AI Tools Benefitting Students in 2025: Beyond the Realm of ChatGPT
In the ever-evolving world of technology, AI-powered tools are increasingly becoming essential for students, aiding in research, writing, and academic workflows. Here, we explore some of the most popular AI tools for students in 2025, focusing on Quillbot, Perplexity, Gamma, NotebookLM, and Google Gemini.
Quillbot: A Comprehensive Writing Assistant
Quillbot, an AI-powered writing tool, offers a suite of features tailored to students' needs. Key features include an AI-powered paraphrasing tool with nine unique writing modes, advanced summarization, an integrated citation generator, a grammar checker, a plagiarism checker, translation capabilities for 45+ languages, and AI detection tools that identify AI-generated or refined text.
The main benefits for students are plagiarism avoidance, improved writing clarity and quality, time-saving through quick summarization and citation generation, multilingual support, boosted productivity, and cost-effectiveness. Compared to competitors like Grammarly, Quillbot is especially praised for its holistic approach to academic writing, integrating paraphrasing, summarization, and citation generation in a single suite that addresses students’ specific research and writing challenges.
Perplexity: A New Approach to Search Engines
Perplexity, a search engine offering well-structured answers with clickable sources, provides a different experience from traditional search engines like Google. However, its freemium plan has limits, and premium plans with different benefits start from $20 per month. Users should be aware that while Perplexity can help reduce the time spent cross-checking information, it can occasionally generate incorrect information or misinterpret sources.
Gamma: A Presentation Creator for Students
Gamma, an AI-powered presentation creator, helps students generate presentations, documents, and webpages using prompts and notes. It also allows basic image generation using AI tools and supports real-time collaboration and feedback with other students. Gamma's free plan has branding restrictions, with a "Made with Gamma" watermark appearing on content made with the AI tool. Monthly plans range from $10-$25.
NotebookLM: Google's AI-Powered Research and Study Tool
NotebookLM, Google's AI-powered research and study tool, helps students summarize documents, create study outlines, and ask questions about their uploaded materials. It also allows organizing different projects into notebooks and sharing them with classmates and collaborators. The mobile apps for NotebookLM have fewer features compared to the web version.
Google Gemini: Google Workspace's AI Chatbot and Search Assistant
Google Gemini, Google's AI chatbot and search assistant integrated with Google Workspace, features 'Gems' (AI assistants for specific tasks), a math-focused model, conversational learning, and the ability to analyze images, charts, and documents.
AI Tools on the African Continent
AI tools are increasingly being used by students on the African continent for tasks such as creating study plans, summarizing documents, and designing presentations. Some lecturers remain wary of AI, arguing that it could erode students' intelligence and independent thinking, while others are taking a more measured approach, encouraging students to explore AI without letting it replace core learning.
The Balance between AI and Learning
As AI tools continue to evolve and become more integrated into students' lives, it's essential to maintain a balance between leveraging these tools and fostering independent thinking and learning. Some students worry they are becoming too dependent on AI and are deliberately scaling back, while others are embracing these tools to streamline their academic work and produce polished, well-rounded papers more efficiently.
- Quillbot's AI-powered features, such as its paraphrasing tool, grammar checker, and citation generator, make it an ideal technology for students in education-and-self-development, as it enhances their writing clarity, quality, and productivity.
- In technology, NotebookLM, Google's AI-powered research and study tool, offers benefits to students by simplifying document summarization, creating study outlines, and promoting an efficient academic workflow, especially when used in conjunction with the mobile app.
