AI For Education

Find the tools you need

Content creation

Visuals

Read about our experience with video AI before checking out the examples

AI video generation was a disappointment overall. If you need generic footage and have plenty of time, these tools might work, but don’t expect accuracy or consistency.

Despite being top-tier tools, Sora and Runway ML struggled across the board (Sora performed slightly better). KREA did better but still had issues generating realistic humans.

We tested everything—detailed prompts, narratives, simple ones, and everything in between. We even asked AI chatbots for tips and used preset prompt tokens, which helped with camera angles and movement but didn’t improve video quality.

For speaking avatars, Synthesia and HeyGen were the best that we tested. But neither tool is perfect and it’s obvious they were generated by AI.

We just provided a simple prompt, “Create a presentation about web accessibility compliance standards and why it’s important in education,” and Synthesia created a decent AI video with text on screen too.

Compared to most of the tools we tested, Synthesia (and HeyGen) decently paired words with the avatar’s lips.

Swipe to see the interface and how it works.

Sora, which is available in ChatGPT, struggled with most prompts. These started off okay, but watch the heads of the 2nd and 3rd examples.

AI-generated video of a sea turtle swimming underwater near a coral reef.

Sea Turtle 1

Prompt: Sea turtle swimming underwater

Sea Turtle 2

Prompt: A sea turtle swims slowly through a crystal-clear water. Beams of light pierce the water. A red crab moves across the seabed. A school of tropical fish swim quickly. Seagrass sways with the current.

Sea turtle swimming underwater by Sora AI

Sea Turtle 3

Prompt: A sea turtle glides gracefully through a crystal-clear underwater paradise, their textured, sunlit shells glowing as they move effortlessly through beams of light piercing the calm water. Below, a group of vivid red crabs scuttle across the sandy seabed, their claws clinking softly as they explore among seashells and small tufts of seagrass. Schools of tropical fish, their scales shimmering with natural iridescence, dart swiftly between vibrant coral—pink, orange, and green—swaying gently in the soft ocean current. Tiny air bubbles rise lazily, and the distant silhouettes of larger marine life add depth to this serene, realistic ocean scene.

Like Sora, Runway struggled significantly regardless of how simple or complex the prompts were.

Underwater scene 1

Prompt: Create a realistic video of a vibrant underwater scene showing colorful fish casually swimming. A sea turtle glides past while a manta ray moves gracefully in the background. Small bubbles rise from the ocean floor as crabs move over rocks. The scene should feel immersive, lively, and visually striking.

Fish swimming underwater in shallow ocean water

Underwater scene 2

Prompt: Create a realistic video of an underwater scene showing colorful fish casually swimming. Small bubbles rise from the ocean floor. Crabs move over rocks. The scene should feel immersive, lively, and visually striking.

KREA was able to generate a few decent videos involving humans, although they aren’t perfect. And the videos underwater were easier to generate than with Sora or Runway.

Nurse taking blood pressure

Prompt: Realistic video at a distance showing a nurse taking a patient's blood pressure in a hospital.

Nurse taking notes

Prompt: Realistic video of a nurse taking notes in a hospital.

Sea Turtle

Prompt: A realistic video of a sea turtle swimming alone underwater in the ocean.

Underwater scene

Prompt: Realistic video of tropical fish swimming casually in the ocean. Colorful reef and show sea grass swaying.

HeyGen definitely wasn’t perfect, but compared to most of the other tools we tested, its lip movements synced reasonably well. The tones were easy to customize, but even the “expressive” characters showed little to no facial change when set to “angry.”

Overall, though, this tool could work if you’re using regular tones and choose the character videos where they are further from the camera.

KREA is hands down the best AI image generator we tested.

It’s a great tool for any images you’re looking for, whether you want ultra realistic photos (like the gorilla example) or art in a certain style (like the Van Gogh pyramid).

Science lab

Prompt: College students using equipment in a high-tech science lab.

Pyramid

Prompt: Realistic photo of an ancient Egyptian pyramid from a side view.

Pyramid art

Prompt: Paint a pyramid in the style of Van Gogh.

Gorilla

Prompt: Create a realistic photo of a gorilla's face with extensive details.

Leonardo.Ai was easy to use and can create a solid mix of somewhat realistic photos and different styles of images and art. But be careful of distortions like the hands in the science lab photo.

Science lab

Prompt: College students using equipment in a high-tech science lab.

Pyramid

Prompt: Realistic photo of an ancient Egyptian pyramid from a side view.

Stable Diffusion was easy to use and performed decently well overall. We were able to generate decent images overall.

Science lab

Prompt: College students using equipment in a high-tech science lab.

Pyramid

Prompt: Realistic photo of an ancient Egyptian pyramid from a side view.

There are hundreds of AI image generators, but here are a few others to check out:

Adobe Firefly
Midjourney
DALL-E 3 (offered within ChatGPT)
Bing Image Generator
Canva

You can also try NightCafe, which is like a hub of different AI image and art generators.

Gamma was the best AI we tested for creating presentations from scratch. It’s easy to use and offers tons of options to tailor the text and design elements.

We gave it this prompt: Create a presentation about the different parts of a cell and how they work.

Within a minute or two, Gamma created a slide deck that was pretty solid based on such a generic prompt. From there, you can edit any text or design elements just like you would within PPT or Google Docs. The exported versions are good quality (no formatting glitches with the changed formats.

It also allows you to embed or export it as a PDF, PPT, or PNGs. There’s a free version or there are two premium versions with added features ranging from $8-15/month.

2_The-Cell-Membrane-Controlling-What-Goes-In-and-Out

4_Mitochondria-The-Powerhouses-of-the-Cell

6_Endoplasmic-Reticulum-The-Cells-Transportation-Network

7_Golgi-Apparatus-Packaging-and-Distributing-Cellular-Products

8_Conclusion-The-Intricate-Dance-of-Cellular-Components

MagicSlides was easy to use and created a basic slide deck based on the prompt, “Create a presentation about the different parts of a cell and how they work.”

The text it generated wasn’t bad, but the images it picked were completely irrelevant. You can edit those if you have the paid plan, which costs $6-12/month.

You can embed the slides or, if using the paid version, export them as a PPT. There’s also an option to open them in Google Slides, but it never actually worked when we tried it.

SlideSpeak was pretty good overall. We provided the prompt, and shortly after, it created a good slide deck with quality content and designs.

Similar to Gamma, all elements on the slides can be edited or removed, and you can choose from other templates. You can embed the slides or, with a paid version, export them as a PDF or PPT.

There’s a free version, but it’s only enough to create one slide deck. Anything more than that costs $29-34/month, which is pretty steep compared to others.

Content creation

Visuals

Video

Hear our summary of the experience using video AI

AI video generation was a disappointment overall. If you need generic footage and have plenty of time, these tools might work, but don’t expect accuracy or consistency.

Despite being top-tier tools, Sora and Runway ML struggled across the board (Sora performed slightly better). KREA did better but still had issues generating realistic humans.

For speaking avatars, Synthesia and HeyGen were the best that we tested. But neither tool is perfect and it’s obvious they were generated by AI.

Synthesia

Compared to most of the tools we tested, Synthesia (and HeyGen) decently paired words with the avatar’s lips.

Sora

Sora, which is available in ChatGPT, struggled with most prompts. These started off okay, but watch the heads of the 2nd and 3rd examples.

Full Prompts Used In Sora

Prompt #1: Sea turtle swimming underwater

Prompt #2: A sea turtle swims slowly through a crystal-clear water. Beams of light pierce the water. A red crab moves across the seabed. A school of tropical fish swim quickly. Seagrass sways with the current.

Prompt #3: A sea turtle glides gracefully through a crystal-clear underwater paradise, their textured, sunlit shells glowing as they move effortlessly through beams of light piercing the calm water. Below, a group of vivid red crabs scuttle across the sandy seabed, their claws clinking softly as they explore among seashells and small tufts of seagrass. Schools of tropical fish, their scales shimmering with natural iridescence, dart swiftly between vibrant coral—pink, orange, and green—swaying gently in the soft ocean current. Tiny air bubbles rise lazily, and the distant silhouettes of larger marine life add depth to this serene, realistic ocean scene.

Runway ML

Like Sora, Runway struggled significantly regardless of how simple or complex the prompts were.

KREA

KREA was able to generate a few decent videos involving humans, although they aren’t perfect. And the videos underwater were easier to generate than with Sora or Runway.

HeyGen

Overall, though, this tool could work if you’re using regular tones and choose the character videos where they are further from the camera.

Images

KREA

KREA is hands down the best AI image generator we tested.

It’s a great tool for any images you’re looking for, whether you want ultra realistic photos (like the gorilla example) or art in a certain style (like the Van Gogh pyramid).

Prompts used for KREA

Science lab: Prompt – College students using equipment in a high-tech science lab.

Pyramid: Prompt – Realistic photo of an ancient Egyptian pyramid from a side view.

Pyramid art: Prompt – Paint a pyramid in the style of Van Gogh.

Gorilla: Prompt – Create a realistic photo of a gorilla’s face with extensive details.

Leonardo.Ai

Leonardo.Ai was easy to use and can create a solid mix of somewhat realistic photos and different styles of images and art. But be careful of distortions like the hands in the science lab photo.

Science lab prompt: College students using equipment in a high-tech science lab.

Pyramid Prompt: Realistic photo of an ancient Egyptian pyramid from a side view.

Stable Diffusion

Stable Diffusion was easy to use and performed decently well overall. We were able to generate decent images overall.

Science lab prompt: College students using equipment in a high-tech science lab.

Pyramid Prompt: Realistic photo of an ancient Egyptian pyramid from a side view.

Other

There are hundreds of AI image generators, but here are a few others to check out:

Adobe Firefly
Midjourney
DALL-E 3 (offered within ChatGPT)
Bing Image Generator
Canva

You can also try NightCafe, which is like a hub of different AI image and art generators.

Presentations

Gamma

Gamma was the best AI we tested for creating presentations from scratch. It’s easy to use and offers tons of options to tailor the text and design elements.

We gave it this prompt: Create a presentation about the different parts of a cell and how they work.

Within a minute or two, Gamma created a slide deck that was pretty solid based on such a generic prompt.

From there, you can edit any text or design elements just like you would within PPT or Google Docs. The exported versions are good quality (no formatting glitches with the changed formats.

It also allows you to embed or export it as a PDF, PPT, or PNGs. There’s a free version or there are two premium versions with added features ranging from $8-15/month.

MagicSlides

MagicSlides was easy to use and created a basic slide deck based on the prompt, “Create a presentation about the different parts of a cell and how they work.”

The text it generated wasn’t bad, but the images it picked were completely irrelevant. You can edit those if you have the paid plan, which costs $6-12/month.

You can embed the slides or, if using the paid version, export them as a PPT. There’s also an option to open them in Google Slides, but it never actually worked when we tried it.

SlideSpeak

SlideSpeak was pretty good overall. We provided the prompt, and shortly after, it created a good slide deck with quality content and designs.

Similar to Gamma, all elements on the slides can be edited or removed, and you can choose from other templates. You can embed the slides or, with a paid version, export them as a PDF or PPT.

There’s a free version, but it’s only enough to create one slide deck. Anything more than that costs $29-34/month, which is pretty steep compared to others.

Writing

Chatbots

ChatGPT

ChatGPT can help you with every part of the writing process, whether it’s brainstorming lesson plans and drafting presentation content or writing objective exam rules and clear assignment instructions. It can also generate different types of text, edit and improve clarity, and adapt content to fit the needs of diverse learners.

Best for: Creating instructional content, generating creative discussion prompts and case studies, checking grammar and punctuation, summarizing research, and adjusting text for different student levels and accessibility needs.

Limitations: May produce generic or inaccurate content and requires fact-checking, especially for subject-specific accuracy.

Pricing: Free with limits, with “Plus” ($20/month) and “Pro” ($200/month) subscriptions for expanded access and features, along with plans for small teams and enterprises.

Claude

Much like ChatGPT, Claude is a versatile writing tool for educators. It stands out for its ability to interpret and respond to complex prompts with greater nuance and contextual awareness while avoiding cookie-cutter language.

Best for: Developing comprehensive course materials and in-depth resources like study guides and supplemental materials, as well as writing clear assignment instructions and providing structured feedback.

Limitations: Can be less versatile than ChatGPT and may require more specific instructions to achieve desired outputs.

Pricing: Free with limits. “Pro” subscription ($18/month) for expanded access and features. Also offers plans for teams ($25/team member per month) and enterprise implementations.

Gemini

Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, is a flexible tool for educators that can generate text, images, and code. Its capability to create different types of content is especially useful for lesson plans that include visuals, coding exercises, or interactive materials.

Best for: Research-based writing, developing multimedia-rich instructional content, creating visual aids and coding examples, and generating structured study materials.

Limitations: Gemini’s writing capabilities are improving, but there’s still a noticeable gap in depth and creativity compared to ChatGPT and Claude.

Pricing: Varies depending on the specific version you use and how you access it. It may be included with some Google products.

Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant built into Microsoft apps (Word, Excel, etc.) and is also available as a standalone chatbot. It runs on the same large language model as ChatGPT but is geared more toward productivity and organization rather than creative writing.

Best for: Creating course materials within Microsoft apps, summarizing research, and assisting with administrative writing tasks and organization.

Limitations: May not be ideal for highly creative or in-depth content that requires more flexibility.

Pricing: Included with some Microsoft 365 subscriptions. It also offers a free subscription with limited access and features and a Pro plan for $20/month per user.

DeepSeek Chat

DeepSeek Chat is a newer chatbot that’s great for helping educators handle technical writing tasks. It can simplify really dense, complex information into clear, well-organized content that’s easy to understand.

Best for: Organizing and presenting technical content for academic or administrative tasks, such as writing student performance reports, summarizing research, drafting test and assignment rules, and creating instructional guides..

Limitations: May struggle with more creative writing tasks and can have difficulty picking up on sarcasm, figures of speech, and other language nuances.

Pricing: Free through their website/app, offers some open-source models available.

Whether you’re asking technical questions for school/work, looking for life advice, or just yappin’ about how your day was, Pi is the perfect chatbot for it.

It’s built on its own homegrown LLM, designed to be more of a conversational partner than a “copilot” assistant. It can help you incrementally think through ideas, organize and process your thoughts and emotions, and work through tough choices with empathetic, thoughtful responses.

Another cool thing—and, surprisingly, a rare feature that the other popular chatbots don’t offer for some reason (it’s just text-to-speech)—is that Pi lets you choose from several realistic-sounding male and female AI voices with different accents to read its responses aloud.

AI prompt templates & examples here

Writing Assistants

Editors (overview)

Most AI writing assistants, like Grammarly, QuillBot, Linguix, and Hemingway App (great for improving clarity), work similarly—you paste your text, and they correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. They also offer features to adjust tone and simplify text, which can help when writing assignment instructions or test questions.

Rytr

Rytr is an AI writing assistant that’s mostly used by businesses, but it’s just as useful for educators who need to quickly draft class announcements, discussion prompts, or assignment descriptions.

It has technical editing tools and dozens of templates to streamline short-form content, but it isn’t ideal for long-form content and research-based writing.

Lex

Lex is a versatile AI writing tool for educators who want a distraction-free writing experience. Its interface is simple, offers AI editing, and has focus features like dark mode and a built-in Pomodoro-style timer (REALLY cool).

It helps with drafting course materials, research papers, and professional communications. It also keeps data secure and your writing isn’t used to train its AI models.

The only downside is that the free version is really limited—it only allows you to check your writing 30 times each month. The pro version is $12-18.

SciPub+

SciPub+ is an AI academic writing tool designed to help researchers and educators with each step in the academic writing process.

It has 10 specialized AI assistants that help with different steps (introduction, methods, results, and discussion, etc.) and it’s built to keep everything structured and aligned with scientific standards.

Sudowrite

Sudowrite is an AI creative writing assistant—maybe not the first tool that comes to mind for educators, but hear us out—with tools that help with brainstorming and planning, creating more descriptive text, and building out simple ideas into a cohesive story.

How’s this useful for educators? It can help craft case studies that won’t put students to sleep, create narratives for writing-intensive assignments, and develop interactive learning materials. It’s also a great tool for creating interesting and engaging discussion prompts, icebreakers, and presentation copy.

Basically, it’ll help make your course content a lot more fun.

Notes & Summarizers

Scholarcy

Scholarcy is an easy to use AI summarizer that organizes the content into a digestible format. We uploaded a pretty technical research study and within about a minute it summarized and organized it. You can also ask questions about the content itself.

While we used a research study, you can put any information in here, like your notes or class transcriptions, and it’ll summarize it all for you in the same way.

It supports these file formats: PDF, Word, Powerpoint, HTML, XML, LaTeX, TXT, CSV, RIS, BIB, NBIB

NotebookLM

NotebookLM allows you to upload PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs, or Slides and summarize them or turn them into detailed outlines, study guides, and FAQs.

The video below gives you an idea of how it works, you can use its preset summary tools (FAQ, study guide, briefing document) and questions it generates from the text and save the responses to your notebook. You can also ask it specific questions and it’ll answer with cited information from the text.

SciSummary

SciSummary is an AI tool built to summarize scientific articles. It uses custom-built GPT models to summarize complex scientific articles and make them easy to understand. They also offer features to expand on specific information and it recommends other relevant articles to expand your own research.

Elicit

Elicit is an AI tool that summarizes papers, extracts data, and synthesizes information. Similar to the other summarizer tools, you can ask it questions and expand on information. And, like SciSummary, it suggests other relevant research articles.

Chatbots

All of the chatbots we discussed in the other tab can effectively summarize notes, lecture transcripts, research articles, and any other information you provide.

Audio

AI Voice Generators

Summary & Example

Voice generation AI has come a long way. It used to sound like robots, but now they sound pretty realistic.

Educators can use voice generation AI to update previous videos, add narration to case studies, and create audio explanations for complex topics.

Here are some AI text-generation tools to try:

WellSaid Labs
Speechify
ElevenLabs
Murf.AI

This recording was created using WellSaid Labs.

Podcasts

NotebookLM

NotebookLM allows you to upload documents, blogs, slides, and videos which are turned into very realistic summary podcasts in just a few minutes.

We provided our Why Students Cheat ebook to NotebookLM and it generated a 34 minute podcast covering each and every aspect. Here’s a clip of the first few minutes.

Descript

Descript is a popular all-in-one podcasting tool that allows you to record, transcribe, edit, and repurpose the audio and video.

Audioread

Audioread is a text-to-speech AI that allows you to listen to articles, PDFs, emails, etc., in very natural voices.

Editing

Adobe Podcast

Ignore the “podcast” in the name.

This AI tool by Adobe makes any voice recordings, whether they’re for a podcast or voice overs for a presentation or class lecture, sound clear and professional.

Its editing features are pretty great too. It transcribes the audio and you basically just edit it like a word document.

Descript

Descript and its AI assistant, Underlord, help edit and improve audio (and video) by removing filler words and background noise, translating captions into different languages, and automatically creating clips of particularly important information.

Although, some reviews mention that some aspects of the platform are difficult to use and that it’s expensive at scale.

Nomono

Nomono has an option for editing/improving audio, and another for capturing it.

For editing and improving, Nomono’s AI removes unwanted noises and improves voice quality, and offers simple editing tools.

If you wanted to capture audio in a large classroom or lecture hall, they can use Nomono’s “Sound Capsule.”

You’ll need a big budget, though—the Sound Capsule costs $2,490. If your department has the budget, faculty could place the capsule and its supplemental microphones around the room to capture high-quality audio, which would be especially useful for large classrooms and lecture halls. After that, the AI can improve the audio and it can be edited as needed.

Transcriptions

Notta

Notta can accurately transcribe classes and meetings and translate them into almost 60 languages. It can also identify who said what and it can summarize everything.

The reviews for Notta has a 4.5/5 rating on G2 after more than 150 reviews.

There’s a free version or a pro version for $9/month.

Fireflies

Fireflies.ai is a comprehensive AI note taking tool for instructors and students to use in the classroom or during online classes. It offers transcripts, organized notes, and complete recordings of each class or meeting.

Fireflies has over 600 G2 reviews and a 4.8/5 rating.

There’s a free option and a pro option for individuals that costs $10/month.

Otter

Otter is a popular AI meeting tool that transcribes speech in real time. It’s an affordable option for instructors and students to transcribe what’s said in class, identify the speaker, and summarize notes.

Otter has a 4.3/5 rating on G2 after close to 300 reviews.

It has free options and the paid options range from around $8-20 per month.

Music

Educators can use music generation AI to make lessons more engaging, whether by bringing history and culture to life with music from different eras or turning complex topics into songs that reinforce key concepts in a memorable way.

Udio

Udio was really easy to use and created diverse songs about any topic. It takes you through a few quick steps to pick the music style (rock, blues, country, etc.), write lyrics for you (or use your own), and adjust settings before creating a song. Udio can also create instrumental songs in any style you’d like.

1 minute samples of songs with lyrics below.

Prompt: Create a blue song about the parts of a cell and how they work.

Prompt: Create a blues song about the cognitive load theory and why it’s important.

Suno

Suno functions just like Udio does; you choose the style, it writes lyrics or you provide them and it creates a song from scratch. You can also use Suno to create instrumental songs in any style. 1 minute examples of songs with lyrics below.

Prompt: Create a rock song about the parts of a cell and how they work.

Prompt: Create a relaxing blues song about the cognitive load theory.

Other

Canva: The AI music generator is a solid option for simple background music, although, probably not the best for dramatic video.

Soundverse: Good for a diverse range of instrumental music.

Beatoven: Another solid tool for instrumental background music.

Writing

Chatbots

Best for: Creating instructional content, generating creative discussion prompts and case studies, checking grammar and punctuation, summarizing research, and adjusting text for different student levels and accessibility needs.

Limitations: May produce generic or inaccurate content and requires fact-checking, especially for subject-specific accuracy.

Pricing: Free with limits, with “Plus” ($20/month) and “Pro” ($200/month) subscriptions for expanded access and features, along with plans for small teams and enterprises.

Best for: Developing comprehensive course materials and in-depth resources like study guides and supplemental materials, as well as writing clear assignment instructions and providing structured feedback.

Limitations: Can be less versatile than ChatGPT and may require more specific instructions to achieve desired outputs.

Pricing: Free with limits. “Pro” subscription ($18/month) for expanded access and features. Also offers plans for teams ($25/team member per month) and enterprise implementations.

Best for: Research-based writing, developing multimedia-rich instructional content, creating visual aids and coding examples, and generating structured study materials.

Limitations: Gemini’s writing capabilities are improving, but there’s still a noticeable gap in depth and creativity compared to ChatGPT and Claude.

Pricing: Varies depending on the specific version you use and how you access it. It may be included with some Google products.

Best for: Creating course materials within Microsoft apps, summarizing research, and assisting with administrative writing tasks and organization.

Limitations: May not be ideal for highly creative or in-depth content that requires more flexibility.

Pricing: Included with some Microsoft 365 subscriptions. It also offers a free subscription with limited access and features and a Pro plan for $20/month per user.

Best for: Organizing and presenting technical content for academic or administrative tasks, such as writing student performance reports, summarizing research, drafting test and assignment rules, and creating instructional guides..

Limitations: May struggle with more creative writing tasks and can have difficulty picking up on sarcasm, figures of speech, and other language nuances.

Pricing: Free through their website/app, offers some open-source models available.

Whether you’re asking technical questions for school/work, looking for life advice, or just yappin’ about how your day was, Pi is the perfect chatbot for it.

It’s built on its own homegrown LLM and designed to be more of a conversational partner than a “copilot” assistant. It can help you incrementally think through ideas, organize and process your thoughts and emotions, and work through tough choices with empathetic, thoughtful responses.

Perplexity AI: While it technically isn’t a chatbot (it’s a conversational search engine), Perplexity AI can generate text, but it focuses on summarizing and synthesizing information rather than creative or narrative writing.

AI prompting templates & examples here