I recently posed the following question on LinkedIn, “What AI tools are you exploring and using to do your work?” I asked this because keeping up with the endless influx of new tools is nearly impossible for learning designers. I thought this list could be a starting point for many. It might also be a list of the best AI tools for instructional designers, since these are the tools many are using. While I researched each tool mentioned, I have not personally used all of them myself. I want to thank everyone who provided their input!
Note: As best I could, I did not include image generators because they use artists’ work to train their AI models but give no credit or compensation to the artists. I am uncomfortable promoting those tools until they resolve the legal issues around this practice. You can read more about this issue here: Visual artists fight back against AI companies for repurposing their work.
AI ANIMATION Tools
Instructional designers are using AI animation tools to speed up the animation process.
| Animaker | An AI-powered animation generator. |
| Animated Drawings | Upload a drawing and bring it to life. Marketed as a tool for children. |
| Vyond | Commercial animation tool with some AI capabilities: creates a script and video from a prompt, translates screen text into other languages, creates characters from photos |
AI AUDIO: Enhance and Edit Tools
AI audio tools for instructional design speed up the editing process and enhance the clarity and richness of the sound. See the AI text to speech tools below.
| Adobe Podcast AI | Enhances voice recordings using AI. |
| Audiate | AI text-based audio editing (works with Camtasia for video editing too). |
| AudioGen | AudioCraft is a code base for generative audio needs. AudioGen creates environmental sounds corresponding to a text description. (For the techies.) |
| ClearVoice | Removes the annoying sounds (filler words, stuttering, etc.) from voice recordings using AI. |
AI Audio: Text-to-Speech Generators
Please remember the many talented voice actors who offer a human voice that is more expressive and warmer than an AI voice. Consider limiting use of these tools for demo audio to show stakeholders prior to hiring a voice actor. Two sources for professional voice talent are voices.com and voices123.com.
| Eleven Labs | AI voice generation, text to speech in other languages |
| Speechify | Text to speech, AI voice generation |
AI Chatbot Builders
Chatbot builders allow you to automate communication with customized content. Instructional designers might use these tools to distribute information, for job aids, and for FAQs.
AI Classroom Instruction Tools
AI classroom tools speed up the lesson creation process for teachers and facilitators.
| Magic School AI | Large set of tools to help educators design lesson plans, generate materials and perform other tasks for the classroom. |
AI Content Search and Generation Tools
Instructional designers are using the AI content tools as an assistant for brainstorming, writing, and content generation. Beware of the known hallucinations and inaccuracies of the content they provide and always check the facts first.
| Bard | Similar to ChatGPT but trained on a different Large Language Model (LLM). Bard has access to the internet, was built for research, will cite sources when asked, integrates with Google apps, and has an easy way to check Bard’s responses for accuracy. |
| Bing Chat | Uses the same language model as ChatGPT (OpenAI) but is integrated into Bing Search. Bing Chat generates content, provides step-by-step instructions for performing tasks, and uses Bing to look up information in real-time. |
| ChatGPT | Based on the OpenAI LLM, ChatGPT provides text-based conversations, answers questions, and assists with writing, search, and coding tasks. It cannot browse the internet or access real-time data. All responses are based on its latest update. |
| ChatGPT Voice | Voice chat works on the ChatGPT Mobile app for Android and iPhone. The app provides a way to have back and forth voice conversations with the bot. |
| Claude | An AI assistant that generates content, answers questions, assists with writing, summarizes documents, etc. It does not have the capability to browse the internet or access websites in real time. All responses are based on its latest update unless you provide the information. |
| Jasper | An AI platform promoted as an assistant for marketing teams. It generates long-form content, assists in brand positioning, content strategy, and style guide. |
| Odin AI | Conversational AI assistant for task automation: retrieves and generates content, extracts insights from your data, transcribes and summarizes meetings, performs follow-ups, etc. |
| Perplexity | AI assistant focused on providing accurate and concise answers to user queries. It’s designed to be more of a search assistant, emphasizing finding and delivering precise information rather than engaging in extensive dialogs. |
| You | AI assistant that helps with searching, writing essays, debugging code, and creating digital art. Search results provide a mix of answers and related web resources. |
AI Course Creation Tools
AI course creation tools might help instructional designers optimize the course creation process. Will these courses provide the relevance, strategies, and engagement most people are looking for?
| Courseai.com | Platform that uses AI to shorten the time it takes to organize and create online courses. |
AI Image Editing Tools
Many training products exist in a visual medium. You may welcome any way to speed up the difficult tasks of removing backgrounds, increasing resolution, and editing that these AI image editing tools offer.
| Cleanup.pictures | Erase any defects, objects, people, etc. |
| ClipDrop | AI editing tools to replace backgrounds, upscale resolution, swap faces, etc. |
| PixelCut | AI editing tools to remove backgrounds, upscale resolution, erase artifacts, recolor |
| Remove.bg | Upload an image, the app removes the background |
| Upscale Media | Increase resolution up to 4x, enhance image quality |
AI Meeting Tools
Meetings often have a bad reputation for being too long and tedious. These AI meeting tools remove some of the drudgery.
| Airgram | Record, transcribe, summarize, and share meeting conversations. |
| Fireflies | Transcribe, summarize, search, and analyze meeting notes. |
| Krisp | Optimizes audio to reduce background noise. |
| Mem | Take notes in Mem and it connects your random writings using a conversational interface. |
| Otter | Records audio, writes notes, captures action items, and generates summaries. |
AI Presentation Tools
Similar to course creation tools, presentation tools can provide a base from which to work. However, they may require quite a bit of tweaking.
| Beautiful.ai | Automated way to design presentation slides. |
| Gamma | Generates presentations from text. |
| MagicSlides | Generates a presentation from text, topic, or YouTube. |
| SlidesAI | Installs via a browser and works with Google slides to create presentations from text. |
AI Productivity Tools
Depending on how you define productivity, AI seems well-suited as an assistant for improving workflows, crunching data for insights, and speeding up transcriptions.
| Copy.ai | Automates workflows and business operations. |
| Holler | Provide one-question surveys, then get AI insights from responses. |
| Reclaim | Scheduling automation app that finds the best times for meetings and tasks. |
| Sider | Chrome extension that integrates ChatGPT and other AI functionality into daily tasks like web search, email, writing assistance, and translating text. |
| Taskade | Help with automating tasks, generating workflows, visualizing notes, etc. |
| YouTube Summary | Chrome extension that provides the transcript and a summary of a video in ChatGPT. |
AI Scholarly Research Tools
Educators and learning designers often require research tools to create content, understand SME slides, and fill in missing gaps. These AI academic research tools may help.
| ChatPDF | Drop a PDF into the app, ask a question about it, get a response. Like a ChatGPT for academic papers. |
| Elicit | Summarizes papers, extracts data, summarizes findings. |
| Genei | Summarizes articles, documents, and papers. |
| Humata | Summarizes articles, documents, and papers. |
| Research Rabbit | Imaginative approach to research: add papers and it provides recommendations, keeps up with research for you, interactive visualizations, etc. |
| ScholarAI | ChatGPT 4 plugin for summarizing research. Premium stand alone version provides recommendations, abstract search, generates citations, figure extraction, etc. |
AI Translation Tools
If you work with or interact in a global community, AI translation tools may be what you need to improve communication.
| CopyAI | AI translation in addition to business and workflow automations. |
| DeepL | Text, document, and glossary AI translations. |
AI Video Tools
Instructional designers use AI video tools for video generation, editing, and translation. My experience is that everything needs tweaking, but it can save time.
| CapCut | Generates a video from a prompt. |
| Colossyan | Creates AI avatar videos from text and translates to other languages. |
| D-ID | Creates an AI avatar for a video chat user interface. |
| DeepBrain AI | Video editor generates avatar videos from text. |
| Descript | Edit audio and videos through text, add titles and captions, add voiceover, remove backgrounds, etc. |
| Guidde | Quickly create video documentation for software tutorials, SOPs, etc. |
| HeyGen | AI generated avatars and voices. |
| Lumen 5 | Text to video generation, video templates, pre-licensed videos and photos. |
| Piktory | Generates video from text. |
| Riverside | Transcribe audio & video to text available in 100+ languages. Text-based editing of video and audio. |
| Synthesia | Create videos in 120 languages with AI human-like presenters by typing in text. |
| Visla | Generate a video from text, text-based editor, teleprompter recording, pre-licensed videos and photos. |
AI Writing Tools
Although you won’t take every suggestion from an AI tool, the technology is good at catching passive voice, grammar errors, and unclear writing.
| Grammarly | Identifies grammar, punctuation, and unclear writing. Makes suggestions. |
| Hemingway App | Assists with writing more clearly and in active voice. |
| Wordtune | Rewrites your sentences and generates new writing. |
| Prowriting Aid | Writing assistant provides rephrasing and errors to improve writing. |
A Few Other AI Tool Resources:
One of the best text-to-speech programs with the most realistic sounding human voices that we use is WellSaid Labs. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for computer-generated voice-over narration
Thanks Tiffany.
Connie
Great tools! Thank you Christy for sharing! I truly appreciate all your research and sharing of knowledge.
You’re welcome!
As a new student in Instructional Design, i can’t thank you enough for this list!
Hi Everyone check out our tool also which is not on the above list: https://www.decktopus.com/
I am pretty sure you’ll find it helpful and interesting.
If anyone wants to know more about our tool then you can email me here: funfacts1703@gmail.com
Of course. This was the result of crowdsourcing and as I mention, I’m not including graphic tools that are being sued for ripping off artists. That is, their tools were trained on artist’s images without permission. See this: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/4-700-artist-ai-controversy-182916995.htm. Thanks for your comment Fyodor.
Great List Connie. However there are a lot of great tools which could be included here.
i.e. Midjourney
Decktopus AI is an AI-powered presentation generator that helps you create professional presentations in a short time. It offers features like AI-powered research, copywriting, and image generation, customizable layouts, and drag-and-drop editing tools.
Is it possible for you to include https://www.decktopus.com/ in the AI PowerPoint tools section?
I can’t rave about Claude enough. It can write assessments including instructions, learning outcomes, instructional content, build rubrics that are constructively aligned, summarize content, create bullet points for slides and write quiz questions.
This is very generous to share these useful and helpful resources. Thank you so much .
Is it possible for you to include decktopus here? https://www.decktopus.com/
Thank you so much for organizing tools with explanation!
In many cases, such as with a video too, it maybe obvious. But, in others I guess it is not. Like, how are people using generative AI tools? It’s a good point Maryanne. I’m not sure I’ll be able to go back and find the people who contributed, but perhaps it could make a good topic for another article. Also, please search around. I know people are showing examples in articles and on YouTube. Thanks for your input.
Amazing list of AI resources. It would be great to know how learning designers are making use of these resources.
yes fantastic resource! Thank you so much 🙂
Thanks a lot for this. Quite insightful as I get into content development for my online courses.
Great list! Thanks for sharing.