LibGuides: AI Literacy & Help Guide: Which AI Tool Should You Use for Your Task?

AI Literacy & Help Guide

Which AI Tool Should You Use 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

ChatGPT (free) - trained up to Oct. 2023
Claude (free & paid) - trained up to April 2024

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

ChatGPT Plus (GPT4), $20/mo
Perplexity AI (free & pro versions)
Microsoft Copilot (free & pro versions)
Google Gemini (free & pro versions)

Are you interested in learning about the other AI tools available?

AI Tools Directory: This platform offers a curated list of AI tools across various categories, providing detailed descriptions and updates.

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.)	ChatGPT Claude Perplexity AI Microsoft Copilot Gemini All of these tools also have paid versions that are more capable.
Upload documents and summarize them, create study guides, FAQs, audio overview, and more.	NotebookLM - Google NotebookLM never trains their models on the data you upload to it.

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.

Upload documents and summarize them, create study guides, FAQs, audio overview, and more.

NotebookLM - Google
NotebookLM never trains their models on the data you upload to it.

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. Perplexity AI Microsoft Copilot Gemini ChatGPT-4o and 4o mini (Available in free accounts for limited use).
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 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. Elicit Assistant by Scite Keenious Inciteful These are not 100% free, as most have usage limits.

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.

Perplexity AI
Microsoft Copilot
Gemini
ChatGPT-4o and 4o mini (Available in free accounts for limited use).

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 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.

Are you interested in learning about the other AI tools available?

Check out the AI Tools Directory. This platform offers a curated list of AI tools across various categories, providing detailed descriptions and updates.

These are some of the most popular AI tools:

	ChatGPT	Open AI Free & Paid Options
	Microsoft Copilot	Microsoft Free & Paid Options
	Gemini	Google Free & Paid Options
	Claude	Anthropic Free & Paid Options
	Perplexity AI	Perplexity Free & Paid Options
	Meta AI	Meta Free

Other useful tools based on LLMs

These tools are based on language models, like those from OpenAI.

Elicit
Find answers from 200 million research papers. Elicit uses semantic similarity, which finds papers related to your question even if they don't use the same keywords. See Getting Started.

NotebookLM
Google's tool for saving and working with your own notes. You can include links to websites, Google Docs, Google Slides, YouTube, or paste in any text and then get useful summaries, quiz questions, and even a simulated podcast based on your content. Learn more in this video. Also, Google never uses your data to train NotebookLM: "your uploads, queries, or the model's responses remain private to you."

Explainpaper
Upload a PDF, highlight confusing text, and get a simpler explanation. Useful for reading research papers outside your field. You can also get explanations in languages other than English.

Inciteful
Build a network of academic papers and it will analyze the network to help you discover the most relevant literature. Select two papers and it will show how the literature connects them together.

Petal
Reference manager and more. Ask the AI to explain your selection, translate it into another language, or identify key points.

Scite AI assistant
A conversational tool made by Scite that lets you ask questions in simple language and get answers backed by real, up to date references. Think of like ChatGPT with real, up to date references, tailor-made for anyone discovering, understanding, or writing research.