As a writer, I never imagined an AI could help me write better. But today, I am surrounded by many AI writing assistants. The features that these have are intriguing. So, I had to test them out. I’ve tested Lex, Jasper, Writesonic, and Sudowrite. Read on to find out what I feel about these.
How I use AI in my writing
AI takes care of what I like to call the “writing errands”—those essential starting points and final touches around each article that aren’t always the most enjoyable.
It handles these tasks efficiently, freeing me to focus on the creative aspects I love.
Here’s everything I do with AI:
- Generate Ideas: When brainstorming new topics or angles, AI helps by suggesting relevant ideas and unique perspectives, keeping my content fresh and aligned with audience interests.
- Repurpose Content: To make the most of my work, I use AI to reframe and repurpose existing content for different formats or platforms, adapting tone and style as needed for each.
- Clarify Sentences and Concepts: When tackling complex ideas, AI helps me simplify or rephrase sentences, ensuring clarity without sacrificing depth so readers can understand and connect with the content easily.
- Structural Feedback: I rely on AI to evaluate the structure of my blog posts, giving me feedback on flow and readability so I can organize content effectively.
- Meta Descriptions: Crafting concise, compelling meta descriptions can be challenging, so I use AI to generate options that highlight key points and appeal to search engines and readers.
- LinkedIn Post Review: Before publishing on LinkedIn, I use AI to review posts, offering feedback to help me make sure my message resonates and stays professional.
Top AI writing tools and my experience with them
I’ve picked the most popular AI writing assistants and tested them out. Here’s what I feel about them:
Use Case Recommendations
| If You Need To… | Consider Using |
|---|---|
| Write fiction efficiently | Sudowrite |
| Create marketing content at scale | Jasper |
| Optimize content for SEO | Writesonic |
| AI document writer on a budget | Lex |
| Generate brand-consistent content | Jasper/Writesonic |
Key Features
| Feature | Lex | Jasper | Writesonic | Sudowrite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Generation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Outline Generation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Brand Voice Control | Limited | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Built-in Chat | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (Chatsonic) | ✓ |
| Content Repurposing | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Grammar Checks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom Prompts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| SEO Tools | ✗ | Limited | ✓ | ✗ |
Lex
Starting with a more straightforward tool, we have Lex. Lex is an AI writing assistant. Lex feels like Google Docs but with built-in AI features that help you write well. It uses GPT-4 and Claude 3 as its AI models. You can write your drafts using the tool or use AI to generate an outline. You can also enter the topics you want to cover in the content.
You can also build your own prompts with Lex’s “prompt builder”. You need to enter the details about the prompt and the model you plan on using. For example, you’re a marketing team that wants to add product details that remain consistent across all content. You can create a prompt out of it and then run it every time you’re writing product content with Lex.
Using the tool
To test out Lex, I decided to write about “SWOT analysis for project management.” So, step 1 was generating an outline:
If you opt to pay for Lex’s plan you can also add details about the audience and goal. It gave me this outline.
Now I can start writing based on this outline.
As a writing assistant Lex offers quite a few interesting features:
- Ask Lex: This is Lex’s AI chatbot that can give you ideas and suggestions. I liked that Lex has an entire prompt library from which you can choose. This saves me the back and forth of crafting the perfect prompt.
Based on the outline, I asked the AI chat to identify any weak arguments. And it gave me some great suggestions.
- Lex Checks: One of my favorite features was the checks. It’s like having Grammarly built into my writing doc. You can check grammar, brevity, cliches, readability, passive voice and much more.
Like
- Customizable focus sessions allow you to set a timer and word count goal to stay focused
- A massive prompt library to choose from.
- Generate title ideas to make your content more attractive
- Build your own prompts and checks using the prompt builder
Dislike
- The checks were sometimes a miss especially the grammar checks
Bottomline
I think Lex has some useful features that simplify the content creation workflow for me. It will take you some time to set up Lex the way you want but once that’s done, it’s a great AI-writing assistant.
If I were to use Lex, I’d rely on it to generate an outline, do the writing myself, and then use its checks and my custom prompts to refine and edit the content. And the best part is that I can access a lot of features without having to pay a dime.
Pricing
Starts at $12/mo billed annually
Jasper
Jasper has been around for quite some time and has continued to gain popularity. Initially, the startup focused on AI-writing. Since then, Jasper has repositioned and also offers solutions for workflow automation and Jasper-powered apps.
Jasper’s a step ahead of Lex with the different questions it asks and the ability to enter brand voice in its marketing editor.
Jasper claims to smartly integrate “several large language models” to deliver “high-quality outputs and reliable uptime.” However, I didn’t notice a significant difference between Jasper’s output and that of other apps. That said, it does offer some controls to help ensure your content aligns with your brand.
Using the tool
You can do the following three things with Jasper:
- Create: This is a writing space where you create, edit, and generate texts. You’re asked to input the topic and answer some questions about it. Based on this, a text will be generated which can be further edited.
When I was trying out Jasper, I was specifically interested in the brand voice feature. For my experiment, I added our brand voice, which looks like this:
When I asked Jasper for influencer marketing tips, it did a great job capturing the informative, inspiring, and empowering aspects of the brand voice. However, it lacked the conversational and friendly tone that was needed.
This tool has cut down on the research time for me. If I were to use the text as is, I’d only need to tweak the tone, and no further research would be necessary.
However, if I wanted to include more details, like which KPIs to track or how to choose the right influencer, I’d still need to do some research and add that information myself.
Remix: This feature allows repurposing of content. You can enter text, upload files, URL or repurpose content from your knowledge base.
To test out this feature, I picked a text from our post.
And then I asked Jasper to create an Instagram reel script out of it.
It provided a solid script with all the essential elements, like a strong hook and catchy lines. If I were making an Instagram reel for Fresh van Root, I could definitely use it.
- Chat: Similar to ChatGPT and the likes, this chatbot answers questions and gives you suggestions.
I gave the chat a try and asked it what was missing and for some improvement suggestions. It gave me some good suggestions like “Simplify Technical Jargon”.
Like
- Elements to make sure content aligns with brand’s messaging and content
- Chat feature which reduces the need to use ChatGPT or the likes of it
- Ability to repurpose content from different formats
- Text editing within the tool
Dislike
- Steep pricing models
- Brain voice infusion is not done well Lack of brand voice infusion
Bottomline
Jasper is pivoted towards businesses who want to generate marketing content (both long-form and short-form) with consistent messaging.
While it’s designed to help with brand voice and adding knowledge, it doesn’t always hit the mark without some final touches from a human writer, especially if your brand’s reputation is on the line. Established companies with bigger budgets might find Jasper useful, as it can handle up to 80% of the workload. But for startups, the pricing might feel a bit steep.
If you’re repurposing content or need improvement ideas (Jasper Chat), it is definitely worth using.
Pricing
- Creator: $39 per month per seat
- Pro: $59 per month per seat
- Business: Custom pricing
Writesonic
Writesonic and Jasper are often compared to each other. Many say they are quite alike. It comes with quite a few components like Chatsonic (the advanced AI chat assistant by Writesonic), Article Writer, Content Rewriter and SEO tools.
Chatsonic’s interface feels quite similar to that of ChatGPT, Claude and the other AI tools. By entering your prompt, you can generate data out of Writesonic. It uses GPT4o to give you the outputs. You can generate text, images and upload files to get them analyzed.
Using the tool
I tried to get some marketing copy out of Chatsonic. Just like Jasper, you can add a brand voice to get it incorporated into the content it generates.
I asked it to create a customer survey and gave a few details about the product. It followed my instructions and gave me what I needed.
Then I ventured into the templates section. This is where the cool stuff was!
This section feels quite similar to Jasper. I tested it by prompting for a blog post on how AI image generators work, and it asked follow-up questions such as the desired level of technical detail. I could also specify a word limit and include references, giving me greater control over the output.
The tool is impressively smart, asking relevant follow-up questions, such as which AI models I wanted to cover.
However, when it comes to the text it generated, I wasn’t entirely sold on the overly enthusiastic headings and some parts of the content. Thankfully, you can easily tweak those by applying your brand’s voice to ensure consistency and tone.
Writesonic offers a feature called the “Humanizer,” which claims to make your text sound more natural. When I tested it, the tool made minor adjustments, like simplifying complex words and sentences. However, it didn’t modify the headings, leaving them unchanged.
Like
- Ability to repurpose content with the Remix feature
- Do keyword research, writing, editing all in one place
- Humanizer that makes AI generated content sound more human
- Ability to add my own brand voice and product documents
Dislike
- Complex pricing structure
Bottomline
Jasper and Writesonic are quite similar to each other. You get the article writer, chat features, repurposing content and the brand voice features. Writesonic, however, does come with a humanizer feature.
Writesonic’s use of credits is a bit confusing though. Things like article writing, keyword research and a few other SEO functions use credits. Keeping track of use of credits could be a hassle.
Sudowrite
Sudowrite is one of the few tools that is oriented towards fiction writers. As a result, it also comes with features that are helped for fiction content.
Instead of writing a story for you, its AI tools like Describe and Brainstorm give you a writing partner to bounce ideas off and make a few suggestions. For fiction writers, it’s well worth checking out.
Using the tool
You can start by writing your draft within Sudowrite to keep using the features simultaneously. There’s an interesting element called the Story Bible where you add and generate various elements of your story.
It contains:
- Braindump: A space to jot down everything about your story, including plot, characters, and worldbuilding ideas
- Genre: Select or describe the genre, including any sub-genres or specific tropes.
- Style: Choose a writing style that matches your tone or customize it for your prose.
- Synopsis: Summarize the main characters, conflict, and story themes, with the option to generate a synopsis.
- Characters: Add or generate characters for your story, with customization options.
- Worldbuilding: Build your story’s world with customizable elements like locations, lore, and magic systems.
- Outline: Plan out your story in detail, breaking it into acts or chapters with the option to generate an outline.
Coming to Describe feature, it’s the coolest one. Using the five senses it can describe any word or phrase you highlight. For example, I highlighted a phrase and it gave a detailed description for each of the five senses.
Another cool feature is Brainstorm. With this feature, you can generate ideas for dialogues, characters, world building and more.
I decided to do some brainstorming for a dialogue and it gave some great ideas.
You can also ask the AI to write and rewrite parts of your story. For example, I could end a sentence and ask the AI to write from there. This is great for overcoming writer’s block. Similarly, if I don’t like the phrasing of a particular sentence, I could make Sudowrite rewrite it.
Lastly, there is a Canvas option. This is like a whiteboard for your story. If you’d like to visually bring together the different elements of your story, this feature is great.
Like
- The ability to get descriptions based on the five senses
- Match my style feature that matches the voice and style according to you
- AI character generation and world building
- Twist feature that lets you add twists to the plot with AI
Dislike
- The massive amount of features can be overwhelming at times
- The Canvas feature isn’t intuitive
Bottomline
Fiction writers will usually have areas they struggle with. For example, you might not be able to describe things well, the describe feature can help with that. Struggling to write a twist in your story? There’s a feature for that.
Similarly, the tool is packed with features that help with different parts of writing. It’s a great tool to overcome different elements in your writer’s block. If you’re a fiction writer, Sudowrite is for you.
For marketing content, Sudowrite is not the right fit.
Pricing
- Hobby and Student: $10 per month, billed annually
- Professional: $22 per month, billed annually
- Max: $44 per month, billed annually
AI writing assistant or AI chatbots: Which one is better?
As a writer, I’ve used both AI writing assistants like Lex and AI chat assistants like ChatGPT. And I think they have a place of their own.
While some AI tools help with writing, others can even help create entire websites or videos – demonstrating just how versatile these technologies have become.
Your choice depends on your writing style. If you’re someone who prefers a tailored tool with specialized settings for different genres—like Sudowrite for fiction—AI writing assistants can be your perfect match. For example, with AI chatbots you have do a lot of prompting but with AI writing assistants you can set up an environment that mkes it faster. Just like Jasper gives you brand voice infusion features.
However, if you’re like me and find that more general tools, like ChatGPT, meet your needs, then sticking with those might be all you need!
Whatever solution you choose, remember that AI-content can be detected.