First, you have the "freemi­um" mod­el. This is the most com­mon. You get a basic ver­sion of the tool for free, for­ev­er. It's usu­al­ly good enough for sim­ple tasks. But the more advanced fea­tures, the ones you see in the cool demo videos, are locked behind a paid sub­scrip­tion. Think of it like a free mobile game. You can play, but if you want the best gear, you have to pay.
Sec­ond, there's the "free tri­al" or "cred­it-based" mod­el. You sign up and get a cer­tain num­ber of cred­its or a time lim­it. For an image gen­er­a­tor, you might get 100 free images. For a video tool, you might get 10 min­utes of free pro­cess­ing. Once you use them up, you either have to wait for them to refresh (some­times dai­ly or month­ly) or you have to start pay­ing. This mod­el lets you test the full pow­er of the tool, but only for a lit­tle while.
Third, and this is the rarest, you have the tru­ly free tools. These are often open-source projects or tools offered by large com­pa­nies as a way to get you into their world. For exam­ple, a com­pa­ny might offer a free tran­scrip­tion tool hop­ing you’ll even­tu­al­ly buy their oth­er paid ser­vices. These are great, but they can some­times require more tech­ni­cal skill to set up.
So, with that in mind, let's look at some actu­al free tools you can use right now, bro­ken down by what they do.
For Writ­ing and Brain­storm­ing
This is the cat­e­go­ry most peo­ple start with. You need to write an email, a blog post, or just get some ideas down.
The most obvi­ous one is the free ver­sion of Chat­G­PT. It runs on an old­er mod­el (GPT‑3.5), but it’s still very capa­ble. I use it almost dai­ly for grunt work. For exam­ple, if I have a list of bul­let points for an arti­cle, I’ll ask it to turn them into a few para­graphs. It gives me a start­ing point. I nev­er just copy and paste its out­put because it sounds gener­ic, but it helps me get past that "blank page" feel­ing. The catch with the free ver­sion is that dur­ing peak hours, it can be slow. It also doesn't have access to the inter­net, so its knowl­edge is stuck in the past. Don't ask it about cur­rent events.
Then there's Google's Gem­i­ni (what used to be called Bard). Its main advan­tage is that it’s con­nect­ed to the inter­net. This makes it much bet­ter for research. You can ask it to sum­ma­rize a recent news arti­cle or explain a top­ic based on cur­rent infor­ma­tion. I find it use­ful for plan­ning trips. For instance, I asked it, "What are three fam­i­­ly-friend­­ly restau­rants near the British Muse­um that are open on a Mon­day evening?" It gave me real sug­ges­tions with links. The down­side is that I find its writ­ing style can be a bit bland and repet­i­tive. It’s bet­ter as a research assis­tant than a cre­ative writer.
Anoth­er one I use for research is Per­plex­i­ty AI. It works like a search engine com­bined with a chat­bot. When you ask it a ques­tion, it doesn't just give you an answer; it gives you an answer with num­bered cita­tions that link direct­ly to the sources it used. This is a huge deal. It means you can check its work. The free ver­sion lim­its the num­ber of "Pro" search­es you can do, which use its most advanced mod­els, but for basic fact-find­­ing, it's excel­lent.
For Cre­at­ing Images
AI image gen­er­a­tion is where the cred­it sys­tem is king. It takes a lot of com­put­ing pow­er to make an image, so com­pa­nies rarely give it away for free with­out lim­its.
Microsoft Design­er (which used to be called Bing Image Cre­ator) is prob­a­bly the best place to start. It uses OpenAI's DALL‑E 3 mod­el, which is one of the best avail­able. You get a cer­tain num­ber of "boosts" or fast cred­its each day. You can use these to gen­er­ate images quick­ly. Once your boosts run out, you can still make images, but it will be much slow­er. The qual­i­ty is fan­tas­tic for a free tool. The key is to be very spe­cif­ic in your text descrip­tion. Don’t just say "a car." Say "a pho­to of a clas­sic red 1960s sports car dri­ving on a coastal road at sun­set." The more detail you give it, the bet­ter the result.
Leonardo.Ai is anoth­er great option, and it gives you more con­trol. The free plan gives you a set num­ber of cred­its that reset every day. What makes Leonar­do inter­est­ing is that it gives you access to sev­er­al dif­fer­ent AI mod­els, each with a dif­fer­ent artis­tic style. You can also train your own mod­els if you get more advanced. I use it when I have a very spe­cif­ic aes­thet­ic in mind that Microsoft Design­er can’t quite cap­ture. For exam­ple, if I want some­thing that looks like a vin­tage com­ic book illus­tra­tion, Leonar­do has mod­els specif­i­cal­ly for that.
Can­va also has a built-in AI image gen­er­a­tor. It's part of their free plan. It’s not the most advanced tool out there, but its con­ve­nience is its main sell­ing point. If you’re already design­ing a social media post or a pre­sen­ta­tion in Can­va, you can gen­er­ate an image right there with­out leav­ing the web­site. The free plan gives you a lim­it­ed num­ber of life­time cred­its, so it’s not for heavy use. But for adding a quick cus­tom graph­ic to a project, it works per­fect­ly.
For Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tasks
AI isn't just about writ­ing and images. There are tools for all sorts of tasks.
For tran­scrib­ing audio, I use a tool called MacWhis­per (or Whis­perDesk­top for Win­dows users). This is an exam­ple of a tru­ly free tool. It’s an app you down­load and run on your own com­put­er. It uses OpenAI's Whis­per mod­el, which is incred­i­bly accu­rate at turn­ing spo­ken words into text. Because it runs on your machine, it's com­plete­ly pri­vate. No one else sees your audio files. I use it to tran­scribe inter­views and meet­ing record­ings. The only catch is that it requires a rea­son­ably mod­ern com­put­er to run smooth­ly, and you have to install it your­self. But once it's set up, it’s a work­horse with no lim­its.
For sum­ma­riz­ing long arti­cles or doc­u­ments, Quill­Bot has a free sum­ma­riz­er tool. You just paste in the text, and it pulls out the key sen­tences. The free ver­sion has a lim­it on how many words you can paste in at once, which is a clas­sic freemi­um restric­tion. But for quick­ly get­ting the gist of a news arti­cle or a long email, it saves a lot of time. You wouldn't use it to sum­ma­rize a whole book, but for day-to-day tasks, it's very handy.
The Real "Cost" of Free Tools
It's impor­tant to remem­ber that noth­ing is ever tru­ly free. When you use these ser­vices, you're pay­ing in oth­er ways.
First, you're pay­ing with your data. Most free AI com­pa­nies use the data you pro­vide (your prompts, your text, the images you gen­er­ate) to fur­ther train and improve their mod­els. It's usu­al­ly anonymized, but it's the fun­da­men­tal busi­ness mod­el. The old say­ing applies: if you're not pay­ing for the prod­uct, you are the prod­uct.
Sec­ond, you're pay­ing with your time. Free ver­sions are often slow­er, have wait­ing queues, or are plas­tered with ads. The paid ver­sions are almost always faster and more direct.
Third, you're pay­ing with lim­i­ta­tions. The free mod­els are usu­al­ly a gen­er­a­tion behind the paid ones. They might be less accu­rate, less cre­ative, or have stricter con­tent fil­ters. You might get a good result, but you’ll have to work hard­er, writ­ing more detailed prompts or edit­ing the out­put more heav­i­ly, than some­one using a paid ver­sion.
So, yes, free AI tools are every­where. They are good enough for many people's needs. Start with them, see what they can do for you, and under­stand their lim­its. Just go in with your eyes open, know­ing that "free" is just the start­ing point of the con­ver­sa­tion.