Narrow the list by task and requirements, then add 2 to 4 tools of the same type to compare. A “verified” filter only counts facts confirmed from an official source within our review period.
Adobe Firefly is Adobe's generative AI app on the web and mobile for creating and editing images, video and audio; a beginner might try it to generate images from a text description or to fill and expand parts of a photo.
ChatGPT is OpenAI's chat assistant on the web, desktop and mobile; a beginner might try it for drafting text, asking questions with web search, or asking about an uploaded document or image.
Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant on the web, desktop and mobile; a beginner might try it for writing and editing text, asking about an uploaded PDF or image, or questions that need a web search.
Consensus is an AI academic search engine that finds peer-reviewed papers and summarizes them with in-line citations; a beginner might try it to see what published studies say about a question.
Cursor is an AI code editor and coding agent from Anysphere that runs as a desktop app, a command-line tool and cloud agents; a beginner might try it to get code suggestions while typing or to ask an agent to explain and change a project.
DeepSeek is an AI chat assistant on the web and in iOS and Android apps; a beginner might try it for questions, writing help, or answers that use its web search function.
Elicit is an AI research assistant that searches academic papers and produces cited reports, tables and systematic-review workflows; a beginner might try it to find and summarize papers on a research question.
Gemini is Google's AI assistant on the web, desktop and mobile; a beginner might try it for everyday questions, summarising an uploaded document, or a Deep Research report built from Google Search results.
GitHub Copilot is GitHub's AI coding assistant for code editors, the command line, GitHub.com, GitHub Mobile and a desktop app; a beginner might try it for code suggestions while typing and for asking questions about a repository.
Ideogram is an AI image and video generator with a web app and an iOS app; a beginner might try it to make posters or logos that need readable text in the image.
Midjourney is a subscription-only AI image and video generator used on its website or in Discord; a beginner might try it to turn short text prompts into illustrations or concept images.
Perplexity is an AI search engine that answers questions from real-time web results with numbered citations; a beginner might try it to look up a topic and then open the cited sources.