Recently, you have probably noticed an explosion of AI tools. There is one (or two) for almost every scenario. It reminds me of 2007 when Apple unveiled the iPhone. You may remember, the catchphrase “there’s an app for that” which promoted the idea that a mobile application existed to solve virtually any problem or purely to entertain you. Today, I am seeing another revolution “There’s an AI for that”. Just as the App Store revolutionised mobile technology, the latest application of AI into easily accessible SaaS tools, or generative AI projects is changing the way we approach problem-solving, automation, and innovation.
The App Store Era
The iPhone was introduced in 2007, along with a digital marketplace where developers could distribute their applications to iPhone users. The convenience of downloading apps directly to your iPhone opened up a new world of possibilities. Users were instantly able to access games, productivity tools, social media platforms, and other things they never knew they needed, with just a few taps on their screens, often free and ad-supported.
Since launching in July 2008, the growth of the App Store was phenomenal. When it first opened, it featured around 500 apps, and by the end of its first year, it listed over 100,000 apps, by 2011 there were 500,000 apps, and now, the App Store has in excess of an unbelievable 2.2 million apps available for download (Statista).
“There’s an App for That”
And so the catchphrase “there’s an app for that” became a popular saying. But for me, it was always the idea that, whatever the task or problem, you could find an app to help you with it. From checking the weather, and tracking your daily steps, to organising almost every aspect of your life or business “There’s an app for that”. It changed the way we interact with our devices, redefined industries, and sparked an entrepreneurial gold rush with developers from all walks of life seeking to create the next must-have app or game. After a few years, it was possible to run a business from your mobile device!
The AI Tool Revolution
So fast forwarding to the present day, and we’re witnessing a similar transformation, with the application of artificial intelligence. AI tools are spanning industries with real possibilities of enhancing productivity, streamlining operations, and driving innovation. We have natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, machine learning, predictive analytics, and a bucket load of generative AI tools that are reshaping the current tech landscape.
The Growth of AI Tools
As we saw with the App Store’s app count skyrocketing, the availability of AI tools has seen exponential growth. In 2020, GitHub reported that the number of AI-related repositories had grown by 60% in a single year (GitHub Octoverse Report). We have also seen AI-focused startups raising substantial funding displaying investor confidence.
“There’s an AI for That”
AI tools are being developed at speed to tackle a range of tasks from automating customer support through chatbots, analyzing huge datasets, business insights and decisions, composing music, creating images, creating diagrams, writing articles, transcribing meetings, automating workflows, and maybe in the not-too-distant future, curing diseases.
In the same way that the App Store was central to the app revolution marketplaces for AI tools and models have emerged, providing developers with access to pre-trained models, APIs, and other resources to accelerate their AI projects. This is definitely an exciting time.
Here are some “there’s an AI for that” tools I have found recently
- Bhuman.ai generate Human Connections at Scale https://Bhuman.ai
- Founderpal.ai An AI CMO https://founderpal.ai
- Fredo.ai Boost your whatsApp! https://fredo.ai
- Eleven labs – generative AI voice from text: https://elevenlabs.io
- LaLal.ai vocal remover and music source separation service https://www.lalal.ai/
Bhuman.ai generate Human Connections at Scale
Essentially, this tool allows you to clone yourself to send personalised voice and video messages at scale, great for welcoming new subscribers, thanking customers, etc. You can personalise the audio to include the recipient’s name and the video will appear to be you and sound like you. Somewhat scary, but a real time saver!
Founderpal.ai An AI CMO
Founderpal does 4 main tasks. It’s a marketing Strategy Generator, A business Idea Generator, A User Persona Generator, and a Marketing Plan Generator. It is easy to use and very quick. Great to stimulate Ideas when, you know, you don’t have a pal (or CM) to talk to. So really useful for solopreneurs even if you don’t take the ideas generated and just run with them, it can be really useful to explore and uncover opportunities. As they say “Spend less time — get better results. AI will do the heavy lifting for you.”
Not so long ago you could use this for free (limited, I guess) but now you have to pay the one-off fee or subscribe to use this tool.
Fredo.ai Boost your whatsApp!
Fredo is a really cool app that you add as a ‘contact’ to your WhatsApp and it brings the power of ChatGPT and midjourney image generation directly into your whatsapp. You can ask it to summarise articles by just dropping the URL in the chat, Create articles (chatGPT) and create images, with just a few words. Really convenient for leveraging the power of generative AI, on the go.
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Eleven labs – generative AI voice from text
Text to speech is not new technology and in my opinion you can tell it is not natural speech – but voice cloning is pretty good take a look here: https://elevenlabs.io/voice-cloning (But sorry to say if I sounded like tiffany I wouldn’t be looking to clone my voice!
LaLal.ai vocal remover and music source separation service
The website doesn’t look like your typical SaaS or AI tool, and there is a lot going on when you scroll down the homepage, but this might be a typical Swiss website.
As a record collector and former wannabe DJ, I also mess about with digital DJing and a DJ Controller, so Stems is an interesting development, (this is separating an audio track so you can have just the vocals, just the percussion, or just the bassline) but there are many use cases for source separation and this tool looks pretty good. The company behind this created the first 8-stem audio splitter.
The voice cleaner could be a project life-saver, we have probably all been there when there is hiss, clipping, background noise, etc and no way to salvage an important audio track.
Simple to use website and they price on a per-minute basis, typical of any audio-based AI tool.