4 Expensive, Overhyped AI Writing Tools to Avoid (That ChatGPT Easily Outperforms)

I tested all of them.

7 min readAug 8

This grotesque scene exactly captures my feelings on the current glut of AI tools: surrounded and ultimately destroyed by sugary nonsense. All I can do is laugh. Midjourney prompt: **a table with various cakes, pastries, pies and sweet foods and a giant laughing skull.** — Image #1 @leandromss

AI is the new crypto. Every single startup bro who saw the writing on the wall has pivoted from pushing too-good-to-be-true financial products to pushing too-good-to-be-true AI products instead.

But it’s worse, actually. Because ChatGPT is free, for now at least. Yet almost every single one of those new AI writing tools that are “better” than ChatGPT? They sit directly on top of ChatGPT’s API. They pay pennies to send ChatGPT queries, while you pay them somewhere between $9.99-$49.99 a month (only $8.99/month when billed annually!).

I looked into four popular AI writing tools and found that they’re all either no better, or actually worse than ChatGPT. Here’s the list of overhyped, expensive AI writing tools I recommend avoiding.

1. Jenni.ai

Jenni AI, which I’ve reviewed in full here, is an AI writing tool that promises to supercharge your content creation with high-quality content. The marketing material claims you can write emails, articles, essays, and more. You get 200 free AI-generated words per day. After that, it’s $20/month when billed monthly.

How it works

You provide Jenni AI with a short brief, like, “I am writing an article about the very best cat food,” and it drafts a short paragraph. From there, it works a bit like a turbo-charged Google autocomplete. You can start writing and then allow Jenni AI to suggest autocompletion options. You can accept the suggestions, or see more variations.