May 13: Student Picks for Useful AI Tools

May 13, 2025

I just finished my second semester of teaching AI Journalism at the University of Illinois Chicago. Each semester, I ask my students to give short presentations on an AI tool that they use for anything — journalism, school, research, lifestyle management, etc. We learn a lot from the sessions when the students demo how the tool works, explain who owns/built it and the pricing model.

You can read about my Fall 2024 semester class picks, and here’s what my Spring 2025 class shared:

Derrick Hood shared Headline Hero-Free, Trend-Aware Headline Creation from Yeschat. I became a big fan of this immediately. I think it produces better SEO-driven headlines than the ChatGPT Headline Hero tools.

Interactivity production was another big theme of the semester. Kenny Tran presented Atlas AI for creating summaries and quizzes. While some use it for school, it could be used by journalists for interactivity.

Lorena Mendez showed us Knowt, a study guide and summarizing tool. It’s free with paid upgrades up to $60 a year. Its video and PDF summarizer could be useful for journalists. It’s a good Swiss Army knife tool. The free version has a lot of bandwidth, so I would start there.

Nouma Basharet showed us RYTR, a writing and editing tool similar to Notion.

Emilia Morales presented Canva Magic Design, which has been using AI in exciting new ways for years. Angela Szubra demonstrated how to use Napkin AI (a favorite of mine) to brainstorm designs by using prompts. You also can upload data and choose from a variety of templates.

I use ElevenLabs.io in my classes for building audio news stories. But Reda El Boukhari demonstrated its translation capabilities, which were impressive. I also have students load their stories into Eleven Labs and convert it to audio. By listening to their story on top of reading it, they learn to tighten their writing. It’s a great technique to try with young reporters.

My students eat a lot healthier than I did in college. Henry Taala shared Eat This Much, an AI-driven meal planner. Karol Gniecki showed us Cal.ai, which was built by some high school students. Both phone apps are good for managing weight loss and healthy eating, but any food journalist could use it for tracking calories or researching contents of various restaurant dishes.

I’m typically not a big fan of Elon Musk’s Grok, but Giselle Martinez shared some interesting ways it has been implemented to X/Twitter. I was impressed with using @grok to fact-check a post or photo on X/Twitter.

Other favorite tools from class:

Dylan Drews, Riffusion

Nitya Mehta, Looka AI

Alexis Schofield, Wordtune

Mia Segura, Character.ai

William Gaines Jr, Adobe Acrobat Pro (he did a chat and math calculations using an accident report)

Lizaveta Rahatsiuk, Meta Glasses

Adam Belmares, MindGrasp

Jlynne Askew, Elicit for research.

You can read all of our AI stories and opinion pieces on The Red Line Project’s AI Storytelling page. If you’re launching an AI class anytime soon, feel free to read my previous post on what I learned in my first semester teaching an AI Journalism course.

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ONA/Microsoft AI in Journalism Initiative

We have some new trainings in the Online News Association/Microsoft AI in Journalism Initiative training program. We have scheduled sessions through mid-summer. The trainings are free for ONA members and $25 for non-members. You can register for the trainings here.

The trainings, which last a little over an hour, run each month with a few extra trainings and mini-labs sprinkled in. They will be recorded for those who miss the live Zoom trainings or want to replay them. I helped them design the trainings and conduct several of them.

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New in AI and other tools:

Cloudbooklet AI
AI tools directory
GlobalGPT
An all-in-one AI hub where you can access ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney, Flux, Gemini and Perplexity.
GuideJar
Creates AI-powered step-by-step guides
Forensic OSINT
Chrome Extension used to preserve online evidence and is used by OSINT investigators.
Screenshot-to-code
Take a screenshot of any website and make a clone in minutes.

Become a sponsor: Would you like to sponsor future Journalist’s Toolbox™ newsletters? Our rates are reasonable and our sponsors get results. Contact me at mikereilley1 [at] gmail [dot] com

Textbooks

The Journalist’s Toolbox

My new book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in December. You can order it here,

Data + Journalism

Samantha Sunne and I co-authored a textbook, “Data + Journalism” that’s available now on Routledge. (Order here). It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z.

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