Weird and wonderful AI tools

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been evolving rapidly, but most people likely haven’t explored the technology beyond tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and other prominent platforms.

Realistically, when most people speak of AI, they often refer to machine learning, a subset or application of AI.

Instead of explicit programming, machine learning algorithms analyse massive data sets, learn from the insights, and make informed decisions based on what they learn.

“Machine learning algorithms improve performance over time as they are trained — exposed to more data,” says Google.

The technology powers many groundbreaking tools that simplify various tasks, including finding information online, shopping on e-commerce platforms, or finding streaming content.

“Machine learning models are the output, or what the program learns from running an algorithm on training data. The more data used, the better the model will get,” says Google.

The technology has numerous applications in fields such as healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, e-commerce and retail, financial services, and telecommunications.

For example, healthcare and life science uses include patient health record analysis and insights, outcome forecasting and modelling, and accelerated drug development.

In manufacturing, it could be used to enhance aspects like production machine monitoring, predictive maintenance, Internet of Things analysis, and operational efficiency.

“Incorporating AI and ML capabilities into their strategies and systems helps organisations rethink how they use their data and available resources, drive productivity and efficiency, enhance data-driven decision-making through predictive analytics, and improve customer and employee experiences,” Google said.

However, there is a diverse array of weird, wonderful, valuable AI-powered tools for specific use cases, including AI social networks, legal interpreters, and platforms that can generate memes from your personal photos.

We looked for some of the most unique, useful, and sometimes absurd AI-powered tools and platforms that are easily accessible.

Five such interesting AI-powered tools are listed below.

Songsterr AI

Guitar, bass, and drum tabbing platform Songsterr recently released an AI tool that lets users generate full tabs for songs from music videos on YouTube.

This is incredibly valuable for musicians who can’t find specific tabs or sheet music for songs they want to learn.

In testing, we were able to generate guitar, bass, keyboard, and drum tabs for two full songs. However, the system now says that AI transcription is limited to 20 seconds for free users.

The platform separates tabs for each instrument, and while not perfectly accurate, it produces a very passable tab that users can then tweak. It also allows them to play along with the video from which the tab was generated.

Those who want to generate tabs for full songs can sign up for Songsterr Plus for R59.99 per month.

Chirper

Chirper is an AI-only social media platform that replaces humans with a diverse range of custom AI-powered characters.

“Step into the realm of Chirper, our vibrant world of AI characters. Here, they don’t just exist — they create, learn, discover, and evolve,” it says.

It’s similar to X; only you’re effectively interacting with bots supported by powerful AI.

While it may seem pointless beyond entertainment value, the platform can be used to train AI models to generate autonomous tasks through interactions with and responses from humans.

Memecam

Can AI generate its memes? Andreas Refsgaard and Frederik Lauenborg’s AI creation Memecam can.

The AI tool transforms your photos into memes, analysing the image to generate a punchline and generating text to add a bit of humour.

Memecam uses GPT-4o’s AI image recognition and caption generation to come up with its punchlines.

“While MemeCam aims to provide engaging content, it may occasionally generate memes that may not align with current social sensitivities,” it warns.

Users can upload their photos at memecam.io to use the AI to generate personalised memes. The creators emphasise that they don’t offer apps for Android or iOS. Memecam is only accessible on the web.

Legal Robot

Legal Robot is an AI-powered tool that translates complex legal jargon into simple language that anyone can understand.

It uses several forms of machine learning to produce abstract representations of language contained in legal documents.

“These abstractions allow us to look at the topics across a large set of legal documents and use statistical techniques to identify potential issues in your document,” the company says.

As Legal Robot was trained on contracts from public and private sources in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia, drafted in English, it is currently limited to translating “legalese” into English, under common law.

However, the company says it is working to expand the tool’s resources to understand other jurisdictions and languages.

Deep Nostalgia AI

Deep Nostalgia AI brings old family photos of distant relatives and friends to life using AI-powered drivers to animate their faces, making them blink, smile, and laugh.

The company says photos are transformed into short videos in minutes, with highly realistic animations, natural facial expressions, and lifelike movements.

“Deep Nostalgia AI excels in maintaining the original appearance and character of the individuals in your photos, ensuring the animations stay true to the source,” it says.

Once completed, the animated photos are immediately downloadable and ready to share on social media.

While it seems efficient at capturing human movements, it struggles when the person in the photo interacts with objects.