Frankly, investors are getting nervous. After pouring over $200 billion into the development of artificial intelligence systems the past two years, they’re starting to realize they may never see a return on their investment. As a result, tech stocks are starting to drop.
However, the major companies continue to go full speed ahead with reckless abandon. Why? FOMO. (Fear of missing out.) They see AI as the most important new development in recent years and don’t want to be left behind.
These companies have such large cash reserves that they can afford to keep offering us great new freebies. Which, of course, greatly pleases me.
Microsoft Designer (Designer. microsoft.com). I’m most excited about Microsoft’s new Designer app. It’s available via desktop computer and via a dedicated smartphone/tablet app.
You can use it to create and edit images as well as to edit photos. To create an image, you simply tell it the details of what you want, and it will create three or four versions. You then have the option of editing the images. I’ve been having so much fun with this.
I’m even more impressed with Designer’s photo editing. Its AI capabilities can do things in an instant that in years past took time and skill to accomplish in Adobe Photoshop.
For example, I have a great photo of a groundhog with its face right in front of a $40 trail camera. Of course, that cheapo camera can’t do the sort of shallow depth-of-field photos that professional photographers achieve with their gear, which gives a sharply focused foreground image and a blurred background.
Designer’s AI automatically recognizes what’s foreground and what’s background. With a single tap, I was able to blur the background. Then I used the Sharpness feature to make a crisper foreground image.
Something else I never managed to learn to do with Photoshop was to remove the background in a photo. Easily done with Designer. Or if someone or something has photobombed one of your photos, you just put the cursor over the object and Designer highlights it. Then you tap “Erase object,” and Designer fills in the blank space with imagery that matches what’s otherwise in the photo.
All this and so much more. Free. You are, however, limited to 15 “boosts” a day—a boost being a created image or an edited photo. More than that requires upgrading to the premium version at $6.99 per month.
Microsoft web apps (Office.com). Speaking of free, your tech columnist is embarrassed to admit that he only recently learned that since 2010 Microsoft has offered their full suite of applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) for free via web apps. These apps omit some of the most advanced features of the desktop applications but are highly functional. Your content is stored in the cloud at OneDrive.live.com, with the free version limiting you to 5GB of storage. It’s simple to upload files to OneDrive or to download your files.
Claude (Claude.ai). If I have a question, I always turn to ChatGPT 4o (chatgpt.com). But if I want to generate text for some particular purpose, I turn to Claude. The new Sonnet version is even more capable than before.
For example, a colleague published a scientific study but hadn’t written a press release. I uploaded a PDF of the study to Claude and asked it to write one. Claude took less than a minute to read the PDF and write the release. My colleague was impressed with it and said Claude will save him the one or two hours that it would normally take to write releases for each of his forthcoming studies.
Another example: one of my former students was estranged from her son. She wanted to repair the relationship, so she wrote him a long letter. She then asked Claude to critique it for kindness and clarity. She was astounded by Claude’s insights. Claude said it sounded like she was lecturing. My student asked Claude to write a new version, which she then adapted. Success. “Getting that feedback transformed the way I related to my son, and we have reconciled.”
Offline Chat. As we discussed in last month’s column, there are serious environmental considerations related to AI. But many of the AI companies are creating small versions of their chatbots that can run on a smartphone or computer without an internet connection. I recently tried Offline Chat: Private AI ($4.95) on my iPad and was amazed (though I advise you to change the model size within the app from tiny to medium).
A query using an AI chatbot that accesses an AI data center typically takes 10 times the amount of energy as a simple Google query. Being able to query a chatbot while offline saves energy—and it’s also completely private.
I’ll write more about these svelte chatbots in the future. But for now, enjoy the bounty of freebies available online, especially the new Microsoft Designer.
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