Tag: business

How to Register a Domain Name in 2023 (Step by Step)
Having a strong online presence is one of the most important aspects of running a successful business. Whether you’re starting a new blog, setting up an ecommerce website, or creating a portfolio to showcase your work, securing a good domain name is an absolute must. Understanding how to register a domain name serves as an important first step toward establishing your online presence. In this post, we will guide you through the entire process, explain what a domain name is, and offer insight into the ways you can register your new domain.

Let’s dive in.

What is a Domain Name?

Also known as a uniform resource locator, or URL, a domain name is essentially your website’s address. Without domain names, people would have to access your website through an IP address with a string of numbers, such as 12.364.23.354. Can you imagine how tedious it would be to navigate websites using that method? Thankfully, there’s a better way: domain names. A domain name provides an easier way to navigate websites directly or through a search engine. A domain name helps your business be more memorable and easier to find and helps with search engine optimization (SEO).

How to Choose a Domain Name

When starting the process of choosing a domain name, there are a few things to consider. First, your domain should be related to your brand, website, or business name. Typing it should be easy, so avoiding overly long domain names is key. After all, you want your visitors to be able to easily type your domain into the browser directly, so keeping it short, catchy, and memorable is important.

Another consideration is to always opt for a top-level domain (TLD), such as .com. They are the most common, so most people consider them safe and reliable. Although there aren’t any technical differences in TLDs, it’s widely considered that .com will likely be more effective than a .net, .biz, or .org. In fact, according to w3Techs, .com domains make up nearly 48% of all domain names on the internet.

However, not having a .com TLD doesn’t have to be a deal breaker. The most important thing is to find the right domain name for you. That means choosing a lesser-known TLD is okay if your desired domain isn’t available as .com, and you’re set on your choice.

Choosing a Registrar

Before registering your new domain, it’s important to consider the best registrar for your business. Thankfully, several domain name registrars will fit the bill. But first, let’s explain what a registrar is. Domain registrars are like an online store for domain names. You can buy, register, and point your domain to your hosting provider, where your website’s files are located. That said, there are some hosting providers, such as SiteGround, where you can purchase your domain and hosting together. Generally speaking, we don’t recommend doing this, as moving your domain could be difficult if you fall out of love with your hosting provider.

Check Domain Availability

When brainstorming domain name ideas, checking for their availability is essential. All reputable domain registrars offer this capability, so it’s typically easy to determine what is available. For example, Namecheap allows you to check for potential domain names without having to purchase anything upfront.

One thing to keep in mind is not to get frustrated if your first pick isn’t available. With thousands of domain names being registered daily, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to miss out on your favorite. That said, you can easily find variations of your initial pick, with most registrars offering similar options based on your initial search.

How to Register a Domain Name

There are nearly unlimited registrars, each capable of helping you find the perfect domain name. As previously mentioned, there are hosting providers that offer the same service. For this tutorial, we’re going to cover an example of each. First, we’ll walk you through securing a domain through one of the most popular hosting providers, SiteGround. Additionally, we’ll show you how to register a new domain through a popular domain registrar, Namecheap.

How to Register a Domain Name Through SiteGround

SiteGround is one of the best managed hosting providers on the market. They are known for their excellent features, customer service, and value for the money. If you’re in the market for a new provider to go along with your new domain name, SiteGround is the way to go. Setting up a new domain through SiteGround is fast, easy, and affordable. Let’s walk you through the steps to purchase a new hosting plan and add a domain.

Step 1: Choose Your Hosting Plan

SiteGround offers three plans to get you started: StartUp, GrowBig, and GoGeek. If you’re starting out, the StartUp plan is the most affordable option at $14.99 monthly, although SG typically offers up to 80% discounts. Start by selecting the StartUp plan.

Step 2: Choose a Domain

When the screen refreshes, you’ll be forwarded to the domain registration screen, where you can register a new domain or add an existing one. Select Register a new domain. Ensure the Domain Registration checkbox is selected.

Step 3: Search for Domains

Type in your first choice for a new domain, then click proceed.

If your choice is available, you’ll proceed to the next step in the process. If it’s already taken, SiteGround will offer several alternative selections based on the original.

From that point, you can choose one of the suggested domain names or search for an alternate.

Step 4: Register Your Domain

The final step is to complete the registration process. You must complete the account and client information and input your payment method to secure your domain and hosting plan. Once the registration process is complete, your domain is secured, and you’re ready to start building the website of your dreams.

How to Register a Domain Name With a Domain Registrar

Namecheap is among the best domain registrars you can get. With affordable pricing, multiple options for TLDs, and a user-friendly interface, beginners and professional web gurus alike can register a new domain in minutes.

Step 1: Conduct a Domain Search

The first step to registering your new domain using Namecheap is to search for what’s available. Fill in your choice on the Namecheap homepage and click search.

Step 2: Choose Associated Domains

Once you search for the domain of your choice, the registration page will appear, letting you know whether the domain is available. Additionally, you’ll have the option to purchase similar ones should you want to map multiple domains.

Once you’ve selected the domains you wish to purchase, add them to your cart.

Step 3: Purchase Add-ons

Namecheap will offer add-ons such as WordPress hosting, an SSL, and premium DNS, which provides DDoS attack protection and 100% uptime.

Step 4: Create A Namecheap Account

Next, you’ll need to create an account to manage your domain and any add-ons you purchase.

Step 5: Register Your New Domain

On the next screen, you’ll take steps to register your new domain with Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers (ICANN). When a new domain is registered, it goes into a public directory. Your name and contact information will be recorded and available to anyone searching the ICANN directory.

Finally, you’ll set up your ICANN directory listing using the Whois database. This allows anyone with your domain name to learn who the owner is and their contact information. If you want that to remain private, you’ll need to opt into the domain privacy service by checking the Associate to this domain and enable it at the time of purchase checkbox.

From there, the only thing left to do is purchase your domain.

As you can see, registering a new domain with a hosting provider or domain registrar is a straightforward process, making it simple for people with any skill level to achieve.

Final Thoughts on Registering a Domain

Registering a domain name is an exciting milestone in building your online identity. By following our comprehensive guide, you’ll gain the knowledge and confidence needed to navigate the domain registration process effortlessly, ultimately securing the best domain for your business.

If you need both a domain and hosting, you should try SiteGround. However, if you only need to purchase and register your domain, Namecheap is the perfect choice to kickstart your new business.

Looking for more tutorials? Check out some of our most popular articles to help you become an online guru:
Featured Image via Heena Rajput /Â Shutterstock.com

The post How to Register a Domain Name in 2023 (Step by Step) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
12.07.2023
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and How to Improve It in WordPress
This post is the first in a three-part series about Core Web Vitals. In it, we want to go over each of the three metrics that are at the heart of Google’s new yard stick for website quality. Our first stop: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and how to improve it in WordPress.

By now, Core Web Vitals are a critical ranking factor in Google. As measurements for user experience, they determine whether or not visitors have a good time on your site and also influence how well you do in search engines. For that reason, it’s important that you get them right.

To help you do so, as mentioned, we want to examine each of the components of Core Web Vitals in depth. Below, we talk about what exactly they are and why they matter for SEO. After that, you get a grade-A education on how to ace Largest Contentful Paint, the first one of them, on your WordPress site. The post explains what LCP is, how to measure it, what number you should shoot for, and how to improve this metric on your WordPress site if necessary.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

First off, in case this topic is entirely new to you, let’s start with the basics: what exactly are Core Web Vitals?

In short, they are a set of user-centered metrics that measure the loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability of web pages that Google introduced in May 2020. They are supposed to help website owners and developers understand how good of a user experience their pages offer and identify areas for improvement.

Core Web Vitals consist of three metrics:
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
2. First Input Delay (FID)
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Each of these is measured separately and influenced by different factors, which is why we are writing this article series.

Why Do Core Web Vitals Matter for SEO?

The reason why we stress this point is pretty simple. Google has made it clear that it wants to prioritize pages that provide a pleasant experience to visitors who frequent them. Core Web Vitals are a way to measure that.

As a consequence, by now they are a key component of Google’s algorithm for evaluating and ranking web pages. To quote their own page on that matter:

Core Web Vitals are the subset of Web Vitals that apply to all web pages, should be measured by all site owners, and will be surfaced across all Google tools.

Therefore, if you want your pages to perform well, you not only have to look at things like web design, E-A-T, content authority, on-page optimization, site speed, and mobile friendliness but also at these UX metrics. Otherwise, you might find yourself penalized by Google and not ranking well.

In addition, improving Core Web Vitals can lead to better user engagement, longer site visits, and ultimately, increased conversions and revenue. So, optimizing your website for them not only helps with SEO, but also drives business results.

All clear? Then let’s tackle the first metric.

What Is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)?

LCP is the first Core Web Vitals Metric we want to look at. It measures the time it takes for the largest element in the viewport (that’s what you see in your browser window) to become fully rendered on the screen after a user initiates a page load. It could be an image, video, text block, or any other element that occupies a significant amount of space on the page.

LCP is an important metric because it reflects how quickly users can access the main content of a web page, which is likely what they came for in the first place. A slow LCP score means that users may have to wait longer before they can start reading or interacting with the page. This can lead to frustration and simply make them leave. No bueno.

How Is Largest Contentful Paint Calculated?

A page’s LCP score is determined by tracking how long in seconds the largest element in the viewport takes to become fully rendered. However, the metric only regards certain types of elements for its calculation:
- <img> elements, meaning images
- <image> elements inside <svg> documents
- <video> elements that show a preview image
- Elements that load a background image via the url() function
- Block- and inline-level elements with text content
In short, visuals and main text. At the same time, LCP disregards components that users likely do not consider to be “contentful”, such as:
- Elements with an opacity of 0, that are invisible to the user
- Elements that cover the full screen and likely function as background rather than content
- Placeholder images or images with little information that likely do not reflect the true purpose of the page
How to Test Your Site for LCP

There are many ways to test Largest Contentful Paint on your WordPress website. As the quote above mentioned, it is now a metric in all Google tools, so you can start there.

For example, when you input your website into PageSpeed Insights, you can find your LCP value and whether you have passed the test or not.

In addition, you find information about problems with Largest Contentful Paint and other issues in the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console.

Chrome developer tools also shows it (more on that below). Plus, there are browser addons that allow you to measure these metrics like Web Vitals for Chrome and SpeedVitals for Firefox. Finally, if you are a developer, you might want to use more technical solutions such as the web-vitals JavaScript library.

What’s an Ideal LCP Value?

After learning how to measure LCP, your next question is probably what exactly is a good value? What benchmark should you shoot for?

In the case of Largest Contentful Paint, the magic number is 2.5 seconds. If your LCP score is less than 2.5 seconds, it is considered good. The page in question likely provides a good user experience. If your score is between 2.5 and 4 seconds, Google considers it in need of improvement. Anything over 4 seconds is considered poor.

So, pretty cut and dry. No need to wonder, you know exactly what is expected of you by the search giant.

How to Improve Largest Contentful Paint (in WordPress)

If you find that after testing that your site does not meet the above benchmark, fear not. We will spend the rest of this post talking about how to improve your Largest Contentful Paint value if necessary.

The good news is that there is plenty you can do. On the other hand, many factors can influence LCP, therefore, correcting it is often not a quick fix thing. You need to look at the entire page loading process step by step. So let’s do that, shall we?

Find the Largest Contentful Paint Element

The first step in making your LCP value better is to find out what exactly your LCP element is. After all, how can you improve the delivery of something if you don’t know what to focus on?

If you are using PageSpeed Insights to measure your site, it will actually tell you what’s your LCP element further down the page in the Diagnostics section.

If you run a Performance test in Chrome’s browser developer tools, it will also show up in the timeline and even highlight the LCP element on the page. Click on LCP and then hover over the file under Related Node.

Break Down the Loading Process Into Parts

Next up, in order to optimize your Largest Contentful Paint, it helps to divide the process into several phases. As mentioned above, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. You have to look at it from different angles to find out what needs fixing on your site. The phases proposed by Google are:
- TTFB – Means “time to first byte”, as in the time from a user requesting the page until they receive the first byte of HTML.
- Resource load delay – The timespan for receiving the page files (HTML and CSS) and before the LCP resources itself is loaded.
- Resource load time – The phase in which the LCP resource loads.
- Element render delay – Finally, the time between loading the LCP element and fully rendering it.
Breaking down Largest Contentful Paint this way allows you to concentrate on the different phases and improve them individually.

Optimize Site Hosting and Architecture

These are measures to improve TTFB and resource load delay.

How fast visitors receive you site data depends on a number of factors. For one, there is the server. Even if your site has a very small footprint, such as a one page website, it can still be heavily delayed by a sluggish web server. Another factor are the components that your site consists of, such as its operating system, themes, plugins, etc.

As a consequence, improving all of these factors helps optimize Largest Contentful Paint. Here’s how to do it:
- Invest in quality hosting — As mentioned, the web server is a large factor and your hosting provider, therefore, an important consideration. Avoid shared hosting if you can and get a hosting plan according to your traffic. Plus, try to have your site on a server close to your audience.
- Use high-quality themes and plugins — Make sure you get your site components from good sources so that you know they are well programmed, lean, and have good support. Use the minimum number of plugins to reduce HTTP requests on your site.
- Keep your site updated — WordPress core and plugin/theme updates come with improvements, including performance fixes. Stay on top of them in order to get the latest and greatest.
With these in place, you can make sure that visitors receive your site data as quickly as possible. In order to know if your server is the problem, it helps to learn how to speed test your website. Also, avoid multiple redirects and look into the aforementioned server requests.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Another way to improve time to first byte is to use a content delivery network (CDN). It helps to reduce the distance between the user and the place where they receive your website data from. This can make the loading time shorter.

Image source: Kanoha, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There are even specialized CDNs where you only put your images on external servers, such as Jetpack’s Site Accelerator. This makes a lot of sense since images are often the largest contentful elements. CDNs also sometimes implement the image optimization techniques we will talk about now.

Optimize Images and Web Fonts

We are now getting to techniques to reduce the resource load time. If you paid attention earlier, you will know that that is the speed at which the LCP resource is delivered to the browser. An important consideration here are visuals.

Images often end up the largest contentful object because they tend to be larger in size than text due to the surplus in information they carry. For that reason, one of the things you should focus on to reduce your resource load time is optimizing them:
- Use the correct size — Only use images as large as they appear on the page, otherwise you are making visitors load more than they need. This often means resizing your images before upload or setting the WordPress media options exactly to the size you need for your layout. The regenerate thumbnails plugin can help you optimize the sizes of images already on your site.
- Go for modern image formats — Not all image formats are created equal. To make your visuals as small as possible, use modern formats such as webp or avif, which have a smaller footprint than their predecessors.
- Compress images — Compressing means removing unnecessary data. You can do this either before uploading your images (e.g. via TinyPNG/JPG or RIOT) or automatically with WordPress plugins like Smush or Optimole.
- Lazy load images not on screen — Lazy loading means not loading images that aren’t visible in the browser yet. This can save lots of time. Just be sure to exempt images that do need to be visible immediately.
More on this in our article on optimizing images. While you are at it, also reduce the size and number of your web fonts. Load only what really need and consider hosting your web fonts locally.

Set Up Caching and Compression

Caching and compression are both techniques to generally speed up your website by making your site files faster to load. They can help with both resource load delay and load time.

The first one does it by pre-rendering your HTML documents and saving finished versions of them on your server so this process doesn’t have to be performed each time visitors want to see your site.

The second one means shrinking the size of your website files so that they are faster to transmit. You can do the latter either with Gzip compression or the newer Brotli compression. Combine it with minification for your files so that they take up less space and load faster.

A plugin like Autoptimize or many WordPress caching plugins can do all of the above and are an easy way to improve Largest Contentful Paint on your site.

Eliminate Render Blocking Resources

Now we are getting to improving element render delay. Even if you have optimized your page loading speed and the delivery of your LCP element, your score will still be bad if the element itself takes a long time to show up on the page. Here, render-blocking resources are the most common culprit.

You can use the linked article above for detailed instructions on how to deal with them. However, here a some short notes:
- Load scripts asynchronously and inline essential JavaScript.
- Inline style sheets into HTML (this only applies small style sheets, since inlined elements are not cached).
- Reduce style sheet size by eliminating unused CSS and JavaScript. Alternatively, defer non-critical CSS and minify and compress style sheets.
Use the Coverage tab in your browser developer tools to identify the elements that your visitors need to load first. It also helps you identify unused code that you may be able to remove.

Some Really Technical Stuff

If you are of the technical persuasion, here is some more nerdy stuff you can do to further improve your Largest Contentful Paint in WordPress and beyond:
- Preload images in HTML — Especially when used as CSS backgrounds or similar, add <link rel="preload"> to put priority on your most important images. This also works for fonts that could be needed to display the main text.
- Adjust the fetch priority — Tell browsers what they should load first by adding fetchpriority="high". Limit this to one or two images, otherwise it defeats the purpose.
- Use server-side rendering or prerendering — Especially if you have fast server. This reduces the amount of work needed to be done in the browser.
- Optimize web fonts via font-display — Set the font-display rule to swap, fallback, or optional to keep your text rendering from being blocked during web font load.
Largest Contentful Paint and WordPress in a Nutshell

Largest Contentful Paint is just one of three metrics that Google considers as Core Web Vitals and uses to judge a website’s user experience and – ultimately – search rank. If you are struggling with site and search performance, it’s one of the factors to look into.

In this post, you have learned how to figure out if this is a factor for your WordPress site, what LCP value to shoot for, and ways to improve it. Hopefully, by now you feel capable of changing your LCP for the better.

As usual, you don’t have to be perfect. Pick what you feel capable of, implement it, and take it from there.

Do you have any additional tips regarding the Largest Contentful Paint metric and how to improve it in WordPress? Feel free to chyme in in the comments.

The post Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and How to Improve It in WordPress appeared first on Torque.
06.07.2023

8 Best AI Sales Tools to Maximize Revenue for Your Business in 2023

In the high-pressure world of sales, staying ahead of the curve is the only way to make quota and advance your career. One way to gain a competitive edge is by leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The best AI sales tools are taking the industry by storm by automating tasks, providing valuable insights, and enhancing customer interactions. Whether you’re a seasoned AE or a green sales rep, these tools can significantly boost your sales productivity and effectiveness.

The beauty of AI sales tools is their versatility. They cover a wide range of sales tasks, from lead qualification and pipeline management to forecasting and outreach writing. Using multiple tools in tandem can supercharge your sales process, making you incredibly efficient. But before diving in, it’s essential to consider your specific needs and objectives.

Each tool offers unique features and benefits, so understanding your needs will help you make the right choice. Whatever your main goals are, an AI sales tool can help. Let’s explore some of the best AI tools available today and see how they can transform your sales process.

Best AI Sales Tools

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Here’s a look at our top 8 recommendations for AI tools to optimize your sales workflows, starting with Seamless.AI.

1. Seamless AI

Seamless.AI is an AI sales tool that B2B professionals have flocked to. Its main feature provides verified cell phone numbers, email addresses, and direct dials for anyone you need to sell to. With Seamless.AI, you can build a massive list of decision-makers, shorten your sales cycle, and close more deals with your gained knowledge. It also includes an AI writer tool optimized for cold outreachâ€”perfect for outbound sales professionals.

Key Features:

Real-time search engine for B2B sales leads
Integration with favorite platforms like Salesforce, Hubspot, Outreach, Chrome, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Writer by Seamless.AI for sales and marketing messaging
Enrich CRM data with accurate and up-to-date contact data

Enrich List Data with Seamless AI Sales Data

Data Enrich by Seamless AI brings a wealth of actionable B2B sales data into your Excel lists and CRMs to get the most accurate information. The average age of an email is less than three years, and employees stay with their employers, on average, less than five years. That means your list of thousands of prospects is degrading rather quickly. Seamless can update your internal lists with the most relevant and up-to-date information so that you can make more cold calls, emails, and eventually sales than without it.

Best For:

Seamless.AI is ideal for sales professionals who need to build a growing list of qualified leads and find the right people to contact. It’s also beneficial for those who want to integrate their sales tools with their favorite platforms and eliminate manual data entry.

Pricing: Free for up to 50 credits, with paid pricing starting at $65/mo

Get Seamless.AI

2. Apollo

Apollo - Homepage July 2023

Apollo is a sales intelligence and engagement platform that helps you find, contact, and close your ideal buyers. It pairs an extensive database (260 million+ contacts) with AI tools to help you manage outreach workflowsâ€”all with the power of AI. Apollo lets you search, filter, and engage with contacts based on B2B parameters that move the needle.

Key Features:

Access to one of the world’s largest, most accurate B2B databases
Gives sequences, email personalization, click-to-dial, and LinkedIn automation
Intelligent insights and powerful automation for optimizing and improving sales outreach

Apollo Find Contact with AI Workflows

Apollo gives you every imaginable data point as a field to search through. Find your next customer by searching name, email address, company size, industry, location, persona, job titles, and so much more.

Best For:

Apollo is best for sales teams to find and target their ideal buyers. Its automated workflows + data profiles make it an unmatched resource for outbound sales reps. It’s like having an always-full pipeline that never runs out of potential leads.

Pricing: Free version with limited lookup and paid plans starting at $49/mo

Get Apollo

3. Sendspark

Sendspark is a video messaging platform that helps you build relationships with personalized videos at scale. It allows you to humanize your outreach and make real connections, leading to more pipelines, faster closes, and an overall better experience. It does this by infusing video personalization with AI and automation to rapidly create and deliver videos that move the needle. Adds contact names, roles, and company logos to videos for programmatic personalization.

Key Features:

Easy recording of custom videos that can be transformed into personalized masterpieces
Dozens of email and social integrations to help you send personalized videos where they need to go
Reap the benefits of video + personalization which together increase vital lead conversion rates

Personalized Sales Videos with Sendspark

Sendspark makes infusing your sales and intro videos easy with personalized features that grab attention at the first peak. It’s as simple as pulling CRM data into Sendspark.

Best For:

Sendspark is best for sales and marketing professionals who want to cut through the noise and make a human connection with their customers and prospects. It’s also great for those wishing to deliver scale personalization and relevance.

Pricing: Free version with paid plans starting at $15/mo

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4. Gong

Gong - Homepage July 2023

Gong is a revenue intelligence platform that captures customer interactions and analyzes each with AI. It provides precise insights into customer interactions (calls, emails, docs), enhancing revenue efficiency and better decision-making. Gong monitors every interaction and offers detailed and on-time recommendations and labels for each customer. It’s the assistant that is on every call, copied to every email, and updates everyone in the organization with crucial account insights.

Key Features:

Comprehensive visibility into customer interactions and market dynamics
Thoughtful guidance for key workflows to improve productivity
Innovative AI for relevant and specific business insights
100+ integrations with CRM and other tools for a comprehensive understanding

Gong AI Deals View with AI Insights

Gong lets you go as deep as you need. Individual sales reps can see their assigned opportunities with actionable next steps and warnings. They can see all past touch points (and review them), stages, and potential win amount. Sales managers can see high-level analytics to optimize conversations across their sales organization. Every conversation can be analyzed, yet Gong also knows the big picture.

Best For:

Gong is best for enterprise sales teams that must understand customer interactions and make data-driven decisions. The whole point is to discover critical insights to leverage for better sales flows. From coaching opportunities to timing suggestions for the next call, Gong enables sales teams to perform at their best.

Pricing: Requires a custom proposal based on your needs

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5. Warmbox

Warmbox is designed to warm up your cold email inbox and ensure your emails never land in spam. It helps you increase your email deliverability and reach the inbox of your leads effectively. It does this by connecting with your inbox, sending mail to itself, and interacting with the emails as real people would (but with AI). This sends positive signals to email clients (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) that will reduce the amount you land in spam (or promotions/social tabs). Every additional email that properly lands in a lead’s inbox is exponentially more likely to convert them into paying customers.

Key Features:

Automated email interactions to raise your email-sending reputation
Access to a network of over 35,000 private inboxes
Detailed reports to monitor your email deliverability
Multiple warm-up campaigns (recipes)

Warmbox AI Sales Tool Inbox Warming for Outreach

An automated email warm-up process, like the one provided by Warmbox, is essentially a service that helps improve your email-sending reputation. It does this by mimicking human-like interactions with the emails sent from your inbox. The goal is to make email providers see your account as trustworthy and active, which can help ensure your emails land in the recipient’s inbox rather than their spam folder.

The best part? All of this happens automatically. You don’t have to do anything. The service takes care of it all, saving you time and effort. This way, you can focus on what’s important – crafting your emails and connecting with your audience.

Best For:

Warmbox is perfect for sales and marketing teams that rely heavily on cold emailing. It’s also beneficial for those who want to improve their email deliverability and avoid landing in the spam folder.

Pricing: Pricing for one mailbox starts at $19/mo

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6. Motion

Motion - Homepage July 2023

Motion is a productivity tool that helps you manage calendars, meetings, projects, and tasks for sales teams. It combines automation and AI to organize your schedule, plan meetings, and build task lists across teams. as they involve various roles. SDRs (sales development representatives) handle the initial contact with potential customers, AEs (account executives) progress opportunities until they are successfully closed, and CSMs (customer success managers) take over to ensure new customers have a smooth transition and start off positively. Motion can make these tasks run much more efficiently.

Key Features:

Synced calendar for daily schedule management
Automatic task manager that builds to-do lists for whole teams
Automated project manager for organizing complex team projects with timetables, dependencies, and more
Booking pages so that each team member can easily schedule meetings with qualified leads

Manage Tasks and Meetings with Motion AI

Best For:

Motion is perfect for teams with many routine tasks who want to streamline their workday. It is excellent for managing complex projects and reducing the stress of manual planning. Teams with multiple handoffs at set intervals between SDRs, AEs, Sales Engineers, and CSMs could benefit from automated project management. Plus, Motion can be a great boon for the whole business and not only the sales organization.

Pricing: Paid plans start at $34/mo

Get Motion

7. OutreachWriter

Outreachwriter - Homepage July 2023

OutreachWriter is an AI writer that automates the entire outreach process in the channels you need most. It’s also a tool that is part of the 500apps suite, which might be attractive if there are other apps you have had your eye on. OutreachWriter helps you create personalized AI-written emails and LinkedIn messages using AI insights from their profiles.

Key Features:

AI-powered personalization based on LinkedIn account and activity analysis
LinkedIn outreach automation for prospecting at scale
Templates for outreach campaigns like backlink request emails and sales pitch writing

OutreachWriter Sales AI Tool for Propsect Writing

OutreachWriter does so much of the heavy lifting for you. It analyzes LinkedIn profiles to understand what would work in a cold outreach. Then it leverages that insight and crafts compelling, AI-generated pitches that can be sent via email, LinkedIn, or other formats. Say “Hello,” to an increase in efficiency with cold prospecting!

Best For:

OutreachWriter is best for businesses that want to scale their cold outreach activities with AI and automation. If you spend a lot of time analyzing your leads’ LinkedIn profiles to craft the perfect cold pitch, OutreachWriter is here to simplify things for you. It can also handle the same tasks that many AI writers can do.

Pricing: Paid plans for multiple apps start at $14.99/mo

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8. Hoppy Copy

Hoppy Copy is an AI email marketing copywriting platform that helps you write better email campaigns. It can generate powerful content for hundreds of email marketing campaigns, drips, newsletters, and more in seconds. The best part is that it is 100% optimized for email campaigns with its format and flow. It has even more tools designed for people who live and breathe by their inbox activity.

Key Features:

AI-powered cold outreach writing templates for single emails or series
Content converter for repurposing content from any source
Spam checker to limit trigger words that send emails to spam
Competitor subscribe that watches competitor emails (primarily marketing) so you can see what they’re up to

Hoppy Copy Sales Outreach Sequence Writer

The drip series is different from most writing tasks. It makes sense that you wouldn’t want to use a generic AI writer for that particular task. Hoppy Copy is trained and built for email content. From subject lines to your closing byline, it can make emails worth opening up. It saves time and gives you better results so you can focus on follow-up.

Best For:

Hoppy Copy is perfect for cold outreach and marketing campaigns. It’s for anyone who wants to save hours writing by using AI to generate content that’s compelling. It’s also helpful for those wishing to monitor their competitors’ email plans and learn from them.

Pricing: Plans start as low as $29/mo

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Best AI Sales Tools: Price Comparison

With so many options out there, we know it’s hard to consider each one. Here’s a list view of our top eight picks that compares their price tags.

Rank	Best AI Sales Tools	Starting Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	Seamless.AI	$65/mo	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥ˆ	Apollo	$49/mo	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥‰	Sendspark	$15/mo	âœ”ï¸	Visit
4	Gong	Custom	âŒ	Visit
5	Warmbox	$19/mo	âŒ	Visit
6	Motion	$34/mo	âŒ	Visit
7	OutreachWriter	$14.99/mo	âŒ	Visit
8	Hoppy Copy	$29/mo	âŒ	Visit

What is the Best AI Sales Tool?

Seamless.AI is an excellent choice for those looking to maximize their lead generation efforts. If your primary challenge is finding quality leads, Seamless.AI could be the tool you need.

Apollo, on the other hand, shines in the realm of customer relationship management. If you’re struggling to manage your customer relationships or keep track of your sales pipeline, Apollo could be the solution you’re looking for.

Sendspark stands out for its personalized video abilities. So, if you want to stand out from the crowd and make a lasting impression, Sendspark might be the tool you need.

AI Sales Tools FAQs

How is AI used in sales?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the sales industry, offering unprecedented opportunities for sales teams. It’s transforming customer interactions, task management, and strategic decision-making.

AI excels in managing and predicting customer behavior. By analyzing past interactions and purchasing patterns, AI can anticipate a customer’s next move. This insight allows sales teams to personalize their approach, enhancing customer engagement.

AI also automates repetitive tasks, such as scheduling meetings and tracking shipments. This automation frees up sales professionals to focus on strategic activities like building customer relationships and closing deals.

Another significant benefit of AI is its ability to provide accurate sales forecasts. By analyzing historical sales data and market trends, AI helps sales teams plan their strategies effectively.

Lastly, AI can nurture leads by suggesting products based on a customer’s preferences. This targeted approach can improve conversion rates and help sales teams hit their targets.

How can AI be used to automate sales?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing sales, automating processes, and boosting productivity. AI analyzes customer data, identifies promising leads, and predicts conversion likelihood, helping sales teams strategize effectively.

AI also automates outreach emails, enhancing targeting and effectiveness. It generates accurate sales forecasts, providing insights for strategic decision-making.

By analyzing customer interactions, AI improves lead conversion rates. It tailors the sales approach to each lead, increasing conversion chances. AI also pulls in activity or call data without sales reps’ intervention, saving time and kickstarting the sales process.

What is AI in CRM?

When it comes to Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral component. AI in CRM uses algorithms to analyze customer data and automate tasks, making it easier for businesses to organize and access customer information.

AI can automate various CRM tasks, from data entry to customer interaction. For instance, AI can automate analyzing customer data, providing actionable insights to help businesses improve customer experience and predict sales growth.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology and virtual assistants powered by AI can handle customer queries, freeing up time for inbound sales reps to address warmer leads. Predictive analytics, another facet of AI in CRM, can analyze historical data to predict future trends and behaviors, helping businesses stay one step ahead.

Will AI replace salespeople?

AI has undoubtedly made significant strides in automating and enhancing various aspects of the sales process. However, it can’t replace the human touch in sales interactions. Tools allow salespeople to focus on strategic tasks. But this doesn’t mean AI will replace salespeople. Instead, it redefines their roles, shifting focus to strategic and relationship-building activities. Salespeople who adapt and leverage AI will rise in their profession, using AI to augment their capabilities.

What is an AI sales assistant?

AI sales assistants streamline operations by handling tasks like lead qualification, pipeline management, and meeting scheduling. Using machine learning and natural language processing, these tools manage daily activities and provide valuable insights. They predict customer behavior, identify cross-selling opportunities, and improve forecasting. By automating repetitive tasks, they allow sales reps to focus on customer relationships and closing deals, enhancing productivity and effectiveness.

As you continue to explore the world of AI and its applications, we invite you to delve into our other articles. If you found this guide on AI sales tools helpful, you might enjoy our other articles on the best AI paraphrasers, AI productivity tools, and AI chatbots.

Featured Image by CoreDESIGN / shuttterstock.com

The post 8 Best AI Sales Tools to Maximize Revenue for Your Business in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

04.07.2023

Character AI: Everything You Need To Know
The artificial intelligence (AI) world moves at lightning speed, and keeping up with the latest innovations can be tricky. As you get used to one chatbot, another pops up to steal the show. But don’t worry; we’re here to help you stay ahead of the game. Buckle up because, in this post, we’re featuring one of the coolest new AI chatbots: Character AI. We’ll help you discover what it’s capable of, how it works, and how to start using it to have interesting conversations, learn a new language, or create your own chatbot.

Let’s dive in.

What is Character AI?

Character AI is an artificial intelligence chatbot web application that uses neutral language models to generate text responses, allows for user-developed characters, and allows you to chat with fictional, historical, and celebrity figures in a dialogue. Unlike other AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Character AI’s output is more human-like and allows you to chat with more than one bot at a time, offering different perspectives. Developed by former Google AI developers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character AI was released in beta form in September 2022. Since its launch, it has become one of the most popular AI chatbots behind ChatGPT.

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How Does Character AI Work?

Built on large language models (LLM), Character AI is powered by deep machine learning, focusing primarily on conversations. During the training process, Character AI’s supercomputer continuously read large amounts of text, then learned to determine which words might come next in a sentence. The result is a highly entertaining, human-like AI that makes you feel like you’re talking to a real person. In this way, Character AI is more advanced than other AI chatbots because it allows users to immerse themselves in conversation with all types of personalities, including historical figures, celebrities, and other characters created by the community.

Benefits of Using Character AI

There are a lot of unique benefits of using Character AI. First and foremost, it’s a great way to dialogue with different characters, giving you different perspectives. You can chat with Elon Musk, Edward Cullen from the popular Twilight books, or even Taylor Swift.

As previously mentioned, these characters are more lifelike than other chatbots, so you feel like you are talking to an actual human being. Another benefit of this incredible AI is that you can create your own characters to interact with. It’s as easy as assigning a few parameters to give your character a personality, adding an avatar (which you can generate with the software itself), and you’re off to the races. Plus, you can take Character AI wherever you go, thanks to the new Android and iOS apps.

Another thing that sets Character AI apart is themes. Nearly twenty are available, including helpers, games, image generating bosts, movie and tv actors, and language learning.

What are the Limitations of Character AI?

Character AI is an impressive example of artificial intelligence, but it has limitations. Since the community creates these characters, false results, called hallucinations, are frequently generated. When you begin chatting with the various characters, it’s important to consider where they originate from and expect that most, if not all, of what they say is made up. Another limitation is image generation. While you can enable your characters to generate images, they do not belong to the same class as other AI art generators, primarily because it was created mainly as a text generator.

Additionally, it implements strict filtering, blocking any content considered unsafe for work (NSFW). This is a good thing depending on what you want to use it for. Finally, it doesn’t offer an API, so even though it’s open source, you can’t download it and create your own iteration on a local machine.

How to Use Character AI

There are several ways to use Character AI, including chatting with historical figures, creating your own chatbot to interact with, learning a new language, and creating a chat room where multiple chatbots can communicate, to name a few. Let’s explore how to incorporate Character AI to improve your skillset or engage in intelligent conversations.

Chat with a Wide Range of Characters

One of the unique features of Character AI is the ability to interact with a wide range of characters., including historical figures (both living and deceased), as well as user-generated chatbots with distinct personalities. Its deep machine-learning process allows users to experience authentic conversations where it’s difficult to tell your chatting with a computer. Whether you want to chat with a Pokemon, George Washington, or Elon Musk, Character AI provides an interesting perspective that other chatbots can’t. You can engage in interesting conversations with AI-generated characters to expand your knowledge, provide inspiration, or be entertained.

Create Your Own AI Character

One of the best features of Character AI is the ability to create your own chatbot to interact with. The first step is clicking the create button located in the navigation bar on the left-hand side of the interface.

You’ll have the choice between creating a character or a character room. Choose the first option, Create a character.

On the next screen, you’ll configure your chatbot’s settings. You’ll give it a name (1), specify the opening greeting for your character (2), choose whether to enable image generation (3), decide whether you want your character to be public, unlisted, or private (4), create an avatar (5) or upload an existing one (6), edit advanced details (7), and click the create button (8) to create your new character.

If you need some assistance, check out the character book, which gives you a wealth of information to help you create your AI characters.

Learn a New Language

Character AI isn’t just about conversing with celebrities or fictional entities. You can use it to improve yourself. A good example of this is using it to learn a new language. You can use it to brush up on your English, expand your vocabulary, learn German, Japanese, or French, or use it as a translator, to name a few.

As previously mentioned, most of the output is likely false, so checking what it gives you is important. After playing with the Translator bot, we can say that it is mostly accurate and had no trouble translating a simple sentence into Urdu, the primary language spoken in Pakistan.

Create a Character Room

Creating a chat room is a fun way to use Character AI. It’s simple to set up, and you can add personalities you’ve made or user-generated ones. For example, we set up a chat room with Elon Musk and Albert Einstein and instructed them to discuss space exploration and time travel. One of the coolest things about this is that you can interact with them or sit back and watch the conversation unfold.

If you’d like to create your own chat room, it’s quite easy. Start by clicking the create button, then select create a room.

Next, give your room a name, add characters, assign a topic, and click Create it. Note: You can only add characters you create or add some of the top 5000 most popular ones.

Once your chat room is created, you can begin typing to interact with the other chat members or sit back and watch them interact.

Is Character AI Safe?

After reading about the conversations you can have using such an incredible platform, you might wonder if it’s safe. You’ll be pleased to know that character creators won’t be able to view your conversations. That said, the platform will keep a record of everything you say, intending to use it to improve the results. With that in mind, carefully consider what you say and how you say it, especially if you are concerned with privacy. When creating personalities, you can make them public or private, providing an extra layer of security.

Final Thoughts on Character AI

As we’ve discussed, Character AI provides a unique experience where visitors can interact with various personalities, create their own characters, and even learn new languages, thanks to LLM’s training, helping it to sound more human. Unlike similar AI chat software like Jasper and ChatGPT, Character AI stands out because it lets you have interesting conversations with multiple chatbots simultaneously.

As AI technology continues evolving, we can expect Character AI to evolve along with it. Be looking for creators to enhance their already amazing technology with better image generation and different ways to incorporate it into your daily life. In the meantime, take some time to play around with it and experience all that it can do.

Would you like to learn about more interesting AI technologies? Check out some of our other AI-related posts:
Featured Image via Irina Strelnikova /Â Shutterstock.com

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01.07.2023

5 Best AI Music Generators in 2023 (Most are Free)

What if you could create a unique soundtrack for your podcast or video without learning an instrument? Or compose a song without ever knowing the fundamentals of songwriting? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now creating music, and it’s not just random notes strung togetherâ€”it’s harmonious, evocative, and incredibly human-like.

AI music generators are making music creation accessible to all, not just the musically inclined. Just like AI text-to-speech tools, these AI songwriting tools open up possibilities for all sorts of creators. Whether you’re a content creator needing unique soundtracks, an aspiring musician, or just a curious soul, these AI tools are opening up a world of possibilities. Let’s dive in and explore the best AI music generators that are hitting all the right notes.

Can AI Really Create Music?

Believe it or not, AI is now capable of composing music and doing a pretty good job at it. AI music generators use complex algorithms and vast databases of music to create new compositions. They analyze rhythm, melody, and harmony patterns and use this information (and much more) to compose new pieces. It studies previously created music to create (theoretically) new and original music and tracks.

So, can AI create music? Yes, and it’s doing so in a way that’s revolutionizing the music industry, leading to new possibilities.

Who is AI Music For?

A variety of people in different industries use AI music generators for a variety of purposes. Whether a small or large-scale project requires background music, soundtracks, or sound effects, you can use AI to create everything from simple beats to Beethoven-esque orchestrations. Content creators, musicians, advertisers, event organizers, fitness instructors, and more use them to create unique, customizable music.

Here’s a breakdown of different types of work that can be assisted with music AI.

Content Creation: Bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, and other creators often use AI music generators to create unique soundtracks for their content. This can include background music for videos, intro music for podcasts, or sound effects for digital games. Combine it with an AI voice generator to create podcasts with ease.
Advertising and Marketing: In the advertising industry, AI music generators can be used to create catchy jingles or branded music for commercials. They can also be used to develop mood-specific music for promotional videos or presentations. You can also use an AI video generator for more streamlined workflows.
Film and Game Development: In the film and gaming industry, AI music generators can be used to create soundtracks, theme music, or sound effects.

Aside from work, you can also use AI music generators for personal entertainment. Enter a crazy prompt and watch it work its magic. “Breaking news sound effect, but with cats meowing”.

The Best AI Music Generators

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We’ve collected some of the best AI music creation services and products that are available on the market today. They each have their own unique way of giving you control over creating original music with AI. We’ll start our list with Mubert.

1. Mubert

Mubert - Homepage June 2023
Mubert is a cutting-edge AI music generator making waves in the industry. This platform does a lot and uniquely blends technology and creativity. Mubert is designed for those who seek to break the boundaries of traditional music production, offering an innovative approach to generating unique soundscapes.

Mubert has a few other advantages. Its API lets users create personalized music and soundtrack experiences in their apps, games, and other platforms. AI-generated tracks can also be sold through Mubert Studio, a marketplace for your best AI work. Mubert can also curate already created music into playlists that are optimized to your liking.

Key Features:

Generative music streaming app that creates new and original music based on user preferences
Easily generate music using natural language text prompts
Set duration and other filters like genre, mood, and activity
Provides a studio platform for artists to use AI to create music and sell it
Use their API to generate royalty-free music for your business

Creating a new track is very easy in Mubert. Simply enter a Prompt and set your desired track length (Duration). You can skip the prompt and choose a specific genre, mood, or activity as your prompt. Clicking “Generate Track” will start the AI creation process. Once done, you’ll be able to “Play” the track. You can click the “lightning bolt” icon to regenerate the track, “download” the track, or “delete” it.

Mubert Create AI Track - Steps 1-6

Best For:

Mubert is perfect for content creators, musicians, and businesses looking to enhance their marketing videos or in-store experiences with tailored music. It’s also a boon for app developers, who can integrate Mubert’s API into their games or apps, providing users with a unique and immersive audio experience. If you’re a music lover seeking a personalized listening experience, or a creator wanting to explore new horizons in music production, Mubert is your go-to platform.

Mubert skews toward being better at creating electric, pop, and hip-hop styles of music, so this is definitely something to consider if you need to create those sorts of tracks for your project.

Pricing: Free tier with paid tiers starting at $14/mo

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2. Soundful

Soundful - Homepage June 2023
Soundful is a powerful AI music generator with a unique blend of simplicity and customization. It’s designed to create royalty-free background music for your videos, streams, podcasts, and more. The process is intuitive and straightforward: choose a genre, customize your inputs, and create tracks. Repeat until you find the track that is right for you.

Key Features:

Generates unique music using AI algorithms trained alongside industry-leading producers and sound engineers
Offers over 50 templates across different genres to kickstart your music creation
Allows customization of beats per minute (BPM) and base notes (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) in major or minor keys

Soundful gives more granular controls over the music you can create with AI. To start, you can start with dozens of templates, which are categorized by genre.

Soundful Create AI Tracks - Steps 1-2

Once a template is selected, Soundful gives you granular controls over basic musical parameters, including BPM (speed) and Key (C-B with Maj and Min). Lastly,Â give it a name and generate a track.

Soundful Create AI Tracks - Steps 3-6

If you had a paid tier, you could also download individual tracks instead of downloading the mastered version. If you aren’t musical, this means that each instrument would be separated into separate tracks so you could edit each by yourself. You could also download loops and other soundscapes as a MIDI download.

Best For:

Soundful is a perfect match for producers who want to keep their creative juices flowing without getting stuck. It’s also a boon for creators who want to avoid copyright issues while discovering unique, royalty-free tracks that sync perfectly with their content. Brands looking for an affordable way to acquire excellent, studio-quality music tailored to their needs will also find Soundful a valuable asset. Soundful’s abilities are more matched for anyone who is recording and needs more than a final AI-generated song.

Pricing: Free tier available with monthly pricing starting at $9.99

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3. Aiva

Aiva - Homepage June 2023
Aiva is an AI music generator that has been creating music since its inception in 2016. It’s designed to compose soundtracks for various media, including ads, video games, and movies. Aiva’s technology allows users to create music from scratch or produce variations of existing songs without the hassle of music licensing processes. It offers a range of presets and specified music formats and also provides the ability to edit soundtracks. Aiva’s versatility and user-friendly interface make it a popular choice among both professionals and amateurs.

Key Features:

Wide range of presets and specified music formats
Functional free version with limited features
Ability to edit soundtracks and modify existing tracks

After selecting a template (predefined prompt), users can select a key signature, music length, and # of AI-generated compositions.

AIVA Create AI Music - Steps 3-6

Best For:

Aiva is best suited for individuals and businesses looking to create unique soundtracks for various media. It’s particularly beneficial for those who want to experiment with different genres and styles and those who wish to apply edits to current music. It can also upload previous work in MIDI format as a base to generate AI tracks and music.

Pricing: Free tier with paid plans at â‚¬15/mo (around $16.54/mo pending exchange rates)

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4. Beatbot

Beatbot - Homepage June 2023

Beatbot is an innovative AI-powered song maker that composes short songs based on your text prompts. It uses Splash sound loops to create the music and vocals and ChatGPT to write the lyrics. Currently, Beatbot is in its Beta phase and is free to use. However, pricing may be introduced in the future. It’s not just about creating musicâ€”it’s about empowering users to become part of the music creation process.

Key Features:

Composes short loops and songs based on user-provided text prompts
Simple to use interface for hobbyists who need a quick loop
Ability to write out lyrics and have them superimposed on top of the AI loop

After submitting g a prompt that generates a simple music track or loop, users can add lyrics. Lyrics mostly match hip-hop and rap vocal styles. For best results with lyrics, it is best to do a single line of a lyric. Too few words or too many make the music sound especially AI-generated.

If the music isn’t 100% to your liking, click “Retry” to regenerate. Once you have something you like, Click “more” to download the music.

Beatbox Simple AI Music Loop Maker

Best For:

Beatbot is perfect for individuals who want to experiment with music creation. It’s also a boon for creators who want to add unique, AI-generated music to their content. If you’re a music lover seeking a personalized listening experience, or a creator wanting to explore new horizons in music production, Beatbot is your go-to platform.

Pricing: Free (Beta), unclear pricing for when it is out of beta

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5. Beatoven

Beatoven AI music generator

Beatoven is a unique AI music generator that takes the complexity out of music creation. It’s designed to make the process of composing original soundtracks for your videos or podcasts as simple as possible. With Beatoven, you don’t need to be a music theory expert or a seasoned producer to create unique, mood-based music. It’s all about making music creation accessible and enjoyable, regardless of your skill level.

Key Features:

Combines advanced music theory and production concepts to deliver unique music
Customize the length, genre, mood, and instruments to create your music tracks
Production-ready music with industry-standard mixing and mastering

Beatoven creates multiple versions of your tracks for you. Everything is editable, from the instrumentation used to the genre and the tempo. Upload your video or podcast to generate soundtracks based on it for an even easier audio editing experience.

Beatoven Create AI Songs

Best For:

Beatoven is perfect for content creators who need unique, mood-based music for their videos or podcasts. It’s also a great tool for individuals who want to experiment with music creation but don’t have the technical knowledge or resources to do so. With Beatoven, you can create a unique soundtrack that perfectly fits your content’s duration and mood.

Pricing: Free version with usage-based pricing starting at $3/mo

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Best AI Music Generators Price Comparison

Each tool has its own mix of use cases, ease of use, and price point. Now that we’ve reviewed each feature, here’s a side-by-side comparison of prices.

Rank	AI Music Generators	Starting Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	Mubert	$14/mo	âœ”ï¸	Get
ðŸ¥ˆ	Soundful	$9.99/mo	âœ”ï¸	Get
ðŸ¥‰	Aiva	$16.50+/mo	âœ”ï¸	Get
4	Beatbot	Free (Beta)	âœ”ï¸	Get
5	Beatoven	$3/mo	âœ”ï¸	Get

What is the Best AI Music Generator?

Most people starting with AI music and songs will likely find Mubert to be the best platform, particularly if they want substantial control over the outputs. Soundful, another top option, seems capable of creating more specific outputs than Mubert, but some of the non-electronic outputs disappointed us. We found Aiva to be quite similar to Soundful, and we would place it as our third recommendation.

We’re covering all the best AI tools for business and creative use. If you are into creating music with AI, also check out AI video generators and AI marketing tools to help promote your projects.

AI Music Generator FAQ

What is the best text to song generator for AI?

When it comes to the best text-to-song generator for AI, Mubert is a standout choice. Mubert is a powerful AI music generator that can transform text inputs into song outputs. It’s user friendly, versatile, and capable of creating a wide range of music styles, making it a top pick for both beginners and professionals.

Is there a AI beat generator?

Most AI music generators, such as Mubert, Beatbot, and Beatoven, are equipped with the capability to create beats. These tools use complex algorithms to generate unique and customizable beats, making it easier for users to create music.

Which AI can generate audio?

There are different types of AI designed specifically for creating audio. This includes text-to-speech AI generators that convert written text into spoken words, music generators that create original tunes, and sound effects AI generators that produce various sound effects. These tools are revolutionizing the way we create and use audio content.

Featured Image by Lina ChekhovichÂ / shutterstock.com

The post 5 Best AI Music Generators in 2023 (Most are Free) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

30.06.2023

Otter AI Review 2023 (Transcription Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons)
Transcription services have become a necessity in today’s fast-paced, information-driven world. Among the various options available, Otter.ai stands out with its AI-powered voice-to-text transcription capabilities. But is it the right choice for you? This comprehensive review will explore everything you need to know about Otter AI, from its features and pricing to its best use cases.

What is Otter AI?

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Otter.ai is an AI-powered transcription service that uses advanced machine learning algorithms to convert spoken language into written text. Unlike AI voice generators and text-to-speech tools (TTS), Otter does the opposite by taking spoken voice in meetings and writing it down for high-quality meeting notes and summaries. Otter’s capabilities are accessible online and via Android or iOS apps and a Chrome browser extension.

What is Otter AI Used For?

Otter is beneficial in various scenarios, such as recording notes for online lectures, business meetings, brainstorming sessions, and transcribing pre-recorded video/audio content. It is a convenient tool for jotting down notes during meetings and interviews, capturing thoughts while walking or driving, and transcribing existing recordings and podcasts. Otter shines in any situation where you may be multi-tasking yet need pristine text notes for yourself or your team.

By connecting with your calendars (for finding events and meeting links), Otter knows each meeting you have and can join along. You’ll never have to forgo an appointment without a trusty scribe following you around.

If Otter seems like a niche tool, wait to see all the possibilities that are unlocked with all its features.

Otter AI Features Breakdown

Otter.ai comes packed with various features designed to make audio transcription easy and efficient in any digital setting.

Live Meeting and Media Transcription

Otter.ai can transcribe meetings in real-time. This is its primary goal and feature, but the more you use it, the more you depend on it. It can transcribe audio from Zoom meetings, Google Meets, and other recorded audio and video files. Since Otter is taking notes for you, there is no need to assign a team member or volunteer to take meeting notes for those who missed the meeting. Otter transcribes with high accuracy and even adds a few extra features.

It has a speaker identification feature that automatically identifies different speakers in a recording and labels them accordingly. This prevents documents from covering topic notes without mentioning who said what. Each block of transcribed text also comes with timestamps to quickly reference what happened and when.

Otter also allows you to upload audio and video files in various formats and have it transcribe them. This feature is perfect for transcribing pre-recorded content.

Otter.ai can transcribe up to four hours of a meeting or other audio source, making it ideal for long meetings or interviews. And on top of transcribing every meeting, Otter records each meeting as well and lets users come back to the discussion and play it back. So if meeting notes aren’t going to cut it, full meetings are stored with Otter too. Meeting notes, transcriptions, and playback can be shared across your organization if you use Otter AI as part of your team.

Otter Assistant

The Otter Assistant feature is a game-changer for those instances when you can’t attend a meeting due to unforeseen circumstances such as illness or scheduling conflicts. With Otter’s ability to access your calendars, it can deploy the Otter Assistant to attend meetings on your behalf. Acting as a standalone assistant, Otter Assistant diligently transcribes the sessions you’re unable to participate in, ensuring you don’t miss out on any crucial information.

In essence, Otter Assistant acts as your personal note-taker, ensuring you’re always in the loop, even when you can’t be physically present. It’s something that sets Otter.ai apart in the realm of transcription services.

Custom Vocabulary and Name Recognition

Otter.ai can recognize and learn custom vocabulary, including names, jargon, and acronyms. Just because it is AI doesn’t mean it automatically understands your industry or insider jargon. Name pronunciations can be difficult as well. For those who run into frequent transcription issues, Otter has a section for adding custom vocabulary and names with which it may otherwise have trouble. This can make your notes more readable, inclusive, and accurate.

Outline Summary and Otter Assistant

One of Otter.ai’s most valuable features is the Outline panel, which curates a meeting summary in an accessible and visual format. Outlines can also be automatically (or manually) shared with others with email summaries.

With various file permissions, Otter meeting transcriptions and notes are searchable, so past meeting content can be indexed and quickly found.

File Synchronization

Otter.ai has integrations that automatically sync files from Dropbox and Zoom Cloud, keeping your transcriptions organized and up-to-date without requiring manual transfers.

Integration works both ways, allowing data to come into Otter and allows for saving transcriptions in Dropbox (if that is preferable).

Otter Mobile App + Chrome Extension

Otter.ai supports Android and iOS apps with a clean, professional, and modern interface, allowing you to use the service on your phone or tablet. This brings Otter everywhere and every way you do meetings.

The Chrome extension also adds more functionality around the web. For instance, Otter’s Chrome extension adds “Add Otter meeting notes” to Google Calendar events with Meet or Zoom meetings attached.

Otter AI Pricing and Plans Review

Otter AI offers a range of pricing options to suit different needs and budgets. Best of all, it has a free plan, so you can dip your toes in and try out the service before fully committing.

Annual pricing is shown here. Monthly pricing is found below.

The Basic Plan is free and provides users with 300 minutes of transcription per month, with a limit of 30 minutes per conversation. Users can also import and transcribe up to three audio or video files.

The Pro Plan costs $16.99 per month. The Pro plan offers everything in the Basic plan plus additional features. Users get 1,200 minutes of transcription per month, with a limit of 90 minutes per conversation. They can also import and transcribe ten audio or video files per month.

The Business Plan costs $30 per month. It includes everything in the Pro plan plus team and admin features. Users get 6,000 total minutes of transcription per month, with a limit of 4 hours per conversation. They can also import and transcribe unlimited audio or video files.

For large organizations that need additional security, control, and support, Otter.ai offers the Enterprise Plan. This plan includes everything in the Business plan plus advanced features like Single Sign-On (SSO), organization-wide deployment, domain capture, and advanced security and compliance controls. The pricing for the Enterprise plan is available upon contacting Otter.ai’s sales team.

How to Use Otter to Manage Meetings

Otter brings collaboration and time-management tools into one unified platform, starting with the dashboard. With team members and connected calendars, the dashboard comes alive with insights and tasks based on previous and upcoming meetings.

By being added to “Groups,” users will be notified when there is a new meeting summary to look over when a group-shared meeting transcription is tagged with recent activity. Some of these items will make it into the center of the dashboard under priority items. Otter AI transcription can easily be toggled On/Off for meetings with the right sidebar, showing you all your meetings for a particular day. Otter also makes it easy to transcribe quick thoughts or upload video/audio content that you need to have transcribed for you or your team (with summaries provided).

Users can make Otter’s transcription come alive when inside an active meeting. Select transcribed text, highlight it, add additional notes (text/images), and jot down takeaways/action items to make meetings productive. Individuals could be @ tagged, so specific takeaways are sent to the user even if they weren’t present in the meeting.

Otter revolutionizes the utility of meetings. Even by recording your own thoughts and having Otter transcribe, summarize, and share with team members, Otter can reduce the number of meetings your team has. Inside of meetings and outside of them, Otter is helping you become more efficient.

The best part of using Otter is that it centralizes all meetings and meeting notes so that they are searchable. Even if someone wasn’t at an important meeting, they can find what they need and get back on track in short order. Its collaboration tools mean no more knowledge silos or gaps across an organization because of who is invited to meetings. Otter shares more data and reduces the time it takes to find it.

Pros and Cons of Otter AI

Choosing software for your podcast or business is an important job. It’s important to see what others have experienced so you can make the most informed decision possible. Below is an aggregated Pros and Cons list of customer feedback (across review platforms) for Otter.ai in 2023.

Pros of Using Otter AI
- Good support for Calendar Integrations
- Has quality transcription that’s on par with other services, even without custom vocabulary entry
- Allows users to be more present-minded at meetings
- Easy to use across devices
Cons of Using Otter AI
- Downgrading from Business to Pro turns sub-accounts into separate, standalone accounts
- Doesn’t remove filler words like “umm”
- No Live Chat support, but thorough documentation
- Per-user pricing for Business and Enterprise plans are high compared to other AI business tools
Is Otter AI Worth It?

Otter.ai is a powerful tool offering a range of features designed to make transcription easy for working teams and individuals. Its pricing plans cater to various needs and budgets so that no one is priced out of using it. All of this and its unique mix of tools make Otter well worth your consideration.

AI tools are finding usefulness in every nook and cranny. They are reducing time spent on repetitive work and helping teams discover deeper insights and more efficient ways to collaborate. Otter AI is no different.

Have you tried Otter or some other meeting AI assistant? How have they changed the way your business does meetings?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is Otter ai Legitimate?

Yes, Otter.ai is a legitimate company based in the United States. It has a large user base, including individuals, businesses, and educational institutions. The company uses advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to provide accurate and efficient transcription services. It’s recognized for its innovative approach to speech-to-text transcription and has received positive user reviews.

Can I Use Otter AI for Free?

Yes! Otter.ai offers a Basic plan that is free to use. This plan provides users with 300 minutes of transcription per month and allows for importing and transcribing three audio or video files in the free account’s lifetime. It’s an excellent option for individuals who need transcription services on a smaller scale or want to test the software before committing to a paid plan.

Is Otter AI better than Zoom transcription?

Many users have reported that they prefer Otter.ai’s transcription services over Zoom’s built-in transcription feature. Otter.ai is praised for its accuracy, user-friendly interface, and additional features such as speaker identification and custom vocabulary.

It’s also worth noting that Otter.ai can be integrated with Zoom, allowing for automatic transcription of Zoom meetings. Users interested in comparing the two can sign up for Otter.ai’s free plan and try it out for themselves.

Does Otter.ai keep recordings?

Yes, Otter.ai stores past meetings along with their transcripts and notes. This feature lets users easily playback important meetings and keep them in a centralized location. It’s a valuable tool for reviewing past discussions, studying material, or referencing past meetings. The recordings are stored securely where users can access them anytime through their Otter.ai account.

The post Otter AI Review 2023 (Transcription Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
22.06.2023

10 Best Podcast Hosting Platforms in 2023 (For More Effective Podcasts)

With more people tuning in to listen to their favorite shows, it’s no surprise that more people are seeking to create content in the form of podcasts. As such, podcast hosting platforms have become more important than ever. However, using a regular web hosting server to upload your podcast files can negatively impact your website’s performance, consume your bandwidth and potentially provide a poor user experience for your listeners. The strain that the additional downloads and streaming can put on your server could impact the quality of your podcast. This is where the best podcast hosting platforms come in to save the day.

Podcast hosting platforms are the backbone of any podcast, adding the necessary infrastructure to upload, store, and distribute your audio files efficiently. This article will look at the best podcast hosting platforms in 2023.

What is a Podcast Hosting Platform?

A podcast hosting platform is a service that allows you to upload and store your audio files and then distribute them to various podcast directories and apps, such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

These platforms typically offer a variety of features, such as analytics, hosting, and distribution tools, as well as the ability to monetize your podcast. These tools provide valuable insights into your listeners’ behavior and preferences and can help you widen your audience and earn additional income from your podcast.

10 Best Podcast Hosting Platforms

Our list of the best podcast hosting platforms takes into consideration their various feature sets, integrations, and of course, price. Now, let’s check out the list!

1. Buzzsprout (Best for Ease of Use)

Buzzsprout is a user-friendly podcast hosting platform that makes it easy to upload, publish, and promote your podcast. The platform offers a simple and intuitive interface allowing users to edit audio files directly within the app without additional software. This feature is helpful for podcasters who may not have access to expensive editing software or lack the technical skills to use it.

It also offers detailed statistics on your podcast’s performance, such as the number of downloads, the demographics of your audience, and the most popular episodes. This information can be used to improve your podcast and reach a wider audience. Additionally, Buzzsprout integrates with popular podcast directories and apps, such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify, making it easy for your podcast to be found by listeners.

Key Features for Buzzsprout:

Add show notes
Audio editing
Customization options for branding
Schedule episodes in advance
Powerful analytics and distribution tools
Integrations with popular podcast directories and apps

Buzzsprout home page

Buzzsprout is designed to be intuitive, so you can quickly get your podcast up and running even if you’re new to podcasting. You can easily upload your audio files, add show notes and episode descriptions, and even schedule episodes in advance. Additionally, the platform offers customization options for your podcast’s branding and design.

Buzzsprout design options

It’s perfect for new podcasters looking for a user-friendly platform to track the performance of their podcast and reach a wider audience.

Buzzsprout is for you if…

You’re new to podcasting and looking for a user-friendly platform
You want to track the performance of your podcast
You want to reach a wider audience

Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $12 per month

Try Buzzsprout

2. Blubrry (Best for WordPress Users)

Blubrry is a podcast-hosting platform that offers a variety of unique solutions for podcasters. It’s the best option for WordPress users. Its standout feature is the PowerPress, a popular podcast plugin that allows users to easily publish and manage their podcasts directly from their own WordPress website. You will receive a complimentary WordPress website with any Blubrry plan if you don’t have a WordPress site.

Additionally, Blubrry offers a Podcast Media Hosting plan. This allows users to host their media files on their server while utilizing Blubrry’s advanced and IAB-certified stats.

Key Features of Blubrry:

PowerPress plugin for easy publishing and management from own WordPress site
Podcast Media Hosting plan for hosting media files on own server
Advanced and IAB-certified statistics
Buying any Blubrry plan will get you a free WordPress website

Blubrry website settings page

Blubrry sets itself apart from other services by offering great features such as the PowerPress plugin, a Podcast Media Hosting plan, a WordPress website, advanced statistics, and a Podcast migration service, giving podcasters more control, flexibility, and ease of use. It should be noted that the PowerPress plugin and Podcast Media Hosting plan are separate add-ons and not included in the basic subscription plan.

Blubrry is for you if…

You want to publish and manage your podcast directly from your website easily.
You want to host your media files on your server while using advanced statistics.
You want to use the PowerPress Plugin for your WordPress site.
You want to use Blubrry to create a website for your podcast.

Pricing: $10 per month

Try Blubrry

3. Podbean (Best for Monetization)

Podbean makes creating and editing your podcast incredibly simple. This is especially true due to its mobile integration app, which allows you to use this platform from anywhere. The platform has a drag-and-drop feature that allows users to upload and organize their episodes, add episode details and cover art, and even schedule the release of episodes.

Key Features of Podbean:

Analytics and distribution tools
Built-in music and sound effect library
Mobile app
Monetization options, such as advertising and sponsorships

Podbean example page

Podbean offers several ways to monetize content; podcasters can sell ad spots, sell merchandise and even use the platform’s built-in donation feature. This platform also offers a feature called “Premium Podcasts,” which allows you to create exclusive content and charge a subscription fee for your users to gain access to it.

Live shows feature with Podbean

Plus, you can create live streams directly from the dashboard to engage with your audience.

Podbean is for you if…

You’re looking for a comprehensive podcast-hosting platform
You if you want to gain insights into your audience through advanced analytics and statistics.
If you want to monetize your podcast through running ads, selling merchandise, and offering premium content to your audience.

Pricing: $9 per month

Try Podbean

4. Libsyn (Best for Reliability)

Libsyn is a podcast-hosting platform that has been around since 2004, making it one of the industry’s oldest and most established platforms. Over the years, it has built a strong community of podcasters, making it an excellent option for those starting in the podcasting world.

One of the standout features of Libsyn is its unlimited bandwidth, which ensures that your podcast will not be affected even if it becomes popular and experiences a high volume of traffic. Recently, Libsyn has introduced Libsyn Studio, an addition to its platform allowing users to create and record a podcast using a computer without additional equipment.

Key Features for Libsyn:

Advanced analytics and distribution tools
Integrations with popular podcast directories and apps
Customizable media player
Multiple hosting options and monetization options

Libsyn podcast page

Libsyn is an excellent choice for professional podcasters looking for advanced features and options. However, it should be noted that Libsyn only includes essential features in its plans, and everything else must be purchased as separate add-ons. For example, if you want to use the platform’s monetization features, you must pay extra on top of your subscription. Even basic statistics are not included in the lowest subscription plan.

Libsyn is for you if…

You are looking for a long-standing and established podcast hosting platform with a strong community of podcasters.
You want the peace of mind that comes with unlimited bandwidth.
You want a user-friendly interface for creating and managing your podcast without extra equipment.

Pricing: $5 per month

Try Libsyn

5. Simplecast (Best for Professional Podcasting)

Simplecast is a podcast hosting platform designed to help newcomers and advanced users create professional podcasts. This platform has payment plans for independent users and larger enterprises and is trusted by noteworthy companies like Kickstarter and Nike. It provides its users with responsive and optimized hosting plus unlimited storage.

With its advanced analytics, you can track your podcast’s performance and reach a wider audience with its integrations with popular podcast directories and apps. The Recastâ„¢ tool from Simplecast is a powerful feature that allows users to easily schedule and share clips from their podcast episodes on social media. This is a great way to promote your podcast and reach a wider audience. The tool also allows you to customize your clips’ start and end times and add captions and hashtags.

Key Features for Simplecast:

Advanced analytics and distribution tools
Integrations with popular podcast directories and apps
A customizable and embeddable player
Multiple hosting options
High-quality audio hosting

Create podcast page

Simplecast is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a professional podcast hosting platform. You can start creating your podcast branding and marketing within seconds of starting with the platform, plus it’s a relatively cheap solution for both individuals and larger companies.

Simplecast dashboard

Simplecast is for you if…

You want to collaborate with a large team on a single account
You want to track the performance of your podcast
You want enterprise pricing for your podcast

Pricing: $15 per month

Try Simplecast

6. Transistor (Best for Teams)

Transistor is a podcast hosting platform that is designed for teams and businesses. It allows you to manage multiple shows from a single account and gather data on them to grow your listener base, making it an excellent tool for creating larger-scale podcasting networks. Additionally, it provides team management and collaboration features, making it easy for multiple team members to work on a podcast. It allows users to add multiple hosts and guests to their accounts and assign different roles and permissions for each person. It’s all about collaboration with Transistor.

It also connects with various third-party tools, including social media platforms, email marketing services, and website builders. This makes it easy for users to promote their podcasts and reach a wider audience.

Key Features of Transistor:

Advanced analytics and distribution tools
Integrations with popular podcast directories and apps
Team management and collaboration features

Transistor dashboard

Transistor is an excellent choice for businesses and teams looking for a professional podcast hosting platform. Its advanced analytics and distribution tools, as well as team management and collaboration features, allow you to run and manage your podcast as a team effectively.

Transistor embed example

The platform also provides a customizable and embeddable player that can be added to any website, including those built on WordPress.

Transistor is for you if…

You’re a business or team looking to run a podcast
You want to assign user roles to your podcast
Do you want to integrate your marketing efforts with social media

Pricing: $19 per month

Try Transistor

7. Soundcloud (Best for Music Lovers)

Soundcloud is a popular platform for hosting and sharing music and podcasts. Its simple interface and the large community of users make it easy to upload and share your podcast with a broad audience. Users on the free plan are limited to uploading a maximum of three hours of audio per month, while the least expensive paid plan allows for twice that amount, with a cap of six hours.

Using SoundCloud is an excellent idea because it’s one of the largest social audio platforms available, but its free plan does limit you.

Key Features for Soundcloud:

A large community of users
Analytics and distribution tools
Embed player

Soundcloud podcast player

Soundcloud is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a popular platform to host and distribute their podcast. With over 76 million registered users and 175 million monthly active users, it offers a large audience for creators to share their work. They also have a built-in promotion feature that allows users to share their podcast easily with other Soundcloud users, which is a great way to increase the visibility of your podcast.

Soundcloud is for you if…

You’re looking for a popular platform to host and distribute your podcast
You want to reach a broad audience
You want a free plan with a cap of 3 hours of audio

Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $16 per month

Try Soundcloud

8. Spreaker (Best for Audience Engagement)

Spreaker is a podcast hosting platform that offers a range of features to help you create, distribute, and monetize your podcast. It allows podcasters to interact with their audience in real-time through live streaming. This can help increase engagement and build a stronger connection with listeners.

Spreaker also provides a wide variety of music and sound effects that can be used to enhance the production value of a podcast. Like the other solutions on the list, it has a customizable and embeddable player that can integrate with any website, including WordPress ones.

Key Features for Speaker:

Built-in music and sound effect library
Live streaming
Integration. with popular apps and directories (Apple, Spotify, etc.)
Monetization options, such as merchandise sales and donations

Spreaker page

This platform is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a comprehensive podcast hosting platform. It integrates with popular podcasting apps and directories, such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, to help increase the visibility and reach of a podcast.

Spreaker is for you if…

You’re looking for a comprehensive podcast-hosting platform
You want to use the app to record and mix your podcast
You want to monetize your podcast

Pricing: $12 per month

Get Spreaker

9. Acast

Acast is a relatively new podcast hosting company making waves, especially in digital content creation. With a focus on monetization, Acast provides both the tools to create, edit and distribute your podcast and the ability to monetize it. With Acast, you get free access to Podcastle, a browser-based podcast editor. Acast also provides tools to promote your podcast across social media, making it easy to transform your episodes into video content. Acast’s insights are also an area where this podcast hosting company excels. Not only can you see stats for your podcast across platforms, but you can also track your monetization and advertising efforts. To monetize your podcast to the next level, consider using Acast as your podcast hosting company.

Key Features:

Distribution to 100s of podcast listening apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more
Multiple monetization options, including advertising, sponsorships, and member subscriptions
Native audio-to-video converter to share your podcast on social media and beyond
Deep analytics and insights for growing your audience, podcast revenue, and more
Customizable web player

Acast website builder platform

An exciting feature of Acast is its native website builder. You can change the color, add your Facebook Pixel, connect your social media accounts, and more. Add comments from Disqus or Facebook and include links to your other podcast platforms from one simple interface.

Acast website builder frontend

Have all your latest episodes listed in a simple format that gets updated every time you upload a new podcast episode. You can also add an About page to share more about your podcast with your listeners.

Acast is for you if…

You are a creator who wants to have a platform that supports
Want deep monetization options and analytics
You already have a podcast following and want to move to another platform easily

Pricing:Â Free, Paid plans start at $14.99 per month

Try Acast

10. Streamyard

Streamyard is more than just a podcast hosting platform. With Streamyard, you can live stream, create video podcasts and record your podcasts remotely. Unlike other platforms that focus on only audio podcasting, Streamyard wants to give you the ability to add video to your listeners’ podcasting experience. It prides itself in being able to add up to 10 guests from anywhere in the world, to join each recording session. Streamyard also allows you to edit your audio files for each guest if you upload your audio podcast to other platforms. If you’re looking to host live-streamed podcasting recordings, you have a variety of places to stream your podcasts, like Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook, to name a few. If you’d only like to have Streamyard handle the audio aspect of your podcast, it comes with adequate tools to enable you to be still able to edit

Key Features:

Live streaming functionality with branding and engagement capabilities
Â Create video and audio podcasts from one convenient location
Add logos, lower thirds, and green screens to your visual podcasts
Stream pre-recorded clips and download recordings for external editing
Interact with listeners and viewers, showcase comments on screen

Streamyard destinations

Streamyard sticks out from other platforms on our list because the platform takes video very seriously. While it is a decent audio recorder and editor, you can also live stream your podcast recording to multiple destinations across the web.

The Streamyard recording studio

The Streamyard studio allows you to add guests, banners, and logos and allow for listener interaction. For a fully immersive podcast experience, Streamyard beautifully combines video, audio, and live streaming capabilities to your podcast.

Streamyard is for you if…

You want to build a video podcast, use Streamyard.
You want to quickly interview guests worldwide, no matter their internet connection, consider Streamyard.
You want to add live streaming to your viewers and listeners’ podcast experience.

Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $25 per month

Try Streamyard

Podcast Hosting Platforms Price Comparison

With our top picks listed, let’s look at how each stacks up to each other in terms of price. You may be surprised to know that some of them come with free versions or trials, helping you to start your podcast today for little investment:

	Plugin	Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	Buzzsprout	$12/mth	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥ˆ	Blubrry	$10/mth	âŒ	Visit
ðŸ¥‰	Podbean	$9/mth	âŒ	Visit
4	Libsyn	$5/mth	âœ”ï¸	Visit
5	Simplecast	$15/mth	âŒ	Visit
6	Transistor	$19/mth	âŒ	Visit
7	Soundcloud	$16/mth	âœ”ï¸	Visit
8	Spreaker	$12/mth	âŒ	Visit
9	Acast	$14.99/mth	âœ”ï¸	Visit
10	Streamyard	$25/mth	âœ”ï¸	Visit

What are the Best Podcast Hosting Platforms?

Regarding the best podcast hosting platforms, we believe all the ones we’ve put on our list will help you with your podcast. For our overall best pick, choose Buzzsprout. WordPress users or bloggers with podcasts can get good use out of Blubrry’s WordPress plugin, making adding your podcast episodes to your blog easy. Lastly, for the user focused on making money with their podcast, choose Podbean as your podcast hosting platform.

If you’re using WordPress, we’ve made an article about podcast plugins to help you find the right plugin to work with your podcast platform. Check it out today!

Do you have any podcast hosting tips? Let us know in the comments section below!

Featured Image via Evgeniia Sergeeva / shutterstock.com

The post 10 Best Podcast Hosting Platforms in 2023 (For More Effective Podcasts) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

13.06.2023

Writesonic Review 2023: The Best AI Writing Software?

Writesonic is one of many groundbreaking AI writing assistants transforming the content creation landscape. This article is your guide to understanding Writesonic and its suite of products. We’ll start by examining the basic features of Writesonic, shedding light on its main products, and showing how they can refine your content creation process. Then we’ll cover pricing and plans, offering a brief overview to aid your decision-making process.

If you don’t know much about Writesonic, we’ll give the company a basic overview to understand the product’s quality and backing.

What is Writesonic?

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Writesonic is an AI-powered writing software that emerged in 2020 and has quickly gained traction in the market alongside the likes of Jasper AI. The company has managed funding from top-notch VC firms, including Y Combinator, propelling its product growth and development. It’s so good that it sits near the top of our list of best AI tools.

At the heart of Writesonic are GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 (along with some proprietary magic and the new GPT-4 32K). In addition to these powerhouse LLMs (large language models), Writesonic also sifts through vast internet data to create up-to-date and reliable content. Writesonic is your go-to platform for a wide range of content needs. For example, whether it’s articles, blogs, ads, marketing materials, eCommerce descriptions, social media posts, or website copy, Writesonic is geared to help you create top-tier content.

At this point, Writesonic has been making its mark in the content creation industry for a few years. The company’s rapid growth and diverse offerings hint at a thriving community of users, although specific userbase numbers remain undisclosed. Much of its success has been due to new products that leverage AI technologies in new ways.

Writesonic Features and Products

Many people have come to the platform because of Writesonic, the company’s flagship product and AI writer that can be used for dozens of niche use cases. But as Writesonice has expanded, so has the opportunities for individuals and teams to apply advanced AI tool to different areas of their workflows.

Writesonic AI Writer

Writesonic, the AI writing tool of the Writesonic AI platform, employs cutting-edge AI technology to produce quality content. Whether blog posts, ad copy, or social media content, Writesonic can handle various content types with simple use cases (templates) and prompts.

It’s crafted to aid users in creating top-notch content at a breakneck pace, a feature that’s particularly advantageous for content creators, marketers, and businesses that need to produce content regularly. It supports content generation in 25 languages, making it a versatile tool for users worldwide. It also allows users to set the tone of the content, ranging from excited and professional to funny and dramatic. Writesonic can also mix different types of content creation within a single document so that you can easily create highly tailored pieces of content.

For example, a blogger can leverage Writesonice to generate article ideas, introductions, outlines, and even complete articles. The tool can also rephrase content (making it a great AI rewriter and paraphraser), expand sentences, and condense lengthy paragraphs, making it invaluable for enhancing and refining content.

Writesonic beautifully integrates with SurferSEO to bring vital SERP (search engine results page) and keyword data into the writing process. SurferSEO will also analyze content in the document editor against what it finds important from other top-ranking articles that appear on relevant searches. This can help you dial in content and ensure you hit search intent, NPL/semantic domain coverage (natural language processing), and essential topics visitors expect to be covered.

Chatsonic AI Chat Assistant

Chatsonic, Writesonic’s AI chat assistant, is designed to mimic human-like conversation, providing users with a more interactive and engaging experience. It’s one of the better ChatGPT alternatives out there.

Chatsonic brings multiple different skills to the table within the chat interface. It natively has access to the internet and current, live data to get you the most accurate responses out there. It can also handle requests to generate AI art and images. Chatsonic also comes loaded with “Personalities” (such as Math Teacher, Motivational Coach, and Interviewer) to make the chat assistant act like different types of people you may want to talk with. Assigning a personality can mean you get shown how to do something (teacher) or are asked tough questions about a topic (interviewer) instead of just giving an answer that doesn’t help you improve.

Botsonic AI Conversational Chatbot

Botsonic, Writesonic’s AI conversational chatbot, takes customer interaction a notch higher by providing personalized and interactive conversations. Designed to understand and respond to user inputs conversationally, it makes interactions more natural and engaging. It achieves this by building off OpenAI’s API and appending prompt instructions with user chat messages.

Businesses can leverage Botsonic to automate customer interactions, provide personalized recommendations, and engage users in interactive conversations. For instance, a travel agency can use Botsonic to provide customized travel recommendations based on a user’s preferences and previous interactions. Any business can “train” a Botsonic AI chatbot on their own data by uploading knowledgebase (KB) articles or providing specific URLs from which the bot should draw information. This gives users the power of GPT-4 with their in-house data written specifically for a single business.

Botsonic also keeps tabs on important analytics from user chats so you can see your general usage by determined periods (shown above).

Pricing and Plans

Writesonic offers a range of pricing plans to cater to different needs, from individual users to businesses and teams. The Pro plan is the plan most will get because it gives access to all the features. Writesonic uses a usage-based pricing model which allows you to determine how many monthly words you want to pay for, which is a nice touch since most competitors have an all-or-nothing pricing model attached to them. Here’s a quick overview:

Free Plan

The free plan allows you to try out all features of Writesonic. It includes 10,000 words per month with a one-user limit. Some features include a ChatGPT-like chatbot, an AI chatbot builder, 100+ AI templates, browser extensions, 1-click WordPress export, and support for 25+ languages. It’s important to note that this is a “free plan” and not a “free trial.” Go ahead and use it every month if you like; it does not expire.

Pro Plan

Bloggers, freelancers, and businesses needing a set amount of generated words monthly will typically opt for this plan. It costs $19 per month (with some savings if paid yearly) and includes 100,000 words, but you can get more words for an added cost. It offers all features from the free plan, plus access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 32K (which is GPT-4 with a longer memory), a factual and personalized article writer, an unlimited no-code AI chatbot builder, an article paraphraser/rewriter, Writesonic API, Surfer integration, and access to priority support. Most of our readers will be using this plan, and for good reasonâ€”it does everything!

Enterprise Plan

This plan is tailored for content teams and whole businesses. It offers custom packages, AI model development, onboarding, and better customer support. Choosing this requires contacting sales for custom pricing.

How Generated Words Work with Writesonic

It’s crucial to note that Writesonic offers two quality levels: Premium (GPT-3.5) and Superior (GPT-4 /GPT-4 32K). Superior quality provides enhanced intelligence, improved understanding of inputs, smarter contextual responses, and better non-English language comprehension. If a plan offers 100,000 Premium words, you can use either 100,000 Premium words or 33,334 Superior quality words (or some mix of the two). The important thing to note is that using Superior will drain your word count faster. Superior generations have improved outputs and capabilities that come with using them.

Writesonic vs ChatGPT: Comparing AI Writing Output

Writing output matters when choosing an AI writing service. Arguably, it’s the only thing that matters. We’ve tested Writesonic against ChatGPT using similar prompts for both tools. The beauty of using a dedicated AI writing tool is that creating a prompt for your particular use case should require less work. As such, you’ll notice that I had to feed ChatGPT with a little more details than what was given to Writesonic (but that was a minimum).

To test Writesonic, we chose the “Product Description” template and filled in the Service Name, Description, Tone of Voice, Keywords, Language, Quality Type, and # of Outputs before hitting generate.

Writesonic generated two outputs. The first generated option was 129 words, and the second was 103 words long. We didn’t like the first option that much but thought the second option was remarkable, considering the sparse product description we provided it. Here is a look at the second output Writesonic created for us.

We then gave ChatGPT a similar request (using GPT 3.5) to see what it could do comparatively. The prompt is very simple and maps the field label titles found in Writesonic so that we didn’t overprompt ChatGPT and tip the scales in its favor.

The first response that ChatGPT gave us was 280 words, and the second was 313 words long. Both were significantly longer outputs than what Writesonic produced, but that isn’t necessarily good or preferred. In fact, ChatGPT’s content reads more like a service landing page than a product/service description. Here is the output from ChatGPT that we liked the best:

The Winner: Writesonic

One thing that ChatGPT did was take a lot of liberties. ChatGPT added things I wouldn’t have expected from the prompt such as how client interaction works and adding an operational ethos. These could be correct, but they weren’t mentioned in the prompt. The seven paragraphs, again, felt like an attempt at writing a landing page and not a service description. Writesonic created something I could copy and paste straight into a WooCommerce product without being too wordy for the page. Writesonic also used all the keywords we provided it even though its total word count was lower. This was a big win in being able to trust the output that Writesonic was generating for us.

Writesonic uses GPT 3.5 (and 4) but adds extra layers to fine-tune the prompt-creating experience. It also has a leg up on ChatGPT with its document editor and general user interface. Integrating with SurferSEO also brings the much-needed content analysis to the workflow that would have to be prompted in ChatGPT, which would take extra time.

Overall, we like Writesonic in that it generates quality outputs but does so in a streamlined interface that makes creating, editing, and publishing content very easy.

Is Writesonic the Right Choice for You?

It’s no question, Writesonic AI makes content creation easier. We’ve found that working with Writesonic is a bit easier than even Jasper AI. While Jasper excels in some ways, Writesonic provides a simple yet dependable AI writing experience. We recommend many people signup for a free Writesonic account. This way, they can explore incorporating it into their workflow and writing processes.

Writesonic didn’t just create an AI writer. They went ahead and also created a valuable chat assistant (Chatsonic) AND a website chatbot (Botsonic), adding more value to the whole platform. Each pricing plan comes with both of these extra tools. So, you get access to three separate tools from one account, albeit they share the same monthly word count.

If you are comparison-shopping, we suggest you visit our list of the best AI writing tools. AI has a lot more to offer than just writing. We also created helpful resources for navigating AI SEO tools and AI website builders as well.

Writesonic Frequently Asked Questions

Is Writesonic Free?

While Writesonic does provide a free plan, it’s more of a teaser to give you a taste of what the platform can do. If you’re serious about leveraging the full power of Writesonic for your content creation needs, you’ll want to consider one of their paid plans.

The pricing starts at a reasonable $13 per month if you choose to be billed annually. However, the cost is slightly higher at $19 per month if you prefer a monthly billing cycle.

This investment can truly pay off, especially if you’re regularly creating content and looking to streamline your process with the help of AI.

Are Botsonic and Chatsonic included in a Writesonic subscription?

Both Botsonic and Chatsonic are included in a Writesonic subscription. This means that with a single Writesonic subscription, you get access to these powerful AI tools, enhancing your content creation and customer interaction capabilities.

Each service shares the same pool of generated words per your subscription tier.

Have you used Writesonic? How do you use it, and what do you think it does best?

The post Writesonic Review 2023: The Best AI Writing Software? appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

11.06.2023
How to Generate Beautiful AI Images with Stable Diffusion (2023)
There is much to learn about new tools, such as Stable Diffusion, OpenAI, Midjourney, and other AI art generators. As creative professionals, we owe it to ourselves to embrace this new technology, learn what we can, and use it as a tool to make our lives easier. In this post, we’ll look closer at Stable Diffusion and how to use it to create gorgeous AI images.

Let’s get started.

What is Generative AI?

Generative AI is the process of generating new content based on existing data through machine learning. With Generative AI, users can create various content, including text, images, videos, and other synthetic data. Unlike supervised learning, where a machine uses labeled data to train models, machine learning uses unlabeled data to find patterns and structures without supervision or feedback. It provides a high quality of work in a fraction of the time it would take a human to create so it can be an incredibly useful tool for creators.

What is Stable Diffusion?

Stable Diffusion is a powerful AI image generator that can create images from a text prompt. You can produce output using various descriptive text inputs like style, frame, or presets. In addition to creating images, SD can add or replace parts of images thanks to inpainting and extending the size of an image, called outpainting. You can edit a generative or uploaded image, whether the image was created with AI or not. Like OpenAI, SD is completely open source, so it’s free for anyone to use.

Using Stable Diffusion for Image Generation

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There are primarily two ways that you can use Stable Diffusion to create AI images, either through an API on your local machine or through an online software program like DreamStudio, WriteSonic, or others.

If you plan to install Stable Diffusion locally, you need a computer with beefy specs to generate images quickly. However, with recent advancements, you can get by with the following:
- Windows, MacOS, or Linux operating system
- Graphics card with at least 4GB of VRAM
- 12GB or more installation space, preferably through a solid state drive (SSD)
That said, most users will run SD in an online software setting to avoid the hassle of setting everything up locally. For this tutorial, we’ll use SD’s flagship software, DreamStudio.ai. It comes with a simple and intuitive interface with various settings and editing tools to get the most out of Stable Diffusion.

Understanding Prompts for AI Image Generation

Before creating images with DreamStudio, we’d be remiss if we didn’t explain how to make the best prompts for Stable Diffusion image creation. After all, prompts are a crucial component of the image generation process. First, it’s important to know that a prompt consists of three main parts: frame, subject, and style. The frame defines the size and composition of the image. In contrast, the subject describes the object or objects of the picture. Finally, the style specifies the visual characteristics of the image. Examples of style could be famous artists such as Pablo Picasso or Ansel Adams, an art style or medium like acrylic or oil painting, line art, etc., or descriptive text such as the angle and composition.

For example, we asked DreamStudio to generate an image of a Goldendoodle and Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever in a photorealistic, over-the-shoulder view. Here are the results:

Tips For Creating Effective Prompts

To create effective prompts in Stable Diffusion, it’s important to be specific about what you want. Be sure to provide clear instructions for each prompt component (frame, subject, and style), and above all else, be descriptive.

Use Keywords

As a good rule of thumb, try to incorporate as many of these keywords as possible:
- Subject: What you want to see in an image (example: mountain, cat, car, etc.)
- Medium: the material used, such as digital painting, illustration, photography, etc.
- Style: This refers to the artistic style desired, such as impressionist, realism, hyperrealistic, etc.
- Artist: Name a specific famous artist, such as Rembrandt, Picasso, etc.
- Resolution: infers how sharp and detailed an image is. Use words such as highly detailed, ultrarealistic, etc.
- Additional details: Add in additional descriptors (modifiers) to enhance an image
- Color: Add colors to guide SD to create images of a certain color or tone, such as light blue, deep red, etc.
- Lighting: Add lighting effects through keywords like cinematic lighting, dark, etc.
Add Negative Prompts

In addition to keywords, you can use negative prompts to steer SD in the right direction. Negative prompts are aspects you don’t want to see in your generative output. This is a great way to omit unwanted elements in your images. For example, we used this prompt in DreamStudio, along with this negative prompt to leave out things we didn’t want to see:

Prompt:
an image of a Goldendoodle in a photorealistic, over-the-shoulder view. Add detailed grass, a lake, and mountains in the foreground. Add cinematic lighting, high detail, and sharp focus.

Negative Prompt:
extra limbs, disfigured, deformed, body out of frame, bad anatomy, watermark, signature, cut off, low contrast, underexposed, overexposed, bad art, beginner, amateur, distorted face, blurry, draft, grainy.

Result:

Don’t Forget the Style

Remember to use the style selector when familiarizing yourself with DreamStudio (or any other generative AI that uses Stable Diffusion). This helps SD identify the style you’re looking for and will apply the appropriate styling model chosen. Right now, there are 16 style presets available, which will give you different looks. We suggest familiarizing yourself with the style presets to create different types of art.

DreamStudio’s 16 style presets:
- Enhance
- Anime
- Photographic
- Digital Art
- Comic Book
- Fantasy Art
- Analog Film
- Neon Punk
- Isometric
- Low Poly
- Origami
- Line Art
- Craft Clay
- Cinematic
- 3D Model
- Pixel Art
Using DreamStudio to Generate Images

Now that we’ve gotten you up to speed on Stable Diffusion and tips for creating beautiful AI images, let’s focus on DreamStudio. When you sign up, you’ll receive 25 credits, which is generally enough to create 125 images. If you need more, you can purchase 1000 credits for roughly 5000 images for $10.

Navigating the DreamStudio Interface

Upon your initial login, you’ll be directed to the DreamStudio interface. Let’s explore the different tools and settings, so you can familiarize yourself with the platform to generate AI images.
1. Generate tab: Where you’ll generate AI images.
2. Edit tab: for altering your images.
3. Style: Select one of 16 image styles.
4. Prompt: Where you’ll describe the image you want to create.
5. Negative prompt: Image characteristics you want to avoid.
6. Upload image: Generate AI based on an uploaded image.
7. Image aspect ratio: 10 available size presets including 7:4 (896×512), 3:2 (768×512), 4:3 (683×512), 5:4 (640×512), 1:1 (512×512), 4:5 (512×640), 3:4 (512×683), 2:3 (512×768), and 4:7 (512×896).
8. Image count: Choose between 1-4 images to output. The more images you create, the more credits are required.
9. Prompt strength: Controls how strongly SD weighs your prompt. By default, Stable Diffusion uses a value of 15, which can be adjusted from 1-30.
10. Generation steps: Be default, this parameter is set to 50. You can choose between 1-100, with higher values generally producing higher-quality results.
11. Seed: Controls the random seed as the base of the image. Values range from 1 and roughly 4.3 million. Using the same seed with the same settings will provide similar results.
12. Model: There are three models, each providing varying results: Stable Diffusion v2.1, Stable Diffusion v2.1-768m, and SDXL Beta (default).
13. Dream: Generates the image based on your prompt. DreamStudio advises how many credits your image will require, allowing you to adjust your settings for a less or more costly image generation.
14. Output: This is where your generated images will appear.
After generating an image, click on it to make changes such as generating variations, editing, using the image as a basis for similar generated images, reusing the same prompt, or downloading it.

Fine-Tuning Generated Images

After generating AI art, you can use the edit tab to fine-tune your images. You can erase aspects of your image, such as the background, faces, and more. From there, you can add an additional prompt to combine your original photo with another one. This technique, called inpainting, is perfect for combining styles or themes in your images. For example, we generated an image of an astronaut, then erased the original background of the photo.

Next, we created an additional prompt to ask SD to add an image of the moon’s surface with cinematic, volumetric lighting in ultra-high definition and realism. The results worked quite well.

Over time, we expect DreamStudio to expand upon these editing tools to make it easier to create cool mashups, stunning effects, and more.

Saving Generated Images

When you’re ready to share your creation with the world, DreamStudio makes it easy. Click the download button in the main image preview window by hovering over the image.

Alternatively, you can click on the image to bring up a larger preview, then click the download button from within the image preview.

Finally, upon clicking the download button, you can download your image at the original size or pay a small fee (credit) to upscale it.

Final Thoughts on Stable Diffusion

Stable Diffusion is an innovative technology that is revolutionizing the way artists create. Using effective, descriptive text prompts, you can create high-quality images and edit them to suit your needs. The use of Stable Diffusion, along with other generative AI, such as Midjourney, Photosonic, and others, has become an increasingly popular way to create digital art. As generative AI evolves, using it responsibly and ethically is important. After all, AI is designed as an assistive tool, not a job replacement.

If you’d like to learn more about generative AI and the tools used to create it, check out some of our other posts related to all things AI:
The post How to Generate Beautiful AI Images with Stable Diffusion (2023) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
08.06.2023
What is AI? A Beginnerâ€™s Guide to Artificial Intelligence (2023)
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a hot-button topic in recent months because of its potential to revolutionize how we live and work. Because of this, there is much to learn about it. In this post, we’ll explore the basics of artificial intelligence, including the different types of AI, how it works, and the applications you can use if you’re a creative type. We will also discuss the future of AI and how to use it responsibly.

Let’s dive in.

What is AI?

Image created with Midjourney

Artificial intelligence encompasses a range of technologies that empower computers to perform advanced tasks, such as visual perception, language comprehension and translation, data analysis, question answering, artistic creation, video generation, and much more. Serving as the backbone of modern computing, AI showcases astonishing capabilities. For instance, it can effortlessly transform a text prompt into a high-quality image (like the images in this post), simplify the removal of backgrounds from photos, facilitate autonomous driving in vehicles, and even engage customers through AI-powered chatbots.

The origins of AI trace back to 1955 when John McCarthy, an assistant professor of mathematics at Dartmouth, introduced this groundbreaking field of study. McCarthy envisioned AI as a means to “utilize language, develop abstractions and concepts, tackle problems typically reserved for humans, and enhance its own performance.” Despite the broad scope of AI, its fundamental objective remains consistent: constructing computer programs capable of problem-solving and goal achievement on par with human capabilities.

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Types of AI

To truly understand what AI is, you need to understand the types of AI available. There are three main types: narrow or weak AI, general or strong AI, and super AI. Let’s explore each one so you can wrap your brain around each type.

Narrow or Weak Artificial Intelligence

Image created with Midjourney

With this type of AI, the computer doesn’t possess full cognitive abilities; its intelligence is based on training for that specific task. Examples of narrow AI include image recognition systems, speech recognition systems, and AI chatbots. For instance, digital voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, search engines like Google or Bing, and autonomous vehicles like Telsa all use narrow or weak AI to function. In fact, all modern AI tools, AI art generators and AI chatbots, are all examples of weak AI.

General or Strong Artificial Intelligence

Image created with Midjourney

The next type of AI, general or strong AI, is also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI). These systems are not limited to a specific area of expertise and can perform various tasks beyond those of weak AI programs. While we have yet to achieve this level of technology, researchers aim to create intelligence equal to humans. The goal of strong AI is to one day have a machine that has self-aware consciousness, can discern needs and emotions, and can solve any number of problems, learn, and plan for the future. So far, the only examples of general AI are present in movies, with characters such as R2-D2 or Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Super Artificial Intelligence

Image created with Midjourney

Artificial superintelligence (ASI) is a type of AI that allows machines to exceed human capabilities. These systems would be able to do things such as predict the future, create new scientific methods, and more. With ASI, scientists could solve some of our largest problems, such as curing cancer, ending world hunger, or balancing the federal budget. While these seem out of the realm of possibility, scientists hope to use AI to improve our world. That said, this type of artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we could use this technology to enhance our way of life. On the other hand, it could end life as we know it.

How Does Artificial Intelligence Work?

Image created with Midjourney

AI works by processing large amounts of data and using algorithms, a set of rules, to recognize keywords to identify the type of help you’re looking for. It is programmed to think, act, and respond like a human. It encompasses three types of machine learning: supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement, to develop these algorithms to offer solutions, answer questions, make predictions, or offer suggestions.

Every time an artificial intelligence system processes data, it tests and measures its performance, then learns from it. Unlike humans, machines don’t need breaks, so they can run millions of tasks quickly, learning as they go. It is important to understand that AI is not merely a solitary computer program or application but a field of study.

What is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is a type of AI that focuses on developing algorithms to learn from data. It enables computers to learn or train themselves from large amounts of existing data. For example, OpenAI’s ChatGPT uses several data sets containing over 570GB of text data from the internet, including books, articles, websites, and even social media. This enables ChatGPT to be one of the leading generative AI programs available, with many uses.

There are three main types of machine learning: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning.

Supervised Learning

Supervised learning allows computers to learn from labeled examples, meaning the input data already has known outputs. For example, a computer can be trained to recognize cats in pictures by showing many images of labeled cats. The computer can then use this training to accurately identify cats in new photos. You may already be familiar with this concept if you have an iPhone or Android device.

Let’s say you’ve taken photos of a family pet with your iPhone. When you click on the picture, iPhone recognizes the image of your pet and provides a link to the type of pet it thinks is shown in the photo.

Unsupervised Learning

Image created with Midjourney

Unlike supervised learning, unsupervised learning is self-organized and doesn’t require labeled data. Examples of unsupervised learning are clustering, which group data points together based on similarity, and dimensionality reduction, which finds the most important features of that data and reduces its size. Additionally, there’s anomaly detection, which is used to find data points that are unusual or out of the ordinary. Some examples of unsupervised learning in artificial intelligence are fraud detection in banking, cybersecurity, speech recognition, and marketing techniques such as customer segmentation.

Reinforcement Learning

This type of machine learning is the closest to human learning as machines can get. Machines can learn to follow instructions, conduct testing, operate equipment, and more through training. Reinforcement learning revolves around a digital program put into a specific learning environment. Like human learning, the digital agent faces a game-like situation and makes a series of decisions to try and achieve the right outcome. It learns by repeatedly failing, remembering to avoid repeating the same pattern. Correct answers are rewarded, while incorrect ones disperse punishment, teaching the software to avoid doing the wrong thing again. Some examples of reinforcement learning are robots that aid in the car manufacturing process, predictive text (think text messaging), healthcare diagnoses, and energy consumption.

For example, Google implemented reinforcement learning to control the energy expended through its data centers. With the help of DeepMind, Google has managed to reduce its data centers cooling bills by 40%.

What are Large Language Models?

A large language model (LLM) is a machine learning model that leverages deep learning techniques to process and comprehend language. It can process large amounts of data, learn intricate language patterns, and perform tasks such as answering questions, engaging in conversations, and tackling problem-solving scenarios. The most recognizable example of an LLM is ChatGPT, which, as previously mentioned, was trained on over 570GB of data.

Multiple layers of neural networks (similar to the human brain) comprise LLMs, which work together to analyze text and make predictions. They utilize left-to-right patterns to predict the likely association of words with one another. LLMs mirror a human’s ability to anticipate what might follow a word in a sentence.

How to Creatively Use AI

There are countless ways to use AI, including creatively. There are plenty of excellent AI tools to improve your productivity in several ways. These include AI writing tools, AI Art generators, and AI video generators. Let’s look at a few tools you can incorporate into your daily work schedule up your AI game.

AI Writing Tools: Jasper

Jasper is one of the best AI writing tools out there. It’s primarily used for generating SEO-quality copy. It has many features, including a natural language processor (NLP) that you can use to analyze and rewrite your content to make it more engaging. It’s also a great tool for correcting punctuation, improving your writing style, or generating new copy.

Pricing: Plans start at $29/mo, but Plagiarism Checker plans start at $59/mo for Boss Mode.

Get Jasper

AI Art Generators: Midjourney

There is a lot of text-to-image software available right now, but few are better than Midjourney. Built on a Discord server, users can describe the image they wish to create using only a text prompt. You can use any number of descriptors to create pictures based on style, subject, and parameters to make the most realistic images imaginable. The interface takes time to learn, but even the greenest AI user can create gorgeous, lifelike pictures with Midjourney.

Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $10 monthly.

Get MidJourney

AI Video Generators: Pictory

One of the best AI video generators out right now is Pictory. You can create short, branded, long-form, and everything in between with text-to-video generative AI. You can easily turn scripts, blog posts, or simple text descriptions into videos in just a few minutes. Plus, there are over three million images, stickers, and other design elements that you can use in the final product.

Pricing: Free, with premium monthly plans starting at $23.

Try Pictory

How to Use Artificial Intelligence Responsibly

Even though AI has existed for several decades, the general public has remained largely unaware of it until recently. Whether you love or hate it, AI tools can dramatically boost productivity in our daily lives. That said, if we use it, we must use it ethically.

Here are a few tips to follow:
1. Use it as an assistive tool: The most important thing to remember is to use it to help you, not do your job for you. It’s fine to use it to help with blog topics, generate outline ideas, create image assets, or for similar tasks. Never use it as a job replacement.
2. Fact check everything: If you use generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Jasper, or Writesonic, be sure to always check the output for accuracy. People using it for a while can tell you that AI will sometimes lie to you. Take what it says with a grain of salt.
3. Choose a reputable tool: With the emergence of so many artificial intelligence programs, it’s critically important to use a tool that is widely recognized. Be sure to thoroughly research any tool you use by reading reviews and examining their privacy and security practices.
The Future of AI

Image created with Midjourney

Whether we like it or not, the artificial intelligence revolution has arrived, and it’s up to each one of us to embrace it, learn from it, and utilize it responsibly. As this groundbreaking technology continues to evolve, we should anticipate some challenges along the way. While some fear it may result in job losses, others remain hopeful that new opportunities will arise to replace lost ones. Regardless, we owe it to ourselves to learn how to use it to increase productivity, make us more marketable as employees, and help responsibly usher in this new and exciting era.

Final Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence

If you’re still on the fence about AI, try testing a few applications to see what all the fuss is about. For writing, check out Jasper. They offer a 7-day free trial, so you can get a good feel for what it can do. Looking to create videos or images? Give Pictory and Midjourney a try. Pictory offers a free trial, but Midjourney doesn’t. However, once you see the results you can achieve with it, you will be fine paying $10 a month.

Do you want to learn more about AI? Check out a few of our how-to posts to help you get the most out of artificial intelligence.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is AI in simple terms?

In simple terms, Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the ability of machines (or computers) to think, learn, and act like humans. AI uses advanced technology to make human tasks much more efficient. It can learn from data, solve problems, make decisions, and communicate with humans with surprising accuracy.
What are some recent examples of AI?

There are countless ways AI is being used today. Some common examples of AI include:

Writing assistance (like Jasper AI writing tool)

Art/Image generation (like Midjourney)

Virtual assistance (like Siri or Alexa)

Video generators (like Pictory)

Chatbots (like ChatGPT or Chatsonic)

Self-driving cars (like Tesla)

Fraud detection (for financial transactions)

Medical diagnosis (by analyzing images and data)
What are the 3 main types of AI?

Generally, there are three main types of AI:

Narrow AI – This weaker level of AI is most common today, found in modern AI tools like Jasper or Midjourney.

General AI – This stronger level of AI, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI) would attain the same level of intellectual capabilities as a human (hypothetically).

Super AI – also known as artificial superintelligence, is a hypothetical type of AI that would supersede the capabilities of a human.
Featured Image via Deezgrafix (me) /Â midjourney.com

The post What is AI? A Beginner’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence (2023) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
07.06.2023