AI & Apps

AI Solutions
Unsure where to Start?

Download this simple guide that will help you get started with simple to advanced prompts.

Get the Text AI CheatSheet
Get the Image AI CheatSheet

Join Advent AI Lab – a Facebook community for Christian AI enthusiasts.
AI: Benefit Your Ministry – Slides (80mb).
Virtual Bible Snapshot Project – Images

Text Gen AI (LLMs – Large Language Models):
Top 4:
1. Claude.ai, 2. ChatGPT/Copilot, 3. Google Gemini, 4. Meta Llama 2,* [Leaderboard]

Image Gen AI:
Top 6: 1. Midjourney, 2. Dall-E 3 / Copilot, 3. Leonardo, 4. Firefly, 5. Meta AI, 6. Google
Dall-E 3 – Easiest. Highest prompt coherence. Requires ChatGPT Pro. Note: Free in Copilot without portrait/landscape options. Best place to start.
Midjourney – Not as easy as Dall-E. It comes with a good parameter guide. Runs within Discord or here after a generation threshold is met.
StableDiffusion based – Most options besides Dall-E/Midjourney run on SD: Leonardo | Lexica | NightCafe | BlueWillow | Playground.

Image Upscalers: Krea, Leonardo, Magnific, Real-Esrgan, Local installs: Upscayle (free), ChaiNNer/OpenModelDB (free), Topaz Photo AI

Audio Gen AI:
Music: Suno, Udio, Loudly
Voice & Text to speech: ElevenLabs, HeyGen

Video Gen AI: Sora, Haiper, Genmo, RunwayML

Local Install Options:
– For desktop clients that use API keys from Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini, scroll down to “Definitive App Comparisons” below.
LM Studio – Run Llama-based LLMs locally from huggingface.*
StableDiffusion image generators:*
Fooocus – Simplest
Automatic1111 – Most popular
ComfyUI – Most popular node-based. Complicated, most flexible
SwarmUI – Mix of Automatic1111+ComfyUI; by Stability.ai
InvokeAI – Alternative to Automatic1111
Pinokio – A 1-Click “app store” for installing many AI solutions more easily.*
*For Advanced users/machines. These require a 16GB RAM+ Nvidia GPU or high-end ARM processor with 64GB+ shared RAM.

Writing & Academics

Writing and Research:

  • Grammarly – Top AI Grammar Checker. Others: Hemingway Editor, Slickwrite
  • Zotero – Free citation collector, organizer, and generator. Automatically inserts accurate footnotes and bibliographies into your word processor. Add books by ISBN.
  • Scrivener – The Photoshop of writing apps. Sort your writing into chapters and sections with snapshots to save and revert to different versions of your work. Doesn’t work with Zotero, but can take EndNote or Bookends reference codes. My Endnote Turabian 9th preference file.
  • Text Workflow – I use this to automatically find and replace a large variety of common mistakes after copying poorly OCR’d text into my research file.
  • Hebrew or Greek Mnemonic Generator GPT (Requires ChatGPT Subscription) – Enter a Hebrew or Greek Word. ChatGPT will generate 7 mnemonics. Then enter an output number to generate a visual depiction.
  • Devonthink revolutionizes file searching. Watch how it can save you time:

AI And Academics: Usage suggestions: Try asking Claude.ai to…

  • Summarize Content / Create an abstract.
  • Explain or simplify concepts with an analogy.
  • Identify gaps in your logic or any lack of correspondence between your problem/purpose/methodology statements and the rest of your written work.
  • Critique a paper according to an uploaded rubric.
  • Describe the structure or methodology of a paper to understand it better.
  • Check grammar [Grammarly is better specialized here].
  • Create quiz questions based on presentation notes.
  • Find synonyms or re-write a complex sentence.
  • Brainstorm more creative titles.
  • Locate ideas in a document.

AI Resources:

  • PDFGear – A PDF reader with AI chat capabilities to engage with PDF content. Not as accurate as Claude.ai, but still useful. Reliability diminishes beyond 100 pages.
  • AI for Education – Prompt library of ideas for academic use.
  • Brisk Teaching – An AI browser tool to help critique papers and perform a variety of other tasks.
  • Text AI Cheatsheet – Outlines the basic steps to writing good AI prompts.
  • Image AI Cheatsheet – Outlines steps for good image generation prompts.
Awesome, Time-Saving Apps

Mac OS, Browser, & iOS Apps
Definitive App Comparisons
– Crowdsourced spreadsheet with comparisons for Browser, Calendar, E-Mail, Note, Password Manager, and PDF apps.
Affinity Design Suite
(Paid, Mac/Windows/iOS) – Single purchase alternative to the Adobe design suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign) with a special feature that merges all of their apps into their publisher app. This makes an integrated cross-app workflow much faster since you don’t have to switch apps.
BetterTouchTool (Paid) – Set customizable gestures and taps on Mac touchpads. Huge time-saver.
Alfred 5 (Paid) – Spotlight replacement tool with clipboard history and a huge number of extensions. Huge time saver.
Voice Dream Reader (Paid iOS) – Text-to-speech app for improving your reading speed and experience. The Mac version is subscription only, but iOS is a one-time purchase.
Downie – (Paid) Download video from nearly anywhere.
Dropzone 4 (Paid) – Effortlessly move and copy files on your Mac.
ODrive – (Free Tier) Mount cloud drives locally for instant syncing without using hard drive space. Offers just about everything you should need for free. 
Bitwarden (Free, Multiplatform) – Password Manager, time-saving autofill function, or hold CMD+Down arrow to trigger it in browsers.
Ferdium (Free) – All-in-one messenger and web app consolidator.
Vanilla / Bartender (Free/Paid) – Organize your Mac menu bar.
Eagle (Paid) – Organize your photo/font library.
Davinci Resolve (Free/+Paid Option) – Professional free video editing software.
Blender (Free) – Professional 3D software.
Xnconvert (Free) – Batch image converter and resizer.
Gemini 2 (Mac/iOS) – Duplicate file finder.

MacWhisper (Mac) – Generate transcripts of audio/video for subtitles and more.
Find Any File (Freemium) – When everything else fails, this will find it. I use it to track files installed in the last 2–5 mins after an install, so I know what to remove if I’m only trying something temporarily. Closest I can get to sandboxing on MacOS.
NoTunes (Free) – Blocks iTunes/Apple Music from ever opening when play/pause keys are tapped.
Transnomino (free) – Batch file renamer
Ulangi (Free) – Flashcards with spaced repetition that can be fed with a google sheet.
Unclack (Free) – Mutes your mic when typing. Great for zoom as long as you’re not talking at the same time. Don’t leave it enabled when taking notes while recording audio though.
XnConvert (Free) – Batch image converter.

Doodle (Web) – Simplify meeting scheduling and polls.
Sli.do (Web) – Live Q&A and Polls for your Meetings & Events
Poll Everywhere – Captivates audiences with live activities that deliver actionable results (25 responses free)
Social Fixer – Customize your Facebook feed, filter out undesirable topics (I.e. politics), and mark items as read.
Snapdrop (Web) – Cross-platform in-browser airdrop. No installation is necessary.

Video Speed Controller – browser-specific speed controls: Firefox, Chrome
Download Helper
– Download videos from almost any website. Firefox, Chrome

Definitive App Comparisons
View on Google Sheets