3 Best AI Writing Tools: Tested for Quality Content in 2023

If you need to generate a lot of content for your website or blog, an AI writer could be the perfect solution. However, it’s vital to choose the right one. Otherwise you could end up with nonsensical – or even plagiarized – text. And this won’t do you any favors, either in terms of SEO or in the eyes of your audience.

Pretty much every AI writing tool out there claims to be able to produce original, high-quality content with just the click of a button. But as someone who writes and edits for a living, I’m extremely skeptical of automatically generated text. That’s why I decided to test out a few of the top AI writers to see if they really live up to the hype.

First and foremost, I rated each tool’s ability to create coherent and original text. I also took note of any extra features and customization options, and compared pricing plans. Here’s everything I learned from my deep dive into the world of AI writers.

What We Look For in the Best AI Writers

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to evaluating AI writers, but a few aspects stand out above the rest. These are the main things I evaluated in my research:

• Coherence: The text these tools generate needs to make sense and follow basic grammatical rules. I did overlook some odd and silly sentences, but too much nonsensical text was an immediate red flag.
• Originality: AI writers work by imitating content from other websites, but that doesn’t mean plagiarism or paraphrasing is acceptable. I checked each text using Copyscape to make sure it wasn’t clearly copied from another source.
• Customization options: The best AI writers give you several options for the type of text you want to create, the tone of voice, and other aspects. I noted the customization options for each tool and checked to see if they actually worked.
• Word limit: Some tools can only produce up to a certain number of words at a time, so they’re really only useful for certain types of content. I checked to see if each tool had a maximum word count.
• Additional features: Some AI writers offer extra features like templates and organization tools. I also tested these to figure out if they actually add value.
• Pricing: I researched the different subscription options for each tool and checked to see if they offer free versions.

How I Tested the Top AI Writers

To see if these AI writers could create decent content on various subjects, I used each one to generate at least three different blog posts. The general topics were cybersecurity, photo editing software, and loan refinancing. I created a basic title for each article, and plugged it into the AI writer in question to see its most basic capabilities.

If the initial text was fairly well written, I also tested the other features that the tool offered. For example, in some cases I added keywords to make the article more specific or chose a different content type. I considered these results in my overall conclusions about each tool.

Finally, I ran all of the AI-generated text through Copyscape, a tool that detects plagiarism by searching for identical text on the web. If it didn’t get any significant hits, it passed my final test. It’s worth mentioning that Copyscape isn’t perfect, so there’s a chance that it missed some things – but I trust that it would’ve picked up any major cases of plagiarism.

1. Copy.ai – The Most Impressive & Practical AI Writer I Tested

Of all the AI writers I included in my research, Copy.ai was by far the best. I was super impressed with the coherence of the text it generated; it actually sounded like it was written by a human! This tool isn’t without its flaws, but it could definitely be useful for generating content that doesn’t need to follow highly specific guidelines.

Copy.ai offers several templates for different types of content. For my tests, I used the “Blog Post Wizard.” It allows you to input the title, keywords, and tone for your article, and then generates an outline. You can add or remove sections from this outline if you want.

Next it creates a list of “talking points” for each section, which you can also edit before generating the final article. I found that if you don’t manually adjust the outline and talking points, the result isn’t very impressive. But with a bit of human interference, it can create a decent article.

Once the article is generated, you can choose to regenerate the sections that aren’t up to your standards. This is a really useful feature, because it gives you the chance to redo the parts that aren’t working until you end up with something that makes sense. There are a few caveats: you can only regenerate whole sections (not individual sentences or paragraphs), and once you click “regenerate” you can’t restore the previous version.

When I ran the finished articles through Copyscape, I only got a few very generic hits: phrases like “you’ll be able to” that probably have more to do with coincidence than plagiarism. Overall, Copy.ai definitely passed my originality test.

The main downside of Copy.ai is that it doesn’t do great with more obscure topics. This is probably because it has less existing material to draw from – remember that no AI writer can actually create totally new content the way a human writer can. It would probably be most useful for more general topics that have already been covered extensively online.

2. Rytr – Affordable Multilingual Tool, But Content Can Lack Flow

The first thing that stood out to me about Rytr is the fact that it works in more than 30 languages. This is a huge advantage if you need to create multilingual content, as many AI writing tools are only available in English. That said, it’s only useful if the content itself is usable – and in terms of content quality, my tests had mixed results.

I tested a few different “use cases” to see if Rytr was able to generate coherent text for different contexts, and with varying levels of input. The “Blog Idea and Outline” allowed me to specify one keyword and generate up to three variants. It then wrote a series of subheadings (not all of which made sense). I selected a few of these and asked it to write paragraphs for them. The writing itself was decent, but there wasn’t much flow between ideas.

I also tried out “Blog Section Writing,” which allowed me to input a topic and keywords to generate a short section. Again, I was able to generate up to three variants for each section and then choose the best one. I also tried the “Video Description” and “Question and Answer” use cases, and the results were pretty much the same.

I did notice some recurring issues with Rytr. Although it’s pretty good at writing standalone sentences, it’s not very good at creating logical transitions. It also tends to provide a lot of irrelevant background information and repetition. On top of that, sometimes it stops writing in the middle of a sentence – which is obviously not ideal.

Since I was originally impressed by the variety of languages offered, I also decided to test it in Hebrew (which my coworker speaks natively). They told me it did pretty well, especially considering that this isn’t a very common language – although some parts of the text seemed like they had just been plugged into an automatic translation tool.

Overall, Rytr isn’t as good as Copy.ai in terms of the quality of content. But it could definitely be useful in certain contexts. In addition to offering dozens of languages, it has a ton of customization and input options – and both of its paid plans are more affordable than Copy.ai’s Pro plan.

3. Jasper.ai – Works for Short Texts, But Tends to Sound Generic

This is one of the most well-known AI writers on the market, so my expectations were pretty high. It didn’t quite live up to them – but I do see why Jasper.ai has gotten so much attention. It has a ton of customization options and allows you to input a lot of information. You can even give it a whole content brief or introduction.

The main issue I ran into with Jasper.ai was that I could only get it to produce short texts – no more than 300 words at a time – even when using the “long-form” option. That said, the content itself was very smooth. I was impressed with the writing style, although it was admittedly a bit generic. If you only need to generate a few paragraphs at a time, it’s a pretty good option.

Just like any AI writer, Jasper.ai does sometimes produce content that just doesn’t make sense. But I guess any automated tool is bound to write some nonsense eventually. This only reinforces why it’s so important to combine AI writing tools with human intervention, to ensure an acceptable level of quality.

Which AI Writers Are NOT Worth Your Time?

In my research, I only found one AI writing tool that I really wouldn’t recommend. It’s called AIWriter (very generic, I know), and I wasn’t impressed at all with the content it generated. It only allows you to input a title, and the text it churns out doesn’t make sense.

It seemed to me like AIWriter was just rewording sentences it found on the web, without any sense of logic. Granted, this is about what I expected when I set out to do this research. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is actually possible to use AI to write decent-quality content (as evidenced by the tools above) – so this one just didn’t measure up.

Putting the Top AI Writers to Use

First of all, it has to be said that AI writers can’t completely replace real live content writers and editors (at least not yet). But that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful – especially for people who work in the content industry, or businesses that need to create large amounts of content quickly and affordably.

AI writers are especially useful if you’re willing to hire an editor to polish the text. None of the tools I tested created content that I’d feel comfortable publishing without at least a good proofread. But Copy.ai could certainly be useful, especially in situations where quantity is more important than quality. Paying for a subscription would be cheaper than hiring freelance writers, and the results are on par with plenty of online content that’s written by actual people.

These are the main differences I found between the AI writing tools I tested:

FAQ

What is an AI writer?

An AI writer is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to generate text on a given topic. It can create anything from blog posts to social media copy based on a title, keyword, or other input.

Are AI writers worth it?

AI writers are definitely worth it if you need to create a lot of text quickly without worrying too much about quality. They’re especially useful when combined with human intervention, like an editor who can regenerate texts until they make sense and improve their wording, grammar, and accuracy. Many AI writers are very affordable, and some even have free versions.

Can AI replace writers?

In some contexts, AI writing software might be able to replace human writers – but in most cases, you’ll still need an actual writer or editor to manage the tool and ensure that the content it produces is coherent. Existing AI writing tools definitely can’t replace writers altogether, because they’re only useful for specific contexts and types of content.

Is AI writing free?

Some AI writers have free versions, although they’re usually limited in terms of features and customization options. You can use the free version of Copy.ai, for example, to test it out and generate simple pieces of content. But to really get the most out of AI writing tools, I recommend subscribing to a paid plan.