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The Best AI Tools for Creators
+ new username, content repurposing and more
Roberto Nickson
August 04, 2024
Welcome back to The Signal, a weekly letter where I share stories, trends, strategies and insights to help you level up as a creator and win on the internet.
As always, feel free to reply directly to this email with any questions or comments. I love hearing from you.
Today’s topics:
The Best AI Tools for Creators
New Username + Repurposing Content
Best AI Tools for Creators
Before we get started, a few things to note.
Our ideation and research tool for creators – Pulse – is launching soon. We’re in early beta testing with creators. If you’d like to test it - join the waiting list here.
The tools listed below are all my genuine, organic opinion. Nothing is sponsored. However, some of the links are affiliate links. Which means if you sign up, I get paid.
Let’s get into the list.
The Best Tools for Generating AI Video
AI video is progressing fast. There are two tools in particular here that I am calling out as best-in-class:
Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha. Paired with Midjourney 6.1 - this is a lethal combination. For an example of how I am using it, check out this post on Metav3rse. I used Runway to animate the famous Ben Affleck meme.
Luma Dream Machine. Results are similar to Gen-3 Alpha, but Luma has a feature that sets it apart - key-framing. You can choose an image to animate from, and an image to animate into. This results in some really unique memes.
For creating AI avatars and digital clones, Synthesia and HeyGen are the top options. I give HeyGen the edge – and is useful for talking-head clones. I have a friend named Varun who has used a clone exclusively for the last 6 months on his Instagram if you want to see HeyGen in action.
The Best Tools for Generating AI Images
While Midjourney 6.1 is still best-in-class, Firefly, Meta AI and so many Stable Diffusion based models are almost on par with it now.
I do want to let you know about another open-source model I have my eye on - FLUX, which you can try a demo of here.
FLUX represents what is likely the most indistinguishable-from-reality images that I have seen AI generate.
The Best Tools for AI Audio and Podcasting
The absolute best-in-class tool for voice cloning, dubbing, sound effects and realistic speech is Eleven Labs. It’s one of those tools that is helpful in just about any creative’s workflow. A must-have in your toolkit.
For music generation, I recommend Suno and Udio. These models are so good that I’ve gotten some of the AI songs I’ve generated in my head. These are great alternatives to stock music libraries, and you can customize music and lyrics to fit the content you are making.
Below is a song I generated with Suno:
For speech enhancement, I use the audio suite integrated into Adobe Premiere. It’s fantastic. There is also a web version you can use to clean up dialogue.
For podcasters, there are a few tools I recommend. AutoPod is an amazing tool for editing your shows, and works for sequences with up to 10 cameras and 10 microphones. It’s magic. It also creates endless social clips from your long-form content automatically. Opus and many others do this effectively as well.
The Best AI Tools for Editing Images
For modifying images - Adobe’s generative fill is goated. It’s actually available on web now which is awesome. I have a brand deal with Adobe scheduled to go live in the next few weeks about Firefly, which I’m excited about because generative fill is genuinely my favorite AI tool available for visual creatives.
For upscaling images, Magnific is my go-to. You can see how I integrate it into my workflow here.
The Best AI Tools for Editing Videos
For adding captions to your videos, look no further than Submagic. It’s also a great tool for cutting long-form into short clips, adding transitions, etc – highly recommend.
Viggle is a fun tool. It allows you to insert people into any animation you’d like. It’s how people are creating the viral Lil Yachty videos you’ve probably seen all over the internet.
And there you have it, that is my short-list for absolute best-in-class AI tools. Hopefully Pulse will be joining those ranks soon.
If you want a more comprehensive list of AI tools, check out my friend Matt’s resource - Future Tools.
My New Instagram Username
I have a new username on Instagram - @rpn!
Stoked about this as it will be much easier to build a brand around my initials. My last username (now assigned to a secondary account) was a bit tricky to memorize and spell out for people.
Working on TikTok and Twitter next…
Content Repurposing
I can’t emphasize this enough - make sure you are repurposing, or even just straight reposting your best performing content from time to time.
Two days ago, I reposted one of my most popular videos (with a slightly modified intro and music edit) – and to no surprise - it’s performing incredibly strong, reaching millions of new people.
What I want you to note here, is that the original video (posted ~7 months ago) only reached 3.3% of my followers. And while it reached 3.3 million accounts, there’s another 2.3 billion active Instagram users and 5.3 billion internet users with the potential to see it.
Repurpose and repost. Of course, you don’t want to abuse it – but always remember that the vast majority of your followers did not see it the first time.
Quick Hits
This section includes things I have found interesting and helpful this week.
‣ Zuck wrote about why open-source AI is the path forward. Very thoughtful read.
‣ Apple published details about a rare Steve Jobs appearance at a 1983 design conference.
‣ Meta just launched SAM 2 – a unified model for real-time promptable object segmentation in images and videos that achieves state-of-the-art performance.
