An AI Tools Directory: Video, Voice, Images, Writing and SEO

I kept two lists of AI tools going for a while, and they'd drifted into near-copies of each other with slightly different descriptions. This post is the merge: one list, grouped by what you'd use the tool for, with each tool listed once.

It's a directory, not a set of reviews. The description says what the tool does, not that I'd vouch for it.

Note

AI tools change fast. Features move, free tiers disappear, companies get bought or rename things. I put this list together in 2025 and checked every link in September 2026. Treat it as a snapshot from then, and check the site itself before you rely on anything here.

Video generation and editing

• Pictory: generates short videos from text, aimed at video marketing.
• Lumen5: turns blog posts and articles into videos.
• Runway: AI video and image tools for editing, generation and effects, like background removal and text-to-video.
• Synthesia: videos presented by AI avatars, from a text script.
• InVideo: online video editor with text-to-video and templates.
• VEED.io: online editor with AI subtitles, translation and basic editing.
• Kapwing: collaborative online video editor with some AI tools built in.
• Magisto: automatic video creation and editing from your own clips.
• Pika: generates and edits video from text or images.
• Kaiber: video from images or text prompts, known for stylized visuals.
• Pexels Videos: not AI, but free, good-quality stock footage for filling out a project.

Speech and text-to-speech

• ElevenLabs: high-quality speech synthesis and voice cloning.
• Speechify: a text-to-speech reader for listening to documents and articles.
• Google Cloud Text-to-Speech: speech synthesis API with many voices and languages.
• Amazon Polly: AWS service that turns text into lifelike speech.
• IBM Watson Text to Speech: IBM's cloud speech synthesis service.
• Natural Reader: text-to-speech app with free and paid versions.
• Murf AI: voiceovers for videos, podcasts and presentations.
• ReadSpeaker: text-to-speech for websites, apps, documents and e-learning.
• Resemble AI: custom voices and speech synthesis, including voice cloning.
• Balabolka: a free Windows desktop text-to-speech program that uses the voices already on your system.

Images and AI art

• Midjourney: image generator known for its artistic output. It started on Discord.
• DALL-E: OpenAI's text-to-image models.
• Stable Diffusion: Stability AI's open image models; run them locally or through a hosted service.
• Leonardo.Ai: image generation with fine-tuned models, popular for game assets and concept art.
• Playground: web app for making and editing images with several models.
• NightCafe Studio: web platform offering several AI art methods and models.
• Artbreeder: blends and evolves images, good for portraits and characters.
• Deep Dream Generator: abstract, dream-like images from neural networks.
• Dream by WOMBO: artistic images from text prompts in a choice of styles.
• StarryAI: AI art generator app with a lot of customization.
• Craiyon: free, simple text-to-image; it used to be called DALL-E Mini.
• Fotor: online photo editor with an AI image generator built in.
• Jasper Art: the image generator inside the Jasper writing platform.

Writing and assistants

• Claude: Anthropic's conversational assistant, strong at writing and reasoning.
• ChatGPT: OpenAI's conversational assistant, useful for drafting, ideas and outreach emails.
• Perplexity: a conversational search engine that gives answers with sources.
• Grammarly: grammar, spelling, style and tone checking.
• Wordtune: rephrasing and tightening sentences.
• QuillBot: paraphrasing, grammar checking and summaries.
• Jasper: AI writing assistant for marketing and general content.
• Copy.ai: copy for marketing, sales and websites.
• Writesonic: marketing copy, blog posts, ads and SEO meta descriptions.
• Rytr: low-cost writing assistant with a range of use cases and tones.
• Copysmith: product descriptions and marketing content at scale.
• Peppertype.ai: content generation from Pepper Content.
• Scalenut: SEO content research, writing and optimization.

SEO and internal linking

• Surfer SEO: analyzes top-ranking pages and suggests content improvements, including linking.
• NeuronWriter: content editor with SEO and NLP-driven recommendations.
• Outranking: AI writing and SEO platform with optimization suggestions.
• Neuraltext: content generation and optimization.
• AISEO: AI writing assistant with an SEO focus.
• Link Whisper: WordPress plugin that suggests and adds internal links.
• Linkilo: AI internal-link suggestions for WordPress.
• Rank Math: WordPress SEO plugin with internal linking suggestions.
• TinyWow: a grab bag of free online tools, mostly PDF, image and file utilities. Handy alongside SEO work, not a link tool as such.

Using a list like this

A few things I'd keep in mind:

• Start with the job, not the tool. Most categories have one or two big names and a long tail of wrappers around the same models. Try the big one first.
• Read the terms before you put anything private into a free tier, and before you use output commercially. Voice cloning in particular comes with rules about whose voice you're allowed to clone.
• Expect churn. A couple of tools from my original lists didn't make it here because their pages are gone.

If you're running a blog of your own and wondering about the tooling around it, I wrote about picking a CMS for a static blog, and there's a separate list of art and drawing references for when you'd rather make the picture yourself.