Ten chatbots and Ai agents you might not know to give as Christmas presents

An alternative: Krea.ai, a creative suite for images, short videos and 3D assets generated and edited in near real time. It is designed for designers, art directors and content creators who want control over style, composition, palettes and upscaling, more than just a social 'wow' effect. There is a free plan, with a limited number of daily generations. The next level is $10 per month and opens up to a much higher number of images and videos. Krea Pro, with wider commercial usage rights and priority in the use of resources, goes up to $35 per month. Above that, a Max plan around $60 per month is designed for high-volume studios and professionals, with early access to new features and higher generation capabilities.

For an agency or a graphics studio, the practical result is that an important part of 'draft' production can be shifted to these tools, while human time is concentrated on selection, fine-tuning and, above all, the creative idea.

Jasper and Predis cover two extremes of the same problem: producing lots of content, consistent with the brand, for different channels, without multiplying human labour.

Jasper.ai acts as a central content engine for marketers 'at scale'. It is a platform that generates text for blogs, newsletters, product pages, ads and entire campaigns, with AI agents trained on tone of voice and brand guidelines. The client uploads examples, documents, style guidelines, and Jasper tries to replicate that 'signature' across all channels.

Prices start at $69 per month.

Predis.ai works even closer to the battlefield, that of social and advertising. The user starts with a concrete target, for example a post for Instagram or an ad for Meta Ads, and the platform generates creative, short videos, carousels and copy already optimised for the target format, complete with editorial calendar, hashtag suggestions, auto-posting and adaptation of formats to the individual platforms.

The economic model is typical of an 'entry level' service for freelancers and micro-agencies: there is a free plan with basic functions, useful for testing the product; the first paid tier is the Core plan, which is around $19 per month; an intermediate level, called Rise, goes up to $40 per month, with more branding and extended functionalities; at the top is the Enterprise+ plan, which goes up to $212 per month and is aimed at those who manage many social accounts with high volumes of creativity.

In short: for just a few tens of dollars per month, one buys a sort of 'serial copier' of creativity and variants, which frees up time for customer relations and the strategic part, the part that no generative model can fully automate.

In the world of software development, two names have changed the way everyday work is understood: GitHub Copilot, which presents itself as an assistant within the development environment, and Claude (from Anthropic), which allows programming by conversing in natural language. If the former is more used by programmers, the latter is preferred by 'vibe coders'. Ordinary people who often only have a good idea but little or no programming experience. Those who design a small management system for their sports club or an internal tool for the office can explain in Italian what they want to achieve, and the model generates, modifies and above all explains the code in a conversation that can last days or weeks. There is a free plan, with however generous limits for personal use; the Claude Pro plan, designed for those who use the ia every day, costs $20 per month if you pay month-to-month, which becomes about $17 per month with an annual subscription; for teams, Anthropic offers a Claude Team plan at $30 per month per person, reduced to $25 with annual, with a minimum of five seats, while the Enterprise and Max plans, designed for intensive loads, have few public details and prices on request.

GitHub Copilot, on the other hand, has become a habit for many developers. Integrated in the most widely used editors, from Visual Studio Code to the JetBrains suites, it suggests whole lines and functions, helps write tests, proposes refactoring and detects possible bugs, reducing the amount of 'service' code that a human has to type by hand.

There is a free plan, Copilot Free, with limited features and templates, and on to Copilot Pro, which for individual developers costs $10 a month or $100 a year, with unlimited completions and access to the latest templates. Above that, for those who want advanced features and more autonomous agents, there is Copilot Pro+ at $39 per month. In the corporate world, Copilot Business costs $19 per user per month, while Copilot Enterprise goes up to $39, adding security, policy and internal code management features.

The lives of those who work (or dabble) with video have been changed by services such as Vizard.ai and Descript.

Vizard.ai fulfils the promise many social media managers have been making for years: upload a webinar, interview or video podcast and get, almost automatically, a battery of short clips ready for TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts. The AI detects the most interesting passages, converts the format to vertical, adds subtitles, suggests titles and descriptions.

The free plan allows you to work on about an hour of content per month, but with watermarking and limited functions. The creator plan is $29, and offers a few hundred minutes of uploads, 4k export and watermark removal. For those working in a group, the $39 business plan is better, with more minutes available, shared workspaces and brand management tools.

Descript approaches the problem from another angle: it transforms audio and video editing into something very similar to editing a text document. The software automatically transcribes the content; to remove a phrase or pause, simply delete it from the text, and editing follows. Added to this are audio cleaning tools, filler removal, voice cloning and an AI editing assistant.

Here, too, the model is freemium. The free plan offers one hour of content per month and some basic functions. The Hobbyist plan, designed for individual creators, costs $16. It then goes up to the $50 Business plan, up to the Enterprise plan with customised pricing.

Music is one of the most controversial areas of AI, because of the legal implications and the sensitivity of artists. But here too there is the same promise: to 'democratise' an activity that previously required specific skills. Now people with no technical knowledge, but artistic sensitivities and good ideas can also make music.

 Suno has become one of the most recognisable text-to-music brands: the user types in a prompt, indicating genre, mood, duration and perhaps a few lyric keywords, and the system returns a complete song, with vocals, lyrics and arrangement, useful for jingles, soundtracks for social videos or internal demos.

The platform maintains a freemium model. The free plan is sufficient for many non-professional needs. Those seeking more control, more usage and higher quality can switch to the paid plans, which are also interesting for speeding up the work of professional musicians. At $8 or $24 per month.

Udio follows a similar philosophy, but is popular with independent producers and creators seeking finer control over song structure, dynamics, instruments and vocals. The interface aims at an audience that wants to intervene in detail, rather than just 'accept' a finished song. Again, there is a free plan and others at $10 and $30 per month.

Taken one by one, these services look like niche tools. Seen together, they tell another story: the fragmentation of AI into micro-services, for specific activities.

They can make all the difference for a small firm, a SME struggling to find digital skills on the market, a creator or a hobbyist, in a wide variety of fields, from marketing to music. And if we also throw in everything that can be done with generative coding, there really are no boundaries any more.