Save 30% with code HTAI25 at press.jhu.edu.

Buy the Book at Amazon
Buy the Book at JHUP

Models

Clicking the links below will open the listed AI tools in new tabs in your browser. The list includes the frontier LLM models (proprietary, open-source, regional and reasoning) as well as consolidators (like Poe) and a few fine-tuned models (like Latimer). Agents and browser extensions are below, but API tools are now on a separate page.

PROPRIETARY FRONTIER MODELS: Here are some AI models you should know. They are from different companies, using different different neural networks and with different personalities and abilities. The paid versions are often substantially better and smarter.

THE BIG THREE 

There are now 1000s of GenAI products, models and tools. Some models are more creative writers while others are better at math or video. Specialized models (below) offer more realistic conversation (Sesame), better infographics (Napkin) or scientific research tools (Future House), but if you want to use one model: the big three (ChatGPT  from OpenAI, Gemini from Google & Claude from Anthropic) still provide the best collection of power and features in one place.  Ethan Mollick has great advice on which model you should use and on why/how to give your AI a job interview.

All of them have slow, medium and fast models (slow for analysis, medium for most tasks, and fast chat when you just need a quick idea from your creative Uncle Claude). ChatGPT 5.2 will even select the right mode for your prompt (but this means that if you are using the free version it will send you to the cheapest and worse model 5.2 Instant. You need to select 5.2 THINKING to get a substantially better model!!) The big three also offer the most standard features in one place: reasoning and deep research models, voice mode, visual mode (to see images and documents), the ability to create images, documents and code (and run the code) and a mobile app. There are specialty tools (on the API page) for video (Hailou, Kling and Google’s own Veo 3) but you can also make video natively in ChatGPT and Gemini; making video within a smarter multimodal model allows for easier prompting but offers fewer cinematic tools. Even these general tools are much better at math now.

What you get for free changes constantly and the names and placements of models are a confusing mess. You will need to hunt for buttons and drop-down menus to find what you want (especially important to make sure you get an internet search when you want it) while you ponder the difference between Deep Research (Gemini) and Extended Thinking (Claude). Also try Google AI Studio which has the latest betas and cool new tools.

You will need to login, even for the free versions, but this also allows you to adjust your settings to turn off training features. You may or may not want ChatGPT to remember everything about you in order to respond better.  A month of a paid model will give you a better sense of what these models can really do but at the beginning of a new release you can sometimes try the best tools a few times a day for free. e. (Poe, BoodleBox and other consolidators allow you to try a variety of models through one platform for one fee.) Also try the app (and voice mode!!): it will give you a better idea of how AI is about to change everything. They get news from different places: Google also has a deal with the Associated Press to get real-time news updates. (Meta uses Fox and CNN and Grok uses X.)

Copilot is just another version of ChatGPT (Microsoft owns half of OpenAI) that integrates with Microsoft projects–so it should be better with Excel and Ppt. If your organization gives you access to this in MS Office you should also be FERPA and HIPPA secure.

OTHER MODELS

OPEN SOURCE MODELS: There are now open source models that are just as good as the best proprietary frontier models, and even better in some specialized areas. You can download most of these models from Github, Azure (Microsoft) or HuggingFace. You can then fine-tune and run them on your laptop, which deals with most privacy issues but also transfers the security risk to you.

REGIONAL and CULTURALLY-SPECIFIC MODELS: Since people and cultures think differently, we are starting to see LLMs that are trained on culturally specific data sets. Here is an MIT paper on the problems and the process of creating cultural and regional LLMs. Note that if you want a culturally specific answer, you can and should still try this with the frontier models (try asking Claude to response as a Black professor and compare the response to Latimer).

REASONING MODELS: In 2025 models started to process through problems before answering. They do NOT actually reason (although it appears that way) but they have internal instructions that break problems down into steps which (especially when combined with web searching) improves accuracy and allows much more complicated problem solving. You need to use them a little differently (more here): give it something hard to do and note (or ask) how it describes its reasoning. Look at this example. The progress here has been rapid and substantial (read this report about the new o3 from Dec 2024). Most of the above models now have free reasoning (but with different names so look for buttons: Kimi calls this “researcher.”)

CONSOLIDATORS: Poe (currently $5/month!!) ChatPlayground ($17/month) and ChatHub are consolidators that provides access to multiple AI through one interface. BoodleBox also offers a wide range of models and also lots of educational tools and controls.

CUSTOM BOTS: Each of the big models also has a way to build and then distribute your own fine-tuned applications with your own prompt instructions. There are also GPTs (from OpenAI), Assistants (from HuggingFace), Bots (from Poe). There are also educational platforms, like BoodleBox which allows the teacher to see everything students do–and has lots of other faculty features like “coach mode” which the chat default (and won’t provide students with direct answers. Much more (including how to build them) on the Custom Bot page.

MINI MODELS and EDGE AI: These are smaller, faster and more specialized (often) OPEN SOURCE tools that you customize to live and run on your phone. Note that the ways to make an LLM better are model size (see Frontier models above), data set size and and the amount of training. Since it is not clear that larger more capable models will be cost effective, these faster smaller models (with more training) may end up being more useful. Apple Intelligence will test this idea. More smaller models are coming. 

AGENTS

A chatbot can only chat with you, but an “agent” can plan and execute a series of tasks, like building you a website or finding information on your computer. Agents code, but that is essentially everything you do on a computer, so don’t think of these just as coding tools. Agents can use multiple tools and know when to switch, so an AI agent can manage a workflow. It is like a contractor rather than a chatbot. Here are details about the “Agent2Agent” (or A2A) or “Model Context Protocol” that create these two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered tools. The distinction between agents and vibe-coding apps is narrowing–the difference is partly workflow and that many of the apps use other foundation models. Stay tuned. There are now lots of demos of agents doing students homework.

AGENIC BROWSERS

First came the browser extensions (with a large cohort of fill in the answer cheating extensions). Google now has its Gemini AI built into its browser(although AI mode is substantially better than the default AI summaries.) Microsoft Edge now has CoPilot integrated. Chrome and other browsers are also starting to integrate, but we now have new ground up AI-browsers with the ability to both ask questions and do things built in.

ROBOTS & MORE

AI is also propelling an advance in robotics including new home robots like Neo, Figure 03, the Walker S2 (from UBTech now actually mass delivered) and robots dogs). Look at the ridable hydrogen-powered Corleo from Kawasaki. There is also AlterEgo, which allows you to have silent (“almost telepathic”) conversations with AI or another human.

EpochAI is an important independent organization that is keeping track of these models, how they compare and where we might be going. They maintain a great dashboardcomparing capabilities of the best models (against their own benchmarks) and also this larger data set of virtual all models. They produce excellent reports about trends including a recent prediction that AI will continue to improve rapidly.

You can find a complete list of AI products (tracked by Ithaka S+R) here

Here is a great AI guide for students.