Best AI-Powered Apps to Try in 2025
The best AI chatbots at a glance
App name | Best for | AI model |
|---|---|---|
ChatGPT | The original AI chatbot | OpenAI GPT models, o1 and o3 models, and DALL·E 3 |
DeepSeek | Open source reasoning model | DeepSeek V3 and R1 |
Claude | Creating interfaces with Artifacts | Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus series |
Meta AI | Social media | Llama series |
Google Gemini | Integration with Google Workspace | Gemini and Imagen series |
Microsoft Copilot | Integration with Microsoft 365 | OpenAI's models |
Zapier Agents | Working with AI agents | OpenAI's models |
Poe | Trying lots of AI models | Includes OpenAI's models, StableDiffusionXL, Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, and more |
Perplexity | Internet deep dives | OpenAI, Claude, and DeepSeek models |
Le Chat Mistral | A simple experience | Mistral model series |
Zapier Chatbots | Building your own shareable chatbot | OpenAI's models |
HuggingChat | Leveraging open models | Lots of open models |
Grok | Integration with X | Grok series |
Pi | Personal use | Inflection-2.5 |
you.com | Alternative to GPTs with lots of models | OpenAI models, Claude, Llama, DBRX, and others |
Personal AI | Training AI personas for business use | Proprietary GGT-P, OpenAI's models, Claude |
Merlin AI | Using an AI chatbot through a browser extension | OpenAI models, Claude, Gemini, Mistral |
ZenoChat | Personal productivity | Sophos 2, OpenAI's models, Claude, Llama |
Khan Academy's Khanmigo | Learning | Proprietary |
How do AI chatbots work?
AI chabots take the prompts you write and pass them to their AI model. This model runs the prompt through its systems and returns the results back to the app, so you can read them in a conversational chatbot style.
While the app takes care of the features—for example, saving your conversation history—the AI model takes care of the actual interpretation of your input and the calculations to provide an answer. (Take a look at our breakdown of ChatGPT vs. GPT for more details.)
Many of the apps on this list are powered by multiple models. And either way, app developers can pass additional commands to configure how the models reply, so you may see different results when you try each chatbot, even if they're running on the same engine.
Want to do a deeper dive? Learn how ChatGPT works.
LLMs vs. reasoning models
One of the biggest leaps in AI chatbots recently was the release of reasoning models, like OpenAI o3 and DeepSeek R1.
LLMs are designed to understand and generate human language by predicting the next word in a sequence after your prompt. They're trained with vast amounts of data, uncovering patterns that help them achieve this objective. This pattern-recognition focus means they're not good at solving problems they have limited training data or context on.
Reasoning models, on the other hand, simulate logic processes to solve complex problems. They break down problems into steps, evaluate how to proceed, and show their thought process as they do so. Unlike LLMs, they're trained with less overall data, instead focusing on tasks requiring deduction and chain-of-thought prompting techniques to improve analytical capabilities. This means they don't have as much knowledge and take longer to create a response due to the extra time needed to "think."
Optimists state that reasoning models mark the birth of artificial general intelligence (AGI). But not everyone is on board. There's still a ways to go in AI technology, which means better models, better tools to help them interact with the world, and more advanced learning systems to give them autonomy.
How I selected the best AI chatbots
I've updated this list quite a bit—since this category is evolving so fast, I'm only featuring tools that are adapting to the changes in the technology as fast as possible. Beyond that, here's what I was keeping an eye out for as I tested each AI chatbot online:
AI model quality. The engine behind the app needs to produce consistently good answers, with fluency and decent accuracy.
Conversational experience. The combination of the app and the AI model needs to create an experience that feels good to use, from the kind of output you'll receive to the flexibility in completing the tasks you put forward.
Chat app tools. Does the app offer more than just a message back-and-forth? Can you search the web, generate images, create charts, or build mini-dashboards?
Extra features. Anything on top of entering your prompt and receiving the output is welcome: this includes everything from canvas-like features to solid chat management, and anything in between.
Based on my research and experiences interacting with them, here are the best AI chatbots for you to try. Have fun—I know you will.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t just a buzzword anymore — it’s quickly becoming an essential part of our daily lives. From improving productivity to creating music, editing photos, and even helping with mental health, AI-powered apps are reshaping how we live, work, and play.
As we step deeper into 2025, the number of innovative AI apps on the market has exploded. If you’re someone who loves trying out the latest tech or simply wants to make your daily tasks a little smarter and smoother, this list is for you.
1️⃣ ChatGPT Mobile (OpenAI)
Helps draft emails, texts, reports, explain concepts, summarize articles, and acts as a 24/7 brainstorming partner. Now with voice and image support.
2️⃣ Canva AI Tools
Text-to-image generation, AI-powered content creation, background remover, image enhancer, and video editing features — perfect for creators.
3️⃣ Gemini by Google (AI Assistant)
Answers complex questions, summarizes emails, suggests replies, and automates smart device management with improved context understanding.
4️⃣ Lensa AI (Photo Editor)
Create AI avatars, enhance photos, smooth skin, blur backgrounds, and turn selfies into cartoons or 3D images effortlessly.
5️⃣ Notion AI
Write meeting notes, summaries, blog outlines, database templates, and translations directly in your workspace. Great for productivity lovers.
6️⃣ ELSA Speak (AI English Coach)
Practice speaking English with real-time feedback, personalized lessons, vocabulary improvement, and AI-based daily speaking practice.
7️⃣ Beatoven.ai (Music Creation)
Create royalty-free background music based on mood, genre, and instruments. Ideal for content creators, podcasters, and YouTubers.
8️⃣ Grammarly AI (Writing Assistant)
Rewrite content, adjust tone, generate ideas, summarize text, and check AI-generated content accuracy with the smarter 2025 version.
9️⃣ Runway ML (AI Video Editor)
Remove video backgrounds, generate text-to-video animations, auto-caption, and stylize videos with pro-level AI tools.
🔟 Pi (Personal AI Companion)
An AI designed for emotional support, journaling, motivation, and friendly conversations that remembers your preferences and moods.
ChatGPT pros:
Easy and fun to use
Powerful
ChatGPT cons:
You have to pay at least $20/month for the best features
ChatGPT is the original AI chatbot. After its late 2022 release, it took the world by storm in 2023 and put AI back in the news. It's very simple to use: start a conversation by writing your prompt at the bottom of the screen. As the output comes back, a new entry is created on the left-side menu, so you can keep all your threads separate and interact with them later. If any of these is particularly interesting, you can share a link and show it to others (and they can start where you left off).
You can do everything from text-to-image prompting to data analysis to voice conversations—and it's impressively fast.
ChatGPT remembers what you've said within each conversation, using it as context to provide more accurate output as it moves forward. And it's extremely flexible, tackling tasks in any discipline with an acceptable level of accuracy. You can share your conversations with others and add custom instructions to customize the bot even further. And with the release of the latest o3 model family (currently available in all plans, including free), OpenAI is forcing the AI to slow down and work through complex problems, rather than just running with the first idea it has.
But the innovation doesn't stop here:
The Search tool searches the web based on your prompt and uses the content of all pages to generate the answers, offering the sources both as a list and in a link after every key claim. Watch out, Google.
One step further, Deep Research acts like an AI agent that reads all the search results, understands what it's reading, and makes additional searches to uncover more insights. The result is an in-depth report with a full list of sources.
Projects is a simple interface where you can upload documents about a project and set a system instruction to direct how ChatGPT should respond. It also keeps track of the conversation history for context.
Canvas is a new output mode where you can co-write with ChatGPT. It will use the entirety of the content in the canvas and the attached conversation as context, and the changes smoothly render into view as you keep prompting.
Advanced Voice Mode adds real-time voice interaction to ChatGPT. It honestly feels like you're having a pretty normal conversation.
Give the Operator AI agent a goal, and it will open its dedicated browser window to achieve the task by browsing the web. Still a bit rough around the edges, but it has amazing potential.
Sora, OpenAI's much-hyped AI video model, is only accessible to Pro users in the United States for now.
You can even build your own customized ChatGPT on the platform.
You can also build ChatGPT into your existing workflows with Zapier's ChatGPT integration—that way, no matter where you are, you can use ChatGPT to summarize, generate replies, or anything else you can dream up. Learn more about how to automate ChatGPT, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.
Final Thoughts
AI apps in 2025 are smarter, faster, and more helpful than ever before. Whether you need a writing assistant, photo editor, AI chatbot, or music composer, there’s something out there for everyone.
This list covers just a few of the standout options, but new AI tools are launching every month. The best way to stay ahead is to keep exploring, trying new apps, and finding the ones that make your digital life easier, more productive, or just a little more fun.
Which AI app are you most excited to try? Share your thoughts in the comments on TechBonheur — and don’t forget to bookmark our blog for the latest trending tech updates!
