AI Tools

Explore AI tools designed to help you draft, edit, and refine written content, brainstorm ideas, and improve productivity across academic and administrative tasks.  Additional tools in this category are listed above (Gemini and Copilot).

ChatGPT

• Developer: OpenAI
• What it does: A generative AI assistant that can generate text, answer questions, summarize information, assist with coding, and support research and writing tasks.
• Example uses: Brainstorming ideas, acting as a tutor for studying, explaining complex topics, drafting emails or documents, and helping analyze or organize information.
• Access: Features and capabilities may vary depending on the version or license used.
• Privacy considerations: Users should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the tool and follow university guidelines for responsible AI use. 

Claude

• Developer: Anthropic
• What it does: A generative AI assistant that can generate text, summarize documents, answer questions, and assist with research, writing, and coding tasks.
• Example uses: Analyzing long documents, brainstorming ideas, drafting written content, and explaining complex topics.
• Design focus: Claude is designed with an emphasis on safety and responsible AI use.
• Privacy considerations: Users should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information and follow university guidelines for appropriate AI use. 

Grammarly

• Developer: Grammarly
• What it does: An AI-powered writing assistant that helps improve grammar, spelling, clarity, and tone in written communication.
• Example uses: Suggesting edits, rewriting sentences, proofreading emails or documents, and improving academic or professional writing.
• Use in a university setting: Supports students, faculty, and staff with drafting messages, revising written work, and improving overall writing quality.
• Privacy considerations: Because Grammarly processes the text that users submit, individuals should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the tool, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Wordtune

• Developer: AI21 Labs
• What it does: An AI-powered writing assistant that helps users rewrite and improve sentences for clarity, tone, and readability.
• Example uses: Suggesting alternative phrasing, shortening or expanding text, summarizing content, and refining written communication.
• Use in a university setting: Can help improve drafts of essays or reports, refine emails, and make writing clearer and more concise.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes the text that users submit, individuals should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using it, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Discover AI tools that support research through literature discovery, generating research summaries, citation analysis, and other workflow-enhancing capabilities.

Perplexity

• Developer: Perplexity AI
• What it does: An AI-powered search and research assistant that answers questions using information from the web and provides cited sources for its responses.
• Example uses: Finding quick explanations of topics, researching current information, summarizing articles, gathering sources for papers, and exploring complex questions with referenced answers.
• Privacy considerations: Perplexity processes user queries and may store interactions to improve the service. Users should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the tool, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Elicit

• Developer: Ought
• What it does: An AI-powered research assistant that helps users find, summarize, and analyze academic research papers.
• Example uses: Assisting with literature reviews, identifying relevant studies, extracting key findings, and comparing results across multiple research papers.
• Use in a university setting: Can support students, faculty, and researchers in exploring scholarly articles, organizing research questions, and understanding academic literature.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user queries and uploaded information, individuals should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or unpublished research data when using it, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Consensus

• Developer: Consensus
• What it does: An AI-powered academic search engine that helps users find and understand insights from peer-reviewed research papers.
• Example uses: Answering research questions, summarizing findings from academic studies, and identifying relevant scholarly sources.
• Use in a university setting: Helps students and researchers quickly explore evidence on a topic and better understand academic literature.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user queries and interactions, individuals should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or unpublished research information when using it, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Scite

• Developer: Scite
• What it does: An AI-powered research tool that analyzes how scientific papers are cited, helping users understand whether studies support, contrast, or mention other research.
• Example uses: Exploring citation contexts, evaluating the reliability of research sources, discovering related studies, and supporting literature reviews.
• Use in a university setting: Helps students, faculty, and researchers better assess the credibility and impact of academic papers and understand how research is used within the scholarly literature.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user searches and interactions, individuals should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or unpublished research information when using it, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Connected Papers

• Developer: Connected Papers
• What it does: An AI-powered research tool that helps users discover and visualize relationships between academic papers through interactive citation graphs.
• Example uses: Exploring related studies, identifying influential papers in a field, discovering prior or derivative research, and supporting literature reviews.
• Use in a university setting: Helps students, faculty, and researchers better understand how scholarly papers are connected and navigate academic literature more efficiently.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user searches and interactions, individuals should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or unpublished research information when using it, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Explore AI tools and strategies that help faculty design courses, create assignments, develop learning activities, and enhance student engagement.

Brightspace Features

• Developer: D2L
• What it does: AI-powered tools built into the Brightspace learning management system that assist with generating course content, summarizing lessons, recommending study materials, and providing AI-assisted tutoring within courses.
• Example uses: Creating course modules, generating summaries of course content, assisting with grading feedback, and helping students receive study guidance or answers to course-related questions.
• Use in a university setting: Supports instructors in building and managing courses more efficiently while helping students better understand course materials.
• Privacy considerations: Because these tools operate within the institutional learning platform, they are governed by university data and privacy policies. Users should still avoid sharing sensitive or confidential information. 

Wonder Tools

• Wonder Tools Substack is a curated AI and digital tools newsletter published by Jeremy Caplan, Director of Teaching & Learning at CUNY's Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
• What it offers:  Wonder Tools provides curated recommendations of digital tools and AI platforms, practical and tested use cases, and examples of AI tools in teaching contexts.

Explore AI tools that assist with data analysis, coding, and computational tasks, helping users streamline workflows, uncover insights, and work more efficiently.

GitHub Copilot

• Developer: GitHub and OpenAI
• What it does: An AI-powered coding assistant that helps programmers write code by suggesting lines or entire functions as they type inside development environments like Visual Studio Code. GitHub Copilot can also explain code, answer programming questions, and help debug errors.
• Example uses: Autocompleting code, generating functions from natural language prompts, explaining what sections of code do, helping debug programming errors, and assisting with writing documentation.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students learn programming by suggesting code, explaining syntax, and assisting with debugging while they work on coding assignments or projects.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes prompts and code entered by users, students should avoid including sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information in prompts or shared repositories, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use. 

ChatGPT Code Interpreter

• Developer: OpenAI
• What it does: An AI tool within ChatGPT that can write and run Python code in a secure environment to solve problems, analyze data, and process files such as spreadsheets, images, or PDFs. It can generate charts, perform calculations, and manipulate datasets automatically.
• Example uses: Analyzing datasets, creating graphs and visualizations, cleaning or transforming data files, performing complex calculations, generating reports, and processing uploaded documents like CSV or Excel files.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students analyze research data, create visualizations for assignments, explore datasets in data science courses, and better understand programming and statistical concepts through automated code execution.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes uploaded files and prompts, users should avoid uploading sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the tool, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Wolfram Alpha

• Developer: Wolfram Research
• What it does: A computational knowledge engine that uses AI and advanced algorithms to answer questions, perform calculations, and analyze data across subjects such as mathematics, science, engineering, and statistics.
• Example uses: Solving equations, generating graphs and visualizations, performing statistical calculations, analyzing datasets, converting units, and exploring scientific formulas or concepts.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students check their work, explore mathematical or scientific concepts, visualize equations, and analyze data for assignments or research projects.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user queries and inputs, students should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the platform, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Copilot Studio

• Developer: Microsoft
• What it does: An AI-powered, low-code platform that allows users to create custom AI assistants or chatbots that can answer questions, automate tasks, and connect with different apps and data sources.
• Example uses: Building AI chatbots for answering questions, creating automated workflows, connecting AI assistants to tools like email or databases, and designing agents that help with research or information retrieval.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students and instructors build AI assistants for answering course questions, automating simple tasks, or exploring how AI agents and automation systems work.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user prompts and connected data sources, users should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when building or interacting with AI assistants, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Discover AI tools that support creative projects by generating images, videos, and designs, helping you bring ideas to life quickly and effectively.  An additional tool in this category is listed above (Adobe Firefly).

Canva AI

• Developer: Canva
• What it does: An AI-powered design system built into Canva that helps users generate graphics, presentations, images, videos, and written content using simple prompts. Canva AI includes tools such as Magic Design, Magic Write, and AI image generation to quickly create and edit visual content.
• Example uses: Generating presentation slides from a prompt, creating social media graphics, writing captions or text for designs, editing photos with AI tools, and automatically converting designs into different formats.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students and instructors quickly create presentations, posters, study materials, and visual projects for coursework or research presentations.
• Privacy considerations: Because Canva AI processes user prompts, uploaded images, and design content, users should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the tool, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

DALL-E

• Developer: OpenAI
• What it does: An AI image generation tool that creates original images from text descriptions. Users can type a prompt describing a scene, object, or concept, and DALL-E generates a visual image based on that description.
• Example uses: Creating illustrations for presentations, generating concept art, producing images for reports or educational materials, designing graphics for projects, and visualizing ideas or scenarios.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students and instructors create visual content for presentations, assignments, research posters, or creative projects without needing advanced design skills.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user prompts and generated images, users should avoid including sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information in prompts or uploaded content, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Midjourney

• Developer: Midjourney, Inc.
• What it does: An AI image generation tool that creates detailed and artistic images from text prompts. Users describe what they want to see, and Midjourney generates unique visuals using artificial intelligence.
• Example uses: Creating illustrations, concept art, graphics for presentations, visualizing ideas or designs, and generating images for creative or academic projects.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students and instructors create visuals for presentations, research posters, creative assignments, or design projects without needing advanced artistic skills.
• Privacy considerations: Because the tool processes user prompts and generated images, users should avoid including sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the platform, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Runway

• Developer: Runway AI
• What it does: An AI-powered creative platform that allows users to generate and edit videos, images, and visual effects using artificial intelligence. Runway includes tools for text-to-video generation, video editing, background removal, and other AI-assisted media creation features.
• Example uses: Generating short videos from text prompts, editing video clips with AI tools, removing backgrounds from footage, creating visual effects, and producing media content for presentations or creative projects.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students and instructors create multimedia projects, educational videos, research presentations, or creative assignments using AI-powered video and image tools.
• Privacy considerations: Because the platform processes uploaded media and user prompts, users should avoid uploading or entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the tool, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Explore AI tools that enhance workplace productivity by streamlining tasks, organizing workflows, and summarizing meetings and communications efficiently.  An additional tool in this category is listed above (Zoom AI Companion).

Otter AI

• Developer: Otter.ai
• What it does: An AI-powered transcription and note-taking tool that automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes spoken conversations in real time. Otter AI can capture meetings, lectures, and interviews while identifying speakers and generating searchable transcripts and key highlights.
• Example uses: Recording and transcribing lectures, generating meeting notes, capturing interviews, creating searchable transcripts of discussions, and summarizing long conversations into key points.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students record and review lectures, generate study notes from class discussions, support accessibility for students who benefit from transcripts, and assist instructors with meeting notes or research interviews.
• Privacy considerations: Because the platform records and processes audio conversations, users should avoid recording or uploading discussions that contain sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information without proper consent, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Fireflies AI

• Developer: Fireflies.ai
• What it does: An AI-powered meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes conversations from meetings, calls, and virtual discussions. Fireflies AI can automatically capture notes, identify key points, and make transcripts searchable for easier review and collaboration.
• Example uses: Recording and transcribing virtual meetings, generating summaries of discussions, tracking action items from group conversations, reviewing interview recordings, and searching past meeting transcripts for important information.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students and instructors capture notes from group projects, meetings, or research interviews, review important discussion points, and organize action items from collaborative work.
• Privacy considerations: Because the platform records and processes meeting audio and transcripts, users should avoid recording or sharing conversations that contain sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information without proper consent, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.

Notion AI

• Developer: Notion Labs
• What it does: An AI-powered assistant built directly into the Notion workspace that helps users write, edit, summarize, and organize information. Notion AI can generate content, improve writing, create summaries, translate text, and assist with research or task organization within notes, documents, and databases.
• Example uses: Drafting essays or reports, summarizing long notes or articles, brainstorming ideas, creating outlines for projects, translating text, and automatically organizing information within databases or documents.
• Use in a university setting: Can help students and instructors organize class notes, generate outlines for assignments, summarize readings, brainstorm research ideas, and manage projects or coursework within a collaborative workspace.
• Privacy considerations: Because Notion AI processes user prompts and content stored in the workspace, users should avoid entering sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information when using the tool, and should be mindful of university guidelines for appropriate AI use.