With all the focus on AI’s applications for text-based tasks like writing and coding, I wanted to see how it’s being used in design and more visual tasks. From UI and full-on website design, to graphics and photo generation, there are a ton of interesting and free tools coming out that are worth trying.

All of them are free to try, but most have some kind of paid plan or limit on the number of free generations. Fair enough given it costs money to run the models, but I've tried to include notes on any that don't have permanent free plans and excluded any that explicitly require a credit card or payment to use.

If nothing else, I found it interesting to see where AI is (and isn't) likely to have a significant impact in design work. For all the hype around AI replacing everyone’s jobs, I see it as much more likely to do what technology has always done: replacing grunt work and shifting human attention to tasks that actually need more human involvement.

AI Website, Graphic and UI Generators:

• Framer: Describe the website you want, and Framer will create it for you. Edit and instantly publish your site from their platform. Ironically my favorite thing about Framer isn’t its AI tool. Its real advantage is its website editor which is the best I’ve seen on any platform (and usable for free). It’s like Figma if Figma let you publish directly to the web.

• Microsoft Designer: Generates designs based on user input for social media posts, logos, and business graphics. It’s free to use with a Microsoft account, and fairly impressive if not always consistent. If you pay a lot or spend a ton of time on design/social media content, Designer is definitely worth checking out.

• UIzard: Transforms text and images into design mockups, wireframes, and full user interfaces. It’s an ambitious concept, but very cool. While Framer was better for generating websites from text prompts, UIZard offers something none of the others did: taking a sketch drawing and turning it into a UI and/or wireframing.

Visualizations, Graphics and Illustrations:

• Taskade: AI powered productivity tool to visualize your notes, projects, and tasks. Taskade lets you easily generate mind maps and other visualizations of your work, and makes use of AI in a bunch of cool ways. For example, you can generate a mind map to help you brainstorm and then ask it to expand on a certain point or even research it for you with the internet.

• Bing Image Creator: Generate images from natural text descriptions, powered by DALL-E. Whether you’re looking for blog illustrations, images for your site’s pages or any other purpose, it’s worth trying.

• AutoDraw: Autodraw is a Google Project that lets you draw something freehand with your cursor, and AutoDraw uses AI to transform it into a refined image with icons and predrawn designs, all for free in your browser.

AI Presentations and Slides:

• Plus AI for Google Slides: AI generated slides and full-on presentations, all within Google Slides. I liked how Plus AI worked within Google Slides and made it easy to make changes to the presentation (as lets be real, no AI tool is going to generate exactly the content and formatting you need for a serious presentation).

• SlidesGo: Generate slides with illustrations, images, and icons chosen by AI. SlidesGo also has their own editor to let you edit and refine the AI generated presentation.

• Tome: Tell Tome what you want to say to your audience, and it will create a presentation that effectively communicates it clearly and effectively. Tome actually goes beyond just presentations and has a few cool formats worth checking out that I could see being useful for salespeople and anyone who needs to pitch an idea or product at work or to clients.

Product Photography:

These are all fairly similar so I’ve kept the descriptions short, but it’s genuinely a pretty useful category if you run any kind of business or side hustle that needs product photos. These photos establish the professionalism of your store/brand, and all the ones I tried had genuinely impressive results that seemed much better than what I could do myself.

• Pebblely: AI image generator for product images in various styles and settings. 40 free images, paid after that.

• Booth.ai: Generates professional-quality product photos using AI, focused on furniture, fashion, and packaged goods.

• Stylized.ai: Generates product photos integrated into ecommerce platforms like Shopify.

Miscellaneous Tools:

• Fronty: Converts uploaded images or drawings into HTML and CSS code using AI. It’s a bit clunky, but a cool concept nonetheless.

• LetsEnhance: Uses AI to enhance the resolution of images and photographs. Generally works pretty well from my experience, and gives you 10 free credits with signup. Unfortunately beyond that it is a paid product.

• Remove.bg: Specializes in recognizing and removing image backgrounds effectively. Doesn’t promise much, but it does the job and doesn’t require you to sign up.

TL;DR/Overall favorites:

These are the ones I've found the most use for in my day-to-day work.

• Framer: responsive website design with a full-featured editor to edit and publish your site all in one place. Free + paid plans.

• Taskade: visualize and automate your workflows, projects, mind maps, and more with AI powered templates. Free + paid plans.

• Microsoft Designer: generate social media and other marketing graphics with AI. Free to use.

• Plus AI: plugin for Google Slides to generate slide content, designs, and make tweaks with AI. Free + paid plans.

• Pebblely: professional-quality product photos in various settings and backgrounds, free to generate up to 40 images (through you can always sign up for another account…)

Let me know if you know of any tools I’ve missed so I can add them to the list! I’ve grouped them by categories, to make it easier to see what each tool is capable of, then given a bit more detail under each specific tool.