THE FIELD GUIDE / Explore all AI tools
Find your inspirationTHE WIDER AI LANDSCAPE
Start with the task, not the brand. Explore conversational assistants, coding collaborators and tools for building agents—without treating them as interchangeable.
Official sources and starting prices checked on 5 October 2026. Muse here means Meta’s personal AI agent.
A conversational assistant for exploring questions, researching, working with files and turning early ideas into drafts or other useful outputs.
A useful starting point: A flexible first stop when you want to think something through, learn a topic, write, analyse material or create.
A coding agent that works with a repository or development environment to investigate tasks, change code and return work for review.
A useful starting point: Software work where you can describe the goal, provide project context and review the resulting changes and checks.
A dot is an always-on agent in ChatGPT that can keep a defined task moving across connected tools and return with progress or a decision for you.
A useful starting point: Ongoing work with a clear goal, useful connected context and a person ready to review the dot's progress.
Meta's Muse is a personal agent designed to work across connected apps, remember useful context and carry tasks forward with permission checkpoints.
A useful starting point: People in supported regions who want an agent to help with personal goals and connected-app tasks over time.
Grok combines conversational help with image and video creation, voice, file analysis and optional connections to personal tools.
A useful starting point: People who want a multimodal assistant and are comfortable checking its answers and managing a shared usage allowance.
Gemini is Google's assistant for conversation, research and creation, with paid Google AI plans adding higher limits and features across Google services.
A useful starting point: People who want an assistant alongside Google services and prefer to begin with a free tier or a low-cost UK subscription.
The consumer Copilot app offers conversational help for answers, writing, ideas and images, with some Microsoft services adding Copilot inside their own apps.
A useful starting point: Everyday questions, drafting and creative help, especially if you already use Microsoft devices and services.
Microsoft 365 Copilot brings AI chat and assistance into Microsoft 365 work apps, with work-data grounding and organisation controls on eligible business plans.
A useful starting point: Teams that already work in Microsoft 365 and want AI help close to their documents, messages and collaboration tools.
Copilot Studio lets organisations build agents for internal workflows or publish them to external channels such as websites and apps.
A useful starting point: Teams that need to build, govern and publish agents connected to business workflows or data.
Microsoft Foundry is an Azure platform for selecting models, building agents and managing AI applications with developer and enterprise controls.
A useful starting point: Developers and organisations building their own AI applications or agents rather than choosing a ready-made consumer assistant.
GitHub Copilot adds code suggestions, chat and agent workflows across supported editors and GitHub, with plan-based models and monthly AI-credit allowances.
A useful starting point: Developers who want AI assistance close to their editor, terminal and GitHub repositories.
Claude is an assistant for conversation, writing, analysis and coding, with paid tiers adding more usage and tools such as Claude Code.
A useful starting point: People who want help with substantial writing, analysis or coding tasks and a conversation they can steer and revise.
Perplexity searches the web and produces answers with inline citations, with paid tiers adding broader access to research tools, models and file work.
A useful starting point: Starting web research when you want sources attached to an answer and a quick route into follow-up questions.
Grok Bot is a persistent cloud-computer agent that can work in connected apps, run routines and handle tasks in parallel, returning for review when needed.
A useful starting point: Delegating repeatable, multi-step work across apps when you can carefully manage account access and review actions.