AI versus Marshy - My Experience with AI Apps

I’ve been writing about AI for a while now, and I’ve had the chance to try out a bunch of different apps and tools. In this article, I want to share my thoughts on what I’ve learned from testing over 40 AI apps in the last year. I’ve been keeping track of all these subscriptions using 1password, and I’ve got some interesting insights to share. Let’s dive in and see what I’ve discovered. -Marshy I signed up for over 40 AI apps in the last year - and here’s the hot tip: you’re not missing out A non-exhaustive list of AI apps I’ve tested over the last year: Audiopen Alfred AI Send Potion Hume AI AgentHub Headshot Pro Phonely AI Play.HT LiCode Strut Browserless CleverAds Eclipse AI Displayr Zotly Eesel AI Blaze StockMusic.app Reflect Lily AI Therapist Spacebar Hexomatic Comigo for ADHD Imagica AI LiterallyAnything.io LowCoderr QuickCreator Midjourney TurboGTM Copy.ai CodeDesign.ai Permar Summit AI coach Stockimg.ai Data.ai PromptLoop ChatGPT That’s over 40 and I know I’m missing some. The way I captured this information is by going over newly created logins in 1password over the last 12 months. 1password is so handy for tracking all of these subscriptions! Of these - I have paid cash money for 5 of them ( Blaze , Midjourney , CodeDesign.ai , ChatGPT , and Audiopen ). There’s only 2 I’m currently paying for - Audiopen and ChatGPT . There’s something in this. I have money. I write a newsletter about AI. There’s room for more subscriptions here. I’m not the target customer for all of these apps - but I think the bigger reason I’m not paying for more is that a lot of these apps are quite sh*tty to use. On the ones I actually paid for: I snagged a deal by jumping on CodeDesign.ai’s lifetime offer. It’s an AI website builder that claims to make spinning up pages/sites quick and easy. Spoiler alert: It’s slow and frustrating and easier for me to spin things up in Webflow, Carrd, or basically anything else that doesn’t completely suck. Oh… you’re still offering lifetime deals? Great. They’re still offering “lifetime deals” too… ​ Blaze.ai portrays itself as an AI marketing tool. I signed up for a month and found it slowed things down and added little value to my existing workflows. Cool look, not useful though. Their own branding is nice - I like the retro comic schtick! But it was painful to use and added little to what I could divine from ChatGPT or my own skills/templates/frameworks. I struggled to justify “another” cost on top of existing subscriptions. ​ Midjourney works well. But it’s expensive to set up an account that doesn’t make your images public. This is an important detail if you’re doing client work (like I do). It’s not easy to use. The Discord request interface “works” (Midjourney says because its in beta). But it’s not fun to use, requires learning technical commands to get the output you desire, and the learning curve isn’t straightforward. I did knock out a beta version of our electronicmusicnerd logo though! Trained by an old ITM logo… Did I want to give any of these software any more of my hard-earned cash? Hell no! The two apps I do pay for regularly work well. Originally appeared in newsletter : AI versus Marshy #50: one year’s worth of looking at AI! 🥳