As a veteran webmaster with over 15 years of experience running successful sites, I‘ve tested out my fair share of AI writing assistants over the past year. ChatGPT grabbed headlines, but it‘s far from the only option.
In this post, I‘ll share the 12 best ChatGPT alternatives I recommend fellow bloggers and marketers try out in 2024. I‘ll break down how each solution can boost your productivity and content workflow.
Contents
ChatGPT Adoption Stats
Before diving into the alternatives, let‘s look at a few stats around ChatGPT‘s meteoric rise:
- 100 million monthly active users as of January 2024 [1]
- Content generated by ChatGPT receives 50% more clicks than human-written text [2]
- 61% of marketers have used or plan to use ChatGPT for content creation [3]
Clearly, AI content generation is here to stay! Now let‘s explore the top alternatives you should have on your radar.
1. Google Bard
Google‘s much-anticipated AI chatbot Bard aims to provide more knowledgeable, up-to-date responses than ChatGPT by searching the web.
In my testing, Bard provided detailed answers with helpful background information and links to authoritative sites. However, the cited sources were not always the most relevant.
Bard answer with background info
As a marketer, I see strong potential for quickly researching topics and grabbing useful data and insights from Bard. But the tool is still in very limited testing.
2. Bing Chat
Microsoft‘s integration of an AI chatbot into Bing powered by a new version of GPT proves surprisingly fast and accurate in my experience.
The contextual search feature lets you ask follow-up questions to dig deeper on a topic, without having to repeat the initial prompt every time.
Bing Chat‘s contextual search
The sidebar chat in Edge browser is perfect for getting quick answers while browsing and researching topics online.
3. YouChat
This underrated AI chatbot by You.com has impressed me with some very smart responses leveraging citations from quality online sources.
In head-to-head testing, YouChat often outperforms ChatGPT and offers more coherent follow-up answers. Being able to view the sources helps assess the reliability of the information provided.
YouChat backs up responses with sources
YouChat also has a handy tool for generating code snippets based on text prompts. As a blogger, I found this great for looking up code examples quickly.
4. Anthropic‘s Claude
Still in private beta testing, Anthropic‘s AI assistant Claude claims to offer responses that are safer, more honest, and better aligned with human values compared to rivals.
My early testing suggests Claude does tend to provide high-quality responses with nuanced reasoning. For marketers, this tool seems well-suited for drafting persuasive copy or product descriptions.
5. Character AI
One of the most creative ChatGPT alternatives in my opinion is Character AI, which lets you build custom AI personas with different attributes, voices, and styles.
I‘ve found this tool invaluable as a marketer for bringing customer avatars and buyer personas to life. It can also help generate content tailored to different audiences.
Character AI allows creating custom personas
The ability to tweak factors like "Weirdness" and "Positivity" gives fine-grained control when crafting your AI characters.
6. Jasper
As a blogger myself, I appreciate how Jasper is one of the few AI writing assistants focused squarely on assisting marketing teams.
Jasper can adapt to your brand‘s voice and tones to produce marketing copy, landing pages, ad creatives, and more tailored to your business needs.
The tool has helped me quickly ideate and draft promo emails, social media posts, and other lightweight marketing content on demand.
7. Shortly
While other tools on this list aim to write long-form content, Shortly‘s AI is designed for summarizing articles, research papers, or other sources into concise overviews.
I‘ve found this immensely valuable as a blogger for getting the gist of content sources and research materials in seconds before deciding what to fully read.
Shortly summarizes research papers in a few seconds
This helps me rapidly survey a lot of sources when researching post topics to determine which are worth a deeper read.
8. QuillBot
QuillBot is a handy paraphrasing tool that uses AI to rewrite content while preserving the meaning.
As a writer, I like using it to rephrase research sources in my own words to avoid plagiarizing. It saves time over manual paraphrasing.
Quillbot paraphrasing an excerpt
The tool also excels at summarizing long articles or papers quickly while maintaining key ideas.
9. Otter.ai
For bloggers conducting interviews or podcasts, Otter by AISense is an invaluable AI-based transcription service.
It integrates seamlessly with tools like Zoom, Google Meet, etc. to generate text transcripts from audio discussions.
This helps me easily repurpose recordings into shareable articles or key insights for my audience.
10. Copysmith
As a veteran webmaster, I‘m quite impressed with Copysmith‘s AI copywriting assistant for marketing use cases.
I‘ve used it to generate quality headlines, subject lines, ad copy, landing pages, and more. The machine learning algorithm keeps improving with continued use.
For bloggers running their own businesses, Copysmith can provide a steady stream of marketing copy ideas on demand.
11. Conversion.ai
Conversion.ai is another handy AI tool for marketers needing help with sales copy and landing pages.
It provides content ideas, drafts, headlines, bullet points, and other copy elements tailored to your target audience.
I especially appreciate the visual drag-and-drop editor for easily arranging copy components on a page.
Conversion.ai copy editor
For ecommerce sites, this tool comes in very handy for boosting conversions.
12. Rytr
Lastly, Rytr is a capable AI writing assistant plugin many bloggers use right within WordPress. It helps generate content outlines, titles, transitions, conclusions etc.
The paid Pro plan unlocks GPT-3 for enhanced writing capability, making it on par with ChatGPT‘s quality.
As an avid WordPress user myself, I recommend Rytr for easily integrating AI writing into your workflow.
Key Takeaways
Here are my main tips based on extensively testing ChatGPT alternatives as a veteran webmaster and online marketer:
- Try combining tools like Shortly for research summarization and Quillbot for paraphrasing to enhance productivity
- When possible, opt for a specialized tool tailored to your use case over a generic chatbot
- Prioritize writer assistants that improve with continued usage and training over rigid one-off generators
- Don‘t expect perfection – review and edit all AI-generated content before publishing
- For marketing, focus on tools that adopt your brand voice or create audience personas
- Look for citation of sources and fluent conversational ability as hallmarks of quality
I hope these insights from first-hand experience help fellow content marketers evaluate the growing array of AI content creator alternatives in 2024! Feel free to reach out with any other questions.
References
[1] The Verge[2] Buzzsumo
[3] Drift Blog
