do much more than chat, like engage in nuanced conversations and handle complex tasks, including analysis, writing, and coding. While Claude doesn't have real-time access to the internet, it does a good job at working with any information you give it, whether that's documents, data, or images. Users tend to like it for providing detailed, thoughtful responses and handling more sensitive topics. Microsoft Copilot is a chatbot and AI assistant that you can access via the web and apps, but it's also integrated into the Microsoft 365 suite, helping you work with applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It offers a range of features designed to improve productivity, like assisting with drafting, editing, and summarizing documents in work. Or managing emails and summarizing threads in Outlook. Or summarizing meetings and highlighting key action items in Teams. It's available to Microsoft 365 subscribers, with additional premium features - like access to the latest AI models and early advanced features - accessible through a Microsoft Copilot Pro subscription. Google offers two AI tools designed to enhance productivity in different ways, depending on what you're looking for: Google Gemini and Google Assistant. Google Gemini is a powerful AI model that competes with ChatGPT and it's designed for tasks like creating content, analyzing data, and answering complex questions. Like Microsoft's Copilot, it also integrates with Google Workspace apps, like Gmail, Docs, and Slides, offering AI-powered assistance for writing, summarizing, and brainstorming. You can use it for free, but advanced features are available through the Google One AI Premium plan. On the other hand, Google Assistant is AI-powered, but it's a voice-activated tool built for everyday tasks. So it's created to help with scheduling, reminders, managing calendars, controlling smart home devices, and hands-free commands on phones, speakers, and smart displays. Siri is Apple's voice-activated, AI assistant and it's built into Apple devices. It excels at hands-free tasks like sending messages, setting reminders, and controlling smart home devices. Because AI is in everything at the moment, it's worth making it clear that unlike AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which are designed for conversation and content generation, Siri focuses on quick, action-based commands instead. However, a recent Siri update means it can now do more than ever and actually calls on ChatGPT (if you grant it permission) to provide more detailed and context-aware responses. A major upgrade is expected to come to Siri with iOS 18.5, which could bring smarter context awareness and on-screen content recognition, as well as much more. These improvements will help Siri handle more complex tasks that involve a lot of steps - hopefully making it more intuitive and useful. Not all AI tools work as multi-purpose productivity partners - many are designed for more specific tasks. If you don't need a general AI helper but want support in a particular area, these specialized tools could be a better fit. Otter: For example, Otter is an AI-powered transcription service that's invaluable for anyone who regularly conducts interviews or attends meetings and needs fast, accurate transcriptions. Perplexity: Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that brings you more context-aware answers, making it ideal for those who need help with research or fact-checking. NotebookLM: Google's NotebookLM is also designed for summarizing notes and helping users organize information more effectively. Think of it like a research companion that can use advanced language models to help you process and refine your ideas. Grammarly: Similarly, Grammarly is a good option for those who write a lot in their roles and don't want an AI tool to do it for them, but need assistance with proofing and spell-checking. Jasper: Jasper is an AI writing and marketing tool, that helps businesses and creators create and refine content for marketing, like email newsletters and blog posts. By focusing on specific use cases and doing one or two jobs really well, these tools provide targeted support, making them useful alternatives to more general AI assistants. AI assistants can be incredibly useful, but there are a few key factors to keep in mind beyond the basics - like whether you like the user experience, if it meets your needs, and if it fits your budget. Firstly, it's important to understand how it handles your data. Some AI tools store and analyze what you ask them or the data you give them to improve performance, while others prioritize privacy by keeping interactions local or encrypted. If data security is a concern for you, then do check whether the assistant retains, shares, or sells your data, and take a moment to review its privacy policy. If you only need an AI assistant for one or two tasks, then you can use it as a standalone tool. But some of the options above can streamline your workflow across multiple platforms, so you'll need to make sure it integrates with other things, like your email, calendar, project management tools, and editors. In the same vein, it's worth thinking about whether you want an AI assistant that'll perform tasks without you prompting it. Some AI assistants take a proactive approach, automating tasks like scheduling, summarizing emails, or generating content without needing input. The good news is that many of these options offer free tiers or trial periods, so you can test their features before you commit. Since everyone's needs and preferences are different, we recommend experimenting with a few of the different options so you can find the right fit for you. AI assistants and chatbots are becoming more advanced, and more people are adding them into their daily routines. While some see these tools as gimmicks or unnecessary, others find them game-changing for managing tasks, boosting productivity, and streamlining their workflows. Whether they'll evolve into indispensable tools we all use for the long term remains to be seen. But with major developments on the horizon from Apple, Samsung, and other major players in tech, the future of AI assistants looks promising.

15 Best AI Apps You Must Try on Android and iPhone

There is no shortage of artificial intelligence tools and services in 2025. From the very best AI writing apps to AI music generators, there is so much out there for everyone. There are numerous good AI apps out there that transcend chatbots and offer a lot more functionality. To make your job easier, we have compiled a list of the best AI apps for Android and iPhone. So without further ado, open the app stores, and let's dive in. Best AI Apps to Supercharge Your Life The following is a list of essential apps you can download on your iPhone or Android device to use AI or any of its form to the full potential. After the release of DeepSeek, OpenAI also made its o3-mini model free for all ChatGPT users. However, for higher chat limits, you will have to subscribe to the ChatGPT Plus plan which costs $20 per month. So if you are looking for a capable AI assistant on your smartphone for free, DeepSeek is the best ChatGPT alternative you can use. If you are a student, Gauth is the best AI app you can use on Android and iPhone. It's an AI study companion, developed by Bytedance, the company behind TikTok. Gauth can help you with homework with detailed explanations and step-by-step instructions. It even generates animations in order to explain problems and solutions in a helpful manner. Gauth mainly covers Math, Biology, Physics, and Chemistry. However, you can use the AI app to improve English writing as well. As for science-related problems, simply take a photo and feed it into the app, and Gauth often generates correct answers. You can also access tutorial videos, and ask tutors if you want further explanation. Gauth is simply the best educational AI app out there. Ever since its launch, Lensa AI has quickly become one of the best AI photo enhancer apps in 2025. While Lensa is an intuitive photo editor, our focus is on its AI capabilities. This AI-powered tool creates vivid avatars of people using real-life selfies. The AI mode is called Magic Avatars and uses the Stable Diffusion deep-learning model to create these amazing selfies. By studying real images, Lensa AI can create several different avatars by blending in elements from both real and AI worlds. All users need to do is download the Lensa app and go about using the Magic Avatars. You can then choose from a variety of styles and upload a minimum of 10 images. Do note that Lensa AI is not a free service and requires a one-time payment for a generation. However, the money is worth it as the final image generation is accurate and beautifully amazing. You can choose to mix and match styles with different images to get a comprehensive list of different avatars. Lensa AI is one of the best apps you can use on Android and iOS. If you're interested then learn how to use Lensa AI here. Perplexity is a popular chatbot-cum-search engine. However, what sets it apart from others is that it provides real-time sources for the information it presents in its answers. This makes it more reliable than others. Well, Perplexity has full-fledged mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. In fact, the new Perplexity Assistant on Android is fantastic and very action-driven unlike Gemini. Not to mention, the recently-released Perplexity Deep Research brings agentic capability to the app. It goes to the web to autonomously perform research for you and accurately presents the information. The Perplexity AI mobile app works in the same fashion as its website. The app can easily answer questions, seek out information, and hold general conversations with the user. However, as mentioned, you also get source links and even related queries in tow here. Perplexity even supports voice recognition and follow-up questions. The best thing is that the Perplexity AI app is completely free to use, making it one of the best selections for those who want to use ChatGPT on iOS. Character AI is one of most popular apps on Android and iPhone. It lets you chat with "life-like" AI characters and you can also personalize AI characters based on your preferences. The app recently got support for calling as well. You can interact with AI characters using voice and call them anytime you want. You can choose the voice from its library, generate your own voice, and engage in role-play with AI characters. Basically, you can chat with fictional characters, historical figures, or your own creations. It's mainly used by young users, and users spend more time on the app than ChatGPT. Having said that, bear in mind that Character AI has been sued after a Florida teenager tragically passed away following a deep attachment to a fictional character. OLMoE is an iOS-only app that lets you run a local in-house AI model on your iPhone. It's a fantastic app developed by the Allen Institute. It runs the open-source OLMoE model (between 1B to 7B parameters) and does a decent job at writing, and other tasks. Since the model is pretty small, there might be hallucinations so keep that in mind. However, if you want a private, local LLM for your iPhone, OLMoE is a fantastic app. The company says you will need iPhone 15 Pro or later, or any M-series iPad to use the app. If you are looking for an AI app to run LLMs locally on Android, well, you can check out PocketPal AI. It's a great app to run a variety of AI models on the device. The best part is that the app is free to use unlike many other apps which limit access to many popular models. With PocketPal AI, you can even run a distilled version of DeepSeek R1 on your smartphone. There are other apps like Private AI, LM Playground, and Llamao that you can check out, but many features are locked for premium users only. On PocketPal AI, you can download any model hosted on Hugging Face and start using it on your smartphone. Pricing: Free 8. Replika: My AI Friend - AI Chat App for Companionship Even though it's a bit old, Replika remains one of the best AI mobile apps on Android and iOS. Replika AI was one of the first apps to get recognition in the AI chatbot scene worldwide. Replika AI is a full-scale chatbot with a strong focus on relationships and providing companionship to users. While you only talk to ChatGPT like an acquaintance, you can become friends with Replika and even progress to lovers through the paid subscription. Replika AI starts as a stranger. However, it slowly learns from your interactions and becomes a personalized chatbot. The Replika avatar is also fully customizable across genders and appearances. So users can go on and tailor the AI however they wish. Activities across Replika vary from simple conversations to full-scale activities and even video calls with the AI. Since the bot also has a personality of its own, it records moments from the conversations in the form of journal entries that you can view at any time. However, do note that Replika's Pro membership begins at $19.99 per month. You need it for relationship expansion and video calls. There are many AI image upscalers, but most of the tools upload images to the cloud for further processing. If you want to upscale your private images, you would not want to upload those images to the cloud. That's where SuperImage comes into play. It's an Android app that upscales your images by running models on your device. SuperImage can unblurs images and enhances details by 16x which is pretty impressive. You can even batch process up to 25 images for free. And if you get the Pro subscription, you won't see ads and there are no limitations of batch processing. All in all, I would say SuperImage is a fantastic app for on-device image upscaling. Pricing: Free, Pro version costs a one-time fee of $3.49 10. ELSA: Learn And Speak English - Best AI App for Language Learning ELSA Speak is a language learning app to help you prepare for exams like IELTS and TOEFL. More specifically, Elsa focuses on pronunciation improvement for communication. It does that by using deep artificial intelligence and voice recognition. The app records users' voices and intelligently studies them. You can then get real-time feedback 0n your spoken phrases using visual cues that denote which parts you got right about that word. There are also other lessons available, including video lectures for test guides and information. While the free version has limited lessons, there is a paid subscription starting from $19.99 per month. You get access to other bite-sized lessons and customizable recommendations for that. Nonetheless, even the free version of ELSA Speak makes its way on our best AI apps list because of its intuitive nature. It's hard to talk about AI apps and not mention Microsoft's Copilot app. Copilot has been completely revamped and now has a warm and inviting UI. It's powered by OpenAI's models including GPT-4o and o1. You can chat with Copilot, ask it to generate images, throw complex queries at it and Think Deeper can solve it for you. And all this is available for free. Microsoft's Copilot is multi-platform and available on Android, iPhone, and as a web app. You can also voice chat with Copilot, just like ChatGPT's Advanced Voice mode. I would say, if you loved using the Pi app, you are going to love Copilot as it offers similar user experience. Luma AI is for the cinematographers and photo enthusiasts out there. Based on the concept of 3D rendering, Luma uses AI tech to output extremely vivid 3D renditions of any real-world object. The app uses a combination of intricate capture and photorealism to then place the objects in any clip or condition. Once on the app, users need to map out an object using their phone's camera to fully capture it. While this is a bit tedious, it's required. Luma AI then requires a small amount of wait for it to fully process the render. Once done, users can use this mapped-out 3D object in any environment of their choosing. Or if you wish you can just upload it to the public gallery for everyone to see. You can even create a custom video with keyframes of your choice including the object. This makes the AI app a must-have for people who want to try out shots not easily achievable in real-life. The best part is Luma AI is completely free. While Lensa AI creates full-scale avatars from pictures, the FaceApp is a selfie editor that uses AI to enhance photos. FaceApp comes chock full of different filters and effects that can users can play around with and experiment with their selfies. The app comes with styles such as retouching, Feature addition, and smiles. There are also other advanced AI face features like gender swap, age reduction, face swap, and even face morphing. Users can combine their faces with practically any other person and create interesting combinations. FaceApp naturally has all the other basic filters, including beauty filters, general adjustments, and cropping. However, the highlights of the show are the ones to watch out for. However, not all filers are free to use. FaceApp has a premium membership that gives access to all Pro filters expansive hairstyles and beards. It starts from $10 per month. For those obsessed with the selfie game, FaceApp is one of the best AI apps to get. Otter is one company you might have heard about for some time now. The workforce-focused company's Otter AI service is focused on eliminating downtime that occurs noting down or recording meetings. The app provides audio transcription and meeting notes in real time. Otter does that by leveraging the power of machine learning and AI to record and simultaneously transcribe audio. The Otter app can work as a standalone application or automated assistant. To get started, a user can simply record a voice note through Otter and it will begin transcribing in real-time. There is a minor lag from the time one speaks to transcription but that's understandable due to processing. You can even set Otter to automatically join your meetings and transcribe them. The app will provide the notes once the meeting has concluded. Otter can identify multiple people and mark notes through timestamps. Otter offers a free tier with 300 monthly minutes. However, one can upgrade to the Pro plan for $16.99 per month. Founded in 2015 in an effort as an accessibility app, Be My Eyes connects visually impaired individuals with sighted volunteers. The former lot helps the blind navigate the world around them through real-time video calls. Be My Eyes has no limit to the number of type of tasks you can ask the volunteers for help with. From helping navigate through busy roads to finding out if a carton of milk has expired, the app helps facilitate everything. Be My Eyes has also recently announced Virtual Volunteer, the company's first digital visual assistant. Virtual Volunteer is powered by OpenAI's latest models, and hence, comes with the power to assist the visually impaired with almost any task. The new integration contains GPT-4o's multimodal capabilities with a new image-to-text generator. All the user needs to do is provide any image and under the hood, GPT-4o will read it and provide contextual information. Be My Eyes even promises that the virtual volunteer can not only read the images but provide added suggestions. For instance: In the provided image of the inside of a fridge, the AI can identify ingredients but can also list out the recipes you can make with it.