Skip to Main Content

AI Literacy in the Age of ChatGPT: A Guide for Instructors

Which AI tool for your task?

Since there are so many generative AI tools these days, it can be difficult to decide which one to use for a particular task.

A helpful way to think about this is to look at whether the tool is grounded in a source of facts.

Not grounded - these models rely only on their training data

Grounded - these models can also use web search results or other types of search results (see below)

Wordsmithing tasks (that don't involve search)

Task Use any of these free tools
  • Brainstorming ideas or examples
     
  • Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper
     
  • Get ideas for keywords to search in library databases
     
  • Summarizing and outlining information
     
  • Changing the writing level of some text (5 years old, high school, college, faculty level)
     

  • Changing the writing style (make it more humorous, more formal,
    more satirical, more diplomatic, etc.)

All of these tools also have paid versions that are more capable.

Tasks that involve searching

For any of these tasks... Use any of these free tools
  • Finding and summarizing websites that answer your question
     
  • Asking questions or getting a summary of information on a specific website
    Example: Please summarize this: [your link here]

These summarize results from web search and link to the sources.
  • Finding scholarly articles
     
  • Summarizing a particular scholarly article
     
  • Asking questions of a particular scholarly article
     
  • Uploading the PDF of a scholarly article and asking questions or getting a summary.

Start with OneSearch, library databases and Google Scholar. 
Their coverage is more comprehensive than the tools below.

Then try these additional tools.
Use these to find additional sources that may not have appeared with keyword searching. They use semantic searching, some of them based on Semantic Scholar, others on OpenAlex.

They also include generative AI features, like natural language queries, summarizing, outlining, etc.

These are not 100% free, as most have usage limits.

AI Tools

Finding Resources

  • Consensus.app (free and $) - An academic search engine grounded in scientific research.  Source material comes from the Semantic Scholar database, which includes over 200M papers across all domains of science. The dataset is updated monthly.
  • Elicit: The AI Research Assistant (free and $) - Finds relevant papers without perfect keyword match, summarizes takeaways from the paper specific to your question, and extracts key information from the papers. While answering questions with research is the main focus of Elicit, there are also other research tasks that help with brainstorming, summarization, and text classification.

  • Inciteful.xyz (free) - Includes two tools. Paper Discovery builds a network of papers from citations and uses network analysis algorithms to analyze the network, allowing you to identify the most similar papers, important papers, prolific authors and institutions. Literature Connector allows you to enter two papers and provides an interactive visualization showing how they are connected by the literature. 

  • Keenious.com (free and $) -  Analyzes text in documents, such as PDFs or written text, and recommends relevant research based on the analysis. It can be used in a web browser, in Microsoft Word, or as a plugin in Google Docs.

  • Perplexity AI (free and $) -  An AI powered search engine designed to provide more comprehensive and accurate answers than traditional search engines. It gives summaries of search results and also supplies the online sources it utilized in providing them, making it effortless for users to validate the information.

  • Research Rabbit (free) -  An online “citation-based literature mapping tool." It is a visual literature review software mapping tool that is similar to Spotify. The tool connects your research interests to related articles and authors

Literature Reviews

  • Connected Papers (free and $) - A visual tool to help researchers and applied scientists find and explore papers relevant to their field of work.

  • Litmaps (free and $) - Finds articles relevant to your search criteria and displays them in visual maps so you can see how the literature is connected. 

  • Research Rabbit (free) - An online “citation-based literature mapping tool." It is a visual literature review software mapping tool that is similar to Spotify. The tool connects your research interests to related articles and authors

Images and Videos

  • Adobe Express (free - use CC credentials) -  Uses Adobe Firefly for text to image generation.
  • Canva (free and $) - Design infographics, presentations, social media graphics, and more with thousands of beautiful layouts. Try their text to image AI tool
  • HeyGen (free and $) - A video creation tool that includes Text to Speech, AI Avatars, Custom Avatars, Generative Outfit and Voice Cloning features
  • kapwing (free and $) - A modern video creation platform that helps teams make great content faster.
  • Night Cafe (free) - Create amazing artworks in seconds using the power of Artificial Intelligence, participate in AI Art Challenges, chat with AI Art enthusiasts, and more. Try an art generator now! Join millions of other AI Art enthusiasts and explore, like and comment on the top AI generated images and AI styles.

Brainstorming and Mind Mapping

  • chatmind - (free and $) Instantly create and refine mind maps with AI Chat.

Design and Editing

  • Adobe Firefly (free and $) - Use generative AI and simple text prompts to create images, text effects, and color palettes. Make all-new content from reference images and explore more possibilities.
  • Adobe Image Background Remover (free and $) - Pull in an image and download a version of it with a transparent background. Use other quick actions like GIF and MP4 converters, video trim and resize, and more.
  • Canva Magic Studio (free and $) - Combines AI image generation and editing in one tool, helping users create the perfect images for their specific use cases
  • Colormind IO (free) - Color scheme generator that uses deep learning. It can learn color styles from photographs, movies, and popular art.

Presentations

  • Canva Magic Presentation - (free and $) - Get a head start on your slides and let Magic Presentation create a professional presentation, tailored to your content.
  • SlidesAI.io (free and $) - SlidesAI.io is an add-on for Google Slides. With SlidesAI.io you can take any piece of text and transform it magically into visually appealing slides.
  • Slides to Go: AI Presentation Maker (free and $) - When lack of inspiration or time constraints are something you’re worried about, it’s a good idea to seek help. Slidesgo comes to the rescue with its latest functionality—the AI Presentation Maker! With a few clicks, you’ll have wonderful slideshows that suit your own needs.

Productivity

  • NotebookLM (free) - Uses Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro model to train an AI on documents that users upload. The AI then becomes an expert on those documents, and can generate personalized guides, answer questions, and provide citations. Use it to create study guides, FAQs, briefing summaries, and audio overviews that sound like a podcast. Uploaded data and documents remain private. 

Translation

  • HeyGen (free and $) - Video translation tool that clones your natural speaking voice and style to deliver in other languages. Can also create realistic avatars of people or animals that can deliver a script with natural nuances.