The Ultimate 2024 AI Toolkit for Beginners (part 1)

1. Introduction

Is your New Year’s resolution to learn how to surf the massive AI tidal wave that’s coming? Then you’ve come to the right place.

I’ve been immersed in the world of AI for most of 2023. Along the way, I’ve tried to learn as much as I can and share some of that knowledge with others. I did a few corporate presentations on the topic in 2023, and I was frequently asked for links to more information about AI.

This article is my master list of all the most valuable resources and information I’ve found about AI over the last year. It ended up being so long that I had to split it into two parts.

Without further ado, let’s get started with part 1.

2. ChatGPT

On November 30th, 2022, the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI was the catalyst to the AI arms race between all the big technology companies.

As of this writing, ChatGPT is the best AI chat-based assistant available. It comes in two flavours: the free ChatGPT 3.5 version and the paid ChatGPT 4 version. If you ask me, the $20 OpenAI charges for ChatGPT 4 is well worth the cost.

Some of the things you can do with ChatGPT 3.5 (free):

• General conversation and Q&A
• Writing assistance: anything from blog posts to scripts, jokes, birthday cards and policies
• Basic coding assistance
• Language translation
• Summarization
• Educational support and tutoring

You can also do everything on this list with ChatGPT 4, but version 4 has far superior reasoning, it’s more accurate and provides more nuanced responses than its predecessor. In human terms, it’s basically a much more intelligent and more capable assistant.

Besides being smarter, here are some additional things you can do with ChatGPT 4 (paid):

• Analyze files such as PDFs and Word documents
• Get it to do your pivot tables, vlookups and other fancy functions in excel files
• Vision: you can take pictures of things and ask it questions
• Create visuals such as logos, flow charts and pictures
• Advanced coding assistance

Signup for ChatGPT at this link: https://chat.openai.com/

Some videos you can watch which explain ChatGPT, how it works and what you can do with it:

1. ChatGPT Tutorial - A Crash Course on Chat GPT for Beginners
2. ChatGPT 4 Tutorial: How to Use Chat GPT 4 For Beginners
3. 7 Different Ways To Use ChatGPT For Your Business

3. Alternatives to ChatGPT

While ChatGPT leads in the conversational AI field, several alternatives offer unique features and capabilities:

Google Bard

• What it is: A conversational AI developed by Google, integrating with Google's vast data and services.
• How it works: Bard leverages Google's comprehensive data, including Maps and other services, to provide relevant and informed responses.
• Best for: Ideal for people who use the Google ecosystem a lot and need AI assistance in Google Docs, Gmail, Google Sheets, Maps, and other Google products.
• Link: Google Bard

Claude

• What it is: Developed by Anthropic, focusing on conversational safety and understanding user intent.
• How it works: Known for its sophisticated context-maintenance over extended conversations and refined response filtering, Claude offers nuanced interactions.
• Best for: Suitable for users requiring AI that can handle longer conversations, large documents, and nuanced discussions where understanding intent is vital.
• Link: Claude

Pi

• What it is: A personal AI assistant recognized for its emotional intelligence and empathetic interactions.
• How it works: Pi excels in providing emotional support, self-compassion exercises, and engaging conversations, offering a more personalized assistant experience.
• Best for: Perfect for individuals seeking personal guidance, emotional support, and an assistant capable of understanding and responding to emotional cues.
• Link: Pi AI Assistant

Google Gemini Ultra

Gemini Ultra has been announced by Google but has not been launched yet. It’s expected to come out in January 2024 and is supposed to be as good as ChatGPT-4. We’ll see about that.

Open-source models

There are many incredible open-source models available for a variety of different tasks. But this is a little too advanced for this article and will be discussed in part 2.

4. AI Image Generators

AI image generators have transformed the creative process, allowing users to convert text prompts into compelling visual images. Here's a look at three notable ones:

DALL-E

• What it is: Developed by OpenAI, DALL-E generates images from textual descriptions, blending computer vision with natural language processing. It creates high-quality images but not as high quality as Midjourney. It’s also pretty strict with images that involve copyright and famous real people. It won’t let you create an image with Mickey Mouse or other copyrighted characters.
• Technical skills: User-friendly, with a straightforward interface. Ideal for beginners.
• Cost: you can get some free Dall-e 2 credits to play with if you sign up. Dall-e 3 comes with a ChatGPT Plus subscription which is $20 per month.
• Link: DALL-E by OpenAI

Midjourney

• What it is: Midjourney stands out for its artistic style and high-quality results. Personally, it’s my favourite on this list and produced the highest quality images on this list. It plays fast and loose with copyright rules, which means you can mostly create real people (e.g. Elon Musk) and copyrighted materials (e.g. Darth Vader) when you generate images.
• Cost: Midjourney offers several pricing plans , the smallest of which is $10 per month. They do offer a free tier but its usually painfully slow at producing images due to high demand.
• Technical skills: Slightly more complex to use than DALL-E, may require a bit of learning for complete beginners .
• Link: Midjourney

Stable Diffusion

• What it is: An open-source model by Stability AI, it produces some great quality images but is a little harder to work with than Dall-e and Midjourney. It gives you a lot more customization options and precision. Most AI profile apps use Stable Diffusion in the background.
• Cost: Because Stable Diffusion is open source, it’s completely free. You can download it and run it on your computer if you have a good GPU card. If you don’t want to hassle with that, there is an online version of Stable Diffusion called Clipdrop but like Midjourney, there is a free tier and paid tiers to use it.
• Technical skills: Accessible for those with basic GPU consumer hardware. Suitable for intermediate users, you’ll need a bit of technical chops to get it up and running.
• Link: Stable Diffusion

Other AI image generators and tools

The three above are just the main ones. AI image generation has evolved a lot over the last 18 months. There are many other smaller alternatives to choose from in 2024:

• Clipdrop : Besides Stable Diffusion, Clipdrop offers a variety other really neat tools for image editing.
• NightCafe : A versatile AI picture generator that allows experimenting with different AI algorithms and offers multiple styles and art transfer.
• PixAI : Specializes in creating high-quality Anime art. Tailored for anime art creation, PixAI offers specialized tools and features for generating detailed and customizable anime characters and scenes.
• Soulgen : Allows users to create both real and anime-style images from text prompts. Offers distinct options to generate images resembling real people or anime characters, with tools to add, extend, and remove content from images.
• Adobe Firefly : Uses AI to enhance creative workflows, generating images and text effects based on user-defined parameters. It’s especially adept at transforming images into different styles and compositions.
• Visme : Offers a text-to-image generation tool that is easy to use and integrates with a suite of AI-powered tools for content authoring and design.
• Jasper Art : Simplifies the image generation process with an intuitive interface, suitable for beginners, marketers, and content creators.
• Craiyon : A free-to-use AI image generator formerly known as DALL-E Mini, generates images based on user input, offering unique features like t-shirt printing.
• Pica AI : Pica AI offers a comprehensive suite of AI-powered tools for creating a wide range of art styles, including illustrations, anime, and paintings from either text or photos. It is user-friendly and provides daily free credits for generating AI art pictures.

5. AI Video Generators

AI video generators are the next frontier of cool stuff you can do with AI, allowing people to generate dynamic video content from text descriptions and images. Let's explore a few of the top options:

Heygen

• What it is: Heygen excels in creating corporate videos and translating voiceovers in the original voice. It's known for its customizable AI avatars, diverse character options, and user-friendly interface. Heygen is particularly handy for marketing, training, and social media content creation.
• Technical skills: Suitable for users with basic to intermediate video creation and editing skills.
• Link: Heygen
• Example: Here is Javier Milei’s speech to the WEF below translated from Spanish to English using Heygen. Note how the translation is in his own voice and how even his lips are moving as if he’s speaking English.

Synthesia

• What it is: Synthesia is an AI video generator designed for business use, especially for creating employee onboarding and training videos. It uses AI avatars and a proprietary text-to-speech engine, making video creation and updates quick and cost-effective. Synthesia is ideal for businesses needing frequent video updates and translations.
• Technical skills: Ideal for beginners and professionals alike.
• Link: Synthesia

RunwayML

• What it is: RunwayML is a comprehensive platform for video, audio, and text media creation. It leverages AI to empower artists and creators with intuitive machine learning tools. RunwayML is suitable for a range of creative tasks, including video synthesis, style transfer, and AI-driven image and video editing.
• Technical skills: Accessible to users of all skill levels, including those without coding experience.
• Link: RunwayML

Veed

• What it is: Veed is an AI video generator and editor that allows you to transform your ideas into professional videos in minutes. It provides tools for creating videos using AI avatars, text-to-speech, and stock media. Veed is suitable for content creators, marketers, and businesses looking to produce high-quality video content efficiently.
• Technical skills: User-friendly and accessible to beginners.
• Link: Veed

Invideo

• What it is: Invideo is a powerful AI video generator that enables users to create professional-level videos in minutes. It's known for its ability to create videos from text descriptions and offers a wide range of features including a selection of AI avatars, AI voices, and a collection of video backgrounds.
• Technical skills: Suitable for both beginners and experienced video makers.
• Link: Invideo

These AI video generators are really fun to play with. They’re still a little wonky and don’t quite work the way you want them to all the time. But nevertheless, you can still do some interesting stuff and I can see most of these tools getting much better over the next 12-18 months.

6. Prompting

Prompting may seem like just typing a question into a box and sending it to the AI. But after a year of using different AI tools every day, I have realized that how you write your prompts plays a huge part in the quality of the output you get from the AI.

Basic Prompting

Prompting is the skill of crafting inputs (questions or statements) to guide AI models like GPT-4 in producing useful and relevant outputs. It's the difference between getting a vague, generic response and receiving a precise answer that directly addresses your query.

Consider prompting as giving directions to someone. The AI, like a knowledgeable guide, uses your prompt as a map to navigate its vast knowledge base and deliver the information you’re looking for. For example, instead of asking "Tell me about whales," a more effective prompt would be "Provide a summary of the migration patterns of blue whales over the last 10 years".

Start with straightforward prompts where you need clear, concise answers. As you understand how the AI interprets and responds to your inputs, gradually introduce complexity. Practice by comparing the AI's responses to different variations of your prompt, and note how slight changes in wording can significantly improve your results.

Advanced Prompting Techniques

As you get deeper into the world of AI, you'll encounter advanced prompting techniques that can significantly enhance the quality and relevance of the AI's responses. Few-shot learning is one such technique, where you provide the AI with multiple examples, effectively 'teaching' it the pattern or style you're aiming for. For example, when you want to make a press release, include a couple of well-crafted examples and instruct the AI to write the new one in a similar way. This method helps refine the AI's output to more closely align with what you want to do.

Chain of thought prompting is another sophisticated strategy, especially useful for complex problem-solving or exploratory tasks. Here, you lead the AI through a series of logical steps or questions, almost like a thought experiment. This approach is particularly effective when dealing with multifaceted issues where a single prompt might not be enough. For example, if you're analyzing market trends, you might start with a prompt about current consumer behavior, followed by prompts that explore historical data, competitor analysis, and future projections.

Prompting Resources

There is so much to say about how to prompt an AI system well that a whole new field has emerged called prompt engineering. I’ve tried to cover some fundamentals in this article but there is a lot more information about prompting at the links below:

Articles:

• Prompt Engineering Guide : Comprehensive set of resources about prompting.
• Prompt Engineering : Documentation written by OpenAI to help you improve your prompts.
• Introduction to Prompt Design : Anthropic’s documentation about how to get the best out of Claude.
• Prompting Guide : Another very detailed set of documentation about prompting, from basics to advanced.
• Brex’s Prompt Engineering Guide : Created by the company Brex for internal use, this has some really interesting information about prompting best practices.
• Advanced Prompt Engineering : This article is for more advanced tools and methods of prompting.

Videos:

• Master the Perfect ChatGPT Prompt Formula (in just 8 minutes) : This is a quick video on an effective technique of prompting ChatGPT
• Prompt Engineering Overview: This is more like a lecture which provides an overview of how prompt engineering works.
• Learn Prompting : An introductory course on prompt engineering.
• Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT : A full course by Vanderbilt University on Prompt Engineering.
• Prompt Engineering for developers : An excellent short course about how to use prompt engineering when building applications using AI.

Other prompt resources:

• PromptHero : a library of prompt templates for various AI tools including ChatGPT and Midjourney.
• Prompt Builder : a tool to help you write better prompts for a few popular AI image generators.
• PromptBase : this is a paid collection of all types of different prompts.
• 2500+ ChatGPT prompt templates : lots of ChatGPT prompt templates for various use cases.
• Awesome ChatGPT prompts : like the title says, this is a collection of some pretty slick ChatGPT prompts.
• Reddit list of prompt resources : If none of this is good enough, here is a gigantic list of very good prompt resources that someone put together on Reddit.

7. What’s next?

In part 2 of this article, we’ll spend some time looking at more intermediate ideas and resources. I will update this article with the link to part 2 when I publish it

This article was originally posted on my Substack: https://lavcrnobrnja.substack.com/