To stay competitive, especially if you’re engaged in extensive search engine optimization (SEO) or content marketing strategies, you might consider using AI writing tools.
While Fortune 500 companies often employ a stable of human writers they can mobilize to meet content needs, small ecommerce businesses often have more limited resources. Generative AI technology can help business owners augment writing staff capacity, increase efficiency, and improve content quality and accuracy. Here’s how AI writing tools work and how to choose the best AI content generator to support your business and marketing needs.
What is an AI writing tool?
An artificial intelligence (AI) writing tool is a type of software that can create content based on a human-generated prompt. The goal of an AI writing tool is to mimic the human-written text. Ideally, the final product is indistinguishable from content produced by a human.
AI writing software tools are powered by large language models (LLMs), which are AI algorithms trained using natural language processing (NLP), a branch of AI concerned with helping computers analyze and generate human language. AI writing tools “learn” from a large volume of source text and apply rule-based or statistical models to predict the next word in a sentence based on previous words or strings of words.
Unlike their predecessors, contemporary systems can engage in unsupervised training, which has led to significant improvements in performance. ChatGPT’s developers, for example, essentially allowed their model to process and learn from the entire internet. As these algorithms process increasing amounts of text, they write their own rules to help them predict the most contextually appropriate language choices.
Benefits of using AI writing tools
An AI content generator can help you with brainstorming, generating, proofreading, and summarizing content. Here are some of the ways in which it can benefit your writing process:
Increased efficiency
AI content writing tools can write articles much more quickly than a human writer can—typically in just a few seconds. While humans still need to provide inputs, verify text accuracy, and check for bias, using an AI writing assistant can help companies efficiently create high-quality content and increase output volume inexpensively.
Quality check
AI writing tools can improve consistency, accuracy, and adherence to grammatical conventions. Many tools also check existing content for plagiarism, typos, and spelling or grammar mistakes.
Idea generation
Some AI writing tools can generate lists of content ideas, making them helpful for beating writer’s block or kick-starting a project’s initial brainstorming phase.
Optimized content
AI tools can also help you optimize content for search engines. Tools can generate keyword-optimized content or rework existing content to incorporate keywords and improve formatting for search engine performance.
What makes a good AI writing tool?
High-quality content writing tools are accurate, user-friendly, and customizable. Here are a few things to look for in a great AI writing tool:
Size of language model
As with all statistical models, increasing the volume of data inputs increases the accuracy of outputs. Look for a tool built on a large language model (LLM), that uses massive datasets of source text for training.
Control of outputs
An AI writing tool that allows users to create parameters around brand voice and specify the tone, format, and writing style can minimize your need to rework AI-generated content. You can use AI writing tools for emails, content marketing, blog writing, marketing copy, and contracts.
Ease of use
Look for a tool that offers a quality user experience. The best tools make it easy to input prompts, navigate features, and view sources.
Cost
Some AI writing tools are more expensive than others. The best tool for your business should fit within your marketing budget and result in net cost savings compared to paying human writers to create the same volume and quality of content.
Best AI writing tools
- ClickUp AI
- Grammarly
- Writesonic
- Rytr
- ChatGPT and ChatGPT+
- GetGenie
- Jasper AI
- HiveMind
- Hubspot AI Content Writer
- Quillbot
The best AI writing tool for your business depends on your budget, the types of content you require, and your specific goals. Here are 10 of the best paid and free tool options to jumpstart your selection process:
ClickUp AI
ClickUp AI is the AI content generator and assistant included in the ClickUp task management platform. The tool excels at creating bios, briefs, blog content, content outlines, landing page copy, product descriptions, and case studies. It also includes other tools designed to increase productivity, such as customizable workflow and process templates.
Pros
- Designed to support multiple content creation processes
- Template library for workflow and process automation
- More than 1,000 integrations offered
Cons
- No free plan
- Only available with paid ClickUp plans
- Limited Slack integrations
Cost: $5 a month on top of paid ClickUp subscription.
Grammarly
Grammarly can help you generate new content, answer questions, and check existing content for typos, grammatical errors, plagiarism, or awkward syntax. The tool includes error explanations designed to help users improve their writing skills and can also recommend and apply solutions. Grammarly can generate text in response to prompts like “create an introductory email” or “write a project progress report.” The free version allows users to input up to 100 prompts a month.
Pros
- Free plan offered
- Browser extension available
- Allows custom rules
Cons
- Free version doesn’t offer plagiarism detection or genre-specific guidance
- Free version is limited to 100 prompts
Cost: $0–$15/month.
Writesonic
Writesonic is a content creation AI software built on GPT technology; the free version uses GPT 3.5, and the paid version uses GPT 4. It offers more than 100 AI template tools, focuses on SEO features like keyword inclusion, and allows users to specify specific source texts for generated copy.
Pros
- Free plan available
- Browser extension available
- User-friendly interface
- Zapier and Surge integrations
Cons
- Free version limited to 10,000 words per month.
Cost: $0–$500+/month.
Rytr
Rytr is a GPT-based AI writer specifically designed to support marketing efforts such as writing articles, social media posts,ad copy, content briefs, and newsletters. It can write content in more than 30 languages, includes a plagiarism checker, and allows users to choose from over 20 different tones of voice. The free plan also allows users to create up to five AI-generated images a month.
Pros
- Free plan available
- Browser extension available
- Includes AI image generator
Cons
- Free plan limited to 10,000 characters per month
- Interface may be less user-friendly than more expensive competitor options
Cost: $0–$29/month.
ChatGPT and ChatGPT+
ChatGPT is the free, open-source software that powers many of the best AI-powered writing assistants on the market. You can use the free model for creating content directly on ChatGPT’s content generation platform. A paid subscription to ChatGPT+ offers users access to GPT4, DALL-E (its image generation tool), and plugin and web-browsing capabilities.
Pros
- Free and open-source
- Browser extension available
- APIs offered
Cons
- Poor performance in languages other than English
Cost: $0–$20/month.
GetGenie
The GetGenie AI-powered tool is specifically designed to work with WordPress. The platform emphasizes SEO features and can perform keyword research and conduct competitor analysis. The free plan also offers 37 different templates for specific content types.
Pros
- Free plan available
- WordPress compatible
- Emphasizes SEO tools
Cons
- Free plan limited to 2,500 words per month
Cost: $0–$69.30/month.
Jasper AI
Jasper AI is one of the more expensive tools on the market, but it also offers one of the most extensive libraries of advanced features. It’s specifically designed to help creators and businesses support the content creation process through ideation, drafting, editing, and proofreading.
Pros
- Offers over 30 languages
- Informed by multiple LLMs
- User-friendly interface
- Offers multiple integrations and custom APIs
Cons
- No free plan
- More expensive than many competitors
Cost: $39–$99/month for teams; business pricing upon request.
HiveMind
HiveMind is the AI writing tool built into the Hive project management system. It can create articles, translate content, and extract data to provide content summaries. The tool provides multiple content templates including sales proposals, content briefs, press releases, website copy, and meta descriptions.
Pros
- Integrates with Hive project manager
- Free plan available
- Browser extension available
Cons
- Requires Hive project manager account
Cost: $0–$12/month for teams, Enterprise pricing upon request.
Hubspot AI Content Writer
Hubspot AI Content Writer is a free tool designed to create blog post ideas and outlines, generate emails, and write paragraphs based on user inputs. It includes SEO features and allows users to specify the tone of voice and audience reading level.
Pros
- Integrates with Hubspot content management system
- Free
Cons
- As of 2023, still in public beta-testing phase
Cost: $0.
Quillbot
Quillbot is an AI tool that allows users to summarize or paraphrase existing writing and identify grammatical errors or plagiarism. Although you can’t use it to create articles from scratch, you can use it to check your work for accuracy. The paid version also allows users to select options to expand or shorten text or select styles like “formal,” “creative,” or “academic.”
Pros
- Free plan available
- Includes citation generator
- Browser extension available
Cons
- Doesn’t generate long-form content
- Not compatible with languages other than English
Cost: $0–$19.95/month.
AI writing tools FAQ
Are there free AI writing tools?
Yes. Many writing tools such as ChatGPT offer significant free capabilities that can help you generate many types of content for your business and personal use.
Is it legal to use AI writing?
Yes. Some entities (such as academic institutions) may forbid the use of AI writing assistants or require disclosure, but there’s no federal law prohibiting the use of AI writing assistants.
How do you choose the right AI writing tool?
The best AI writing tool for your business depends on your budget and specific intended use cases. Make a list of desired features and all of the types of content you plan to create, and select the tool that best meets your needs.
