AI is optional - Directory of various tools predating ai
Just as a preface I wanna say that there are a few justified uses for AI such as a spellchecker, but most of the time it's unnecessary and annoying. No Mozilla, I don't want ai in motherfucking Firefox!
I decided to make this post after noticing the amount of ai garbage polluting search results. They are not only redundant as you're gonna see soon, but those websites are also very predatory, oftentimes lying about a tool being free, and expect you to not only sign up but also spend your money to earn "credits". I don't know why they are called that, but it basically means you have a limited number of uses with a given tool before you must cough up more money.
Note that a few of the tools listed are what I'd like to call "ai-adjacent" i.e they run on an algorithm, but they aren't LLM's. A stupid example would be cleverbot, do you guys remember it? It was popular on youtube back in the hay days, and insanely incoherent.
"Think for me" tools
Some people are so lazy they just ask chatgpt for a video idea and then ask it again for a script.
- https://www.random.org/
- https://randomchoicegenerator.com/
- https://pickerwheel.com/
Perchange.org would have gotten a mention, but sadly it too drank the AI kool aid and turned from a cool generator that works into yet another unnecessary LLM gimmick.
Auto subtitles
Subtitles that pop up in a video are popular in sloptuber circles, they often pair it with more AI tools.
The tools I'm recommending have a unique perk over AI in that they don't require a lot of computing power and can't destroy the planet.
Do note that while auto-subbing tools existed way before LLM's, they weren't as attractive and as easy to use.
- https://pypi.org/project/autosub/
- https://gist.github.com/emisjerry/4f8d98bc7fe8a17fdc2aafa70a382990
- https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/auto-subtitle.1012/
- https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/01/subsync-auto-subtitle-synchronization.html
- Youtube, surprisingly
Visual effects
AI is popular for these because visual effects aren't always readily available to everyone and it may take some research and patience to find the correct software (usually paid garbage like Sony Vegas and After Effects) while with AI you can just ask the clanker to apply whatever effect you want on images, or videos.
Here are many visual effect tools that are free as beer and don't take an excessive amount of resources (like 10 nvidia graphics cards) to work.
- https://3dthis.com/
- https://www.3dgifmaker.com/
- https://textanim.com/
- https://glowtxt.com/
- https://cooltext.com/
- https://www.textfx.co/
- https://www.bloggif.com/
- https://imageonline.co/
- https://makesweet.com/
- https://www.imgonline.com.ua/eng/effects.php
- https://animated-gif-creator.com
- https://www.picmix.com/
- https://photofunia.com/
- https://supermosh.github.io/
- https://natrongithub.github.io/
- https://effect.app/
- https://snafu.stuible.com/about/
- https://dithereffect.com/
Image generation and editing
You won't be surprised to learn that aibros' favorite passtime is to make images on midjourney. Well, you can too without ai and it's fairly straightforward.
Items on this list fall into one of two categories: 1. Image editors (but no apps intended for drawing, so things like Krita, Clip Studio Paint, Procreate and FireAlpaca will be excluded. I have a separate blog post that highlights drawings programs if you're looking for one) or 2. Image generators that make images out of nothing
- Gimp/GNU imp
- https://www2.lunapic.com/editor/
- https://www.filterforge.com/ ($!)
- https://picrew.me/en/
- https://patterninja.com/
- https://repper.app/
- http://www.apophysis.org/
- Mandelbulb
- https://xenodream.com/ ($!)
- https://sirxemic.github.io/ifs-animator/
- https://blog.overwhale.com/?page_id=351
- https://www.ultrafractal.com/
- https://www.eztree.dev/
Audio generators
Why use an AI like Melobytes when you can make your own audio with no strings attached? The tools provided below generally synergize well with each other.
- https://sfxr.me/
- https://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/
- https://midigen.app/
- https://midimaker.io/ (!!!)
- Audacity
- https://onlinetonegenerator.com/
- https://hzgenerator.com/
- https://onlinesound.net/tone-generator
- https://www.rapidtables.com/tools/tone-generator.html
- https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/
- https://www.audiocutter.org/sound-generator
Music visualizers
Yep, there are ai/llm-based apps just for something as simple as beats/audio visualizers because they are popular on youtube. Trap Nation has a bit of a large number of subs.
- https://vizzy.io/
- https://rave.ajm13.com/visualizer
- https://soundcmd.com/tools/audio-visualizer/
- https://webvis.app/
- https://vvavy.io/
- https://codepen.io/nfj525/pen/rVBaab
I don't say this often, but some of these apps are absolutely worth your time.
Music is for a hub area in Ena Dream BBQ
Chatbots
Might as well you know.
- https://www.cleverbot.com/