July 18, 2024

Best AI Writing Tools of 2024 (detailed breakdowns with screenshots)

Stew Fortier

Co-Founder & CEO, Type

@stewfortier

Writing is one of the most powerful ways to communicate ideas, share stories, and convey information.

But writing is hard, especially when you're short on time, energy, or ideas.

Thankfully, there are new AI writing tools that can help solve some of the harder parts of the writing process.

This article summarizes the best AI writing tools for different types of writers, so you can quickly evaluate and choose the right one for your needs.

Table of contents

The best AI writing tools of 2024

  • Best for professional writers: Type
  • Best for beginner writers: Claude
  • Best for students: Jenni.ai
  • Best for fiction book authors: Sudowrite
  • Best for enterprise marketing teams: Writer

How we evaluated the top AI writing tools

At Type, we help writers speed up their process without diminishing the quality of their work. We've spent countless hours testing various writing tools, and we understand that different writers have very different needs.

When we evaluate tools, we assess them on four key criteria:

  • Quality: Does the AI generate useful, accurate, relevant writing?
  • Ease of use: How intuitive and user-friendly is the product?
  • Customization: Can the output be tailored to specific writing use cases or styles?
  • Integration: How well does the tool fit into existing writing workflows?

(By the way, most of the tools in this guide offer free trials, so you can try them out and see the outputs for yourself)

Best AI writing tool for professionals

Type

Type is an AI-first document editor designed for anyone who writes regularly for work. With Type, you can generate drafts in your voice and desired format, get unblocked with personalized writing suggestions, and chat with a writing assistant powered by state-of-the-art AI models.

Type is an excellent choice for professional writers who need more advanced writing and editing features and seamless integration into their writing process.

Content quality - Type allows a user to upload knowledge (documents, PDFs, URLs, and images) and a writing sample so that its AI can generate useful, accurate, and relevant drafts in their unique voice and style. Type's other writing and editing features also automatically attempt to mimic the style and format of a user's document.

Ease of use - Type offers the simplest, most intuitive writing interface of any professional writing tool. The learning curve is minimal for anyone familiar with standard document editors like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Notion.

Customization - One of Type's strengths is its customization capabilities. Users can attach knowledge and style examples to guide Type as it generates first drafts and a user can create and save their own custom prompts across most of Type's writing and editing features.

Integration - Type functions as a complete document editor, and users can copy and paste their work from Type into other tools without losing their formatting or images. They can also export their Type documents to familiar file types like .DOCX, PDF, HTML, and markdown.

Pricing - Free trial available, with paid plans starting at $23/month

Link - Type

Best AI writing tools for beginners

For those just starting their writing journey or looking for relatively simple AI assistance, these tools offer a lot of value without overwhelming, complex features.

Claude

Claude is an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, designed to be helpful, harmless, and honest. It's a good choice for novice writers due to its straightforward interface and powerful, helpful base AI model (Claude Sonnet 3.5).

Given that Claude is primarily a chat-based product, it's especially helpful for brainstorming and ideation. It's also useful for more formulaic types of writing that don't require lots of human editing or refinement (think: email responses, social media posts, or simple blog articles).

Content quality - Claude is able to generate well-structured, useful content across a wide range of topics and genres. It tends to write in a more humanlike tone relative to other popular chatbots, making its content more usable and familiar.

Ease of use - Claude's chat-centric interface is very simple to use. This simplicity makes it ideal for those new to AI writing tools. Claude's "artifact" and project features also help keep your chat uncluttered as you work.

Customization - Claude offers the ability to attach and analyze files alongside a chat, which can be useful for ensuring its output is accurate. It is also good at following complex instructions, which means you can give it relatively nuanced editorial guidance to guide its output.

Integration - Claude doesn't directly integrate with other writing software, but its outputs can be easily copied and pasted into any word processor or document editor.

Pricing - Free option, with paid plans starting at $20/month

Link - Claude

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an AI assistant developed by OpenAI, known for its versatility and advanced reasoning abilities. Similar to Claude, it's a great option for general writing assistance – especially brainstorming and generating first drafts.

Like Claude, it's more limited when it comes to complex writing tasks that involve lots of editing and refinement.

Content quality - ChatGPT excels in producing coherent, accurate content across a wide range of topics. However, it tends to be a bit less expressive and humanlike than other AI writing products. It performs better on technical and academic writing tasks than it does creative writing.

Ease of use - The interface of ChatGPT is extremely simple, allowing users to converse with a handful of OpenAI's models, including their state-of-the-art GPT-4o model. ChatGPT's mobile and desktop apps also allow you to speak with it using your voice, which can be especially helpful for brainstorming and capturing stream-of-consciousness thoughts.

Customization - ChatGPT offers a handful of customization options, including "custom instructions" that you can set to guide how the AI responds to you. You can also find specialized AI assistants in  the GPT store, though often it's just easier to use OpenAI's base model for most tasks.

Integration - You can give ChatGPT access to your Google Drive or Microsoft One account so that it can more easily pull in important context for your conversations.

Pricing - Free tier available, with premium plans starting at $20/month

Link - ChatGPT

Best AI writing tool for students and academics

For students and researchers dealing with academic writing, Jenni.ai offers specialized features to assist with research papers, essays, and citations.

Jenni.ai

Jenni.ai is an AI-powered writing assistant specifically designed for academic and research writing. It's an excellent choice for students looking to streamline their writing process and improve the quality of their papers.

Content quality - Jenni.ai produces well-researched, academically-oriented content. It's particularly strong in generating outlines, expanding on ideas, and providing relevant citations.

Ease of use - The platform offers a user-friendly interface that guides students through the writing process. Its AI autocomplete feature helps users maintain a steady writing flow, while automatic citations help reduce the need to leave the platform to do research.

Customization - Jenni.ai allows users to upload their own files and research to generate drafts. It also supports multiple citation styles (APA, MLA, IEEE, Chicago, Harvard), making it adaptable to various academic requirements.

Integration - The tool integrates well with academic workflows, offering features like PDF uploads for research papers and .bib file imports for citations. It also supports exports to LaTeX, .docx, and HTML formats.

Pricing - Free option available, with paid plans starting at $12/month

Link - Jenni.ai

Best AI writing tool for fiction authors

For creative writers, especially those working on a novel, we've found Sudowrite offers the most comprehensive writing experience.

Sudowrite

Sudowrite is an AI writing tool designed specifically for fiction authors. It offers a number of creative and delightful features designed to make writing novels more fun and efficient.

Content quality - Sudowrite excels at generating creative, story-oriented content. It can help with descriptions, dialogue, and plot development, maintaining consistency with the author's style and narrative. It can also generate NSFW content, which is a must-have capability for certain types of fiction.

Ease of use - The platform offers some familiar features, like a simple editor, complimented by a range of tools built for fiction writing. Powerful features like "Story Bible" and "Canvas" make it easy to organize and develop complex story and character arcs.

Customization - Sudowrite offers high levels of customization, including a new feature that lets authors train the AI to learn their unique voice and style.

Integration - While primarily a standalone tool, Sudowrite offers a Chrome extension for Google Docs, allowing for some integration with existing writing workflows (although as of July 2024, the Chrome store link appears to no longer work).

Pricing - Free trial, with paid plans starting at $10/month

Link - Sudowrite

Best AI writing tool for enterprise marketing teams

For marketing teams, especially at larger companies, we've found that Writer offers the most comprehensive suite of AI-powered content creation tools and collaboration features.

Writer

Writer is a comprehensive AI writing platform designed for enterprise marketing teams. It offers a full-stack solution for generating, editing, and managing content at scale.

Content quality - Writer enables marketing teams to train it on a specific brand voice and style guide so that it can generate content and suggestions that are relevant to the brand.

Ease of use - The platform offers a range of tools and interfaces suitable for different team members, from content creators to editors and managers. Its AI Studio allows for easy creation of custom AI apps.

Customization - Writer excels in customization, offering AI guardrails to enforce brand guidelines, tone, and regulatory compliance. The Knowledge Graph feature allows the AI to be grounded in company-specific data.

Integration - Writer integrates with various enterprise tools and platforms, including Chrome, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Outlook, Figma, and Contentful.

Pricing - Free tier with basic functionality, with paid plans starting at $18/month

Link - Writer

What's next? How to make the most of AI writing tools

As AI writing technology continues to evolve, it's important to remember that these tools are meant to enhance, not replace, human creativity and expertise. To get the most out of AI writing assistants:

  1. Experiment with different tools to find the one that best fits your writing style and needs.
  2. Use AI-generated content as a starting point, then refine and personalize it.
  3. Continuously improve your own writing skills alongside using AI tools.

For more tips on effectively using AI in your writing process, check out our blog. You can also get started with Type for free and try out all of these tips for yourself.

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