Handy AI tools for science writers

Photo credit: Markus Spiske/Pexel

We all think about it, and most of us probably find AI useful. In a global survey of what news organisations are doing with AI by LSE, more than 75% of respondents – media and newsrooms – use it to speed up news gathering and production. The Associated Press has "hired" the Wordsmith algorithm for analyzing the financial reports of companies. It does this faster and more accurately than human correspondents: if necessary Wordsmith can produce 2,000 articles per second. At Bloomberg, the Cyborg system has taken on similar functions. BBC News has the Juicer AI "at work", looking through all the news and events happening around it. It looks at RSS feeds and posts from news outlets and breaks them down into four categories: “people,” “places,” “organizations,” and “things“. 

In short, AI is being integrated into newsrooms and into the lives of journalists. Of course, AI is also entering freelancing, including scientific writing. Here are some tools that can help lighten the load and increase your efficiency, while retaining the human element of our craft. (I skipped the widely used AI tools to be able to introduce you to some lesser-known ones. If you like, send us some comments.)

What can a science writer/journalist do with AI?

Information collection

Especially when working with scientific papers or archive material, AI can become a good assistant for searching and systematization. Some AIs that can collect and process information on demand do it so well that even scientists use them to collect statistics, data from other articles to create a literary review, and so on.

Information processing 

This is a promising area, especially if you need, for example, to work with data from open sources (open statistics data or scientific data from articles, for instance). Working with endless numbers can be tedious (imagine trying to collect information about the African elephant population over many years from different sources). But there's a catch: letting AI process information that's not intended for other people to see (like feeding it with confidential information) can lead to serious privacy issues.

Everyday tasks

Every writer faces a lot of daily routines, from translating audio into text after the interview to browsing social networks such as X or Bluesky to find some idea or a new angle to the article. Such tasks can also be delegated to AI, with subsequent review and editing of the result – of course. And if everything is clear with such a routine, then other tasks can be a challenge. Sometimes AI can become Watson for Holmes: by communicating with it, you can get insights or formulate important topics and the structure of the article for yourself.

Among other things, it can sometimes be useful to use AI to... recognize AI in other content (like recognising that someone's text is made with AI).

Tools to work with the articles and information

Note that this is a list of resources for science writers and journalists and not an evaluation of the best tools available. We retain no liability for the use you will make of this information and tools.

ChatPDF. How often do you want to talk to the authors of an article, but they don't get in touch? You can upload the desired article or other text to this neural network and ask your questions. AI can prompt you to important answers based on the used article, as well as new questions.

SciSpace. This AI selects articles based on your request, forming a short summary, using quotes from articles with links to them. For each statement, it provides at least 2-3 quotes from the article about the particular topic. In addition, it has the already mentioned ChatPDF built in, which allows you to "chat" with the article. It also helps collect the necessary links and citations. The resulting text surely cannot be pasted into your article as it is but can be used as a starting point. Another tool with similar functionality is ScienceOS. 

ConnectedPapers. This will help you draw a graph of interactions between different articles: by selecting one article that interests you, you will immediately receive a whole collection of articles related to this one – quotes, uses, mentions, and articles by the same authors. This will allow you to track citations and mentions, find related articles, and get a more complete picture of the subject.

Research Rabbit. Another tool for visualization of the papers and authors' connection. Among other things, you can set up your own alerts for certain publications and create your system for reviewing articles.

Jenny. A large portal with AI, primarily aimed at scientists, but also suitable for scientific writers. The developers call Jenny a virtual research assistant: Jenny is useful for all work with articles, finding citations, etc.; it’s convenient to cite sources by referring to specific fragments, for instance, or work with sources in languages other than English. You can also use Elicit for that type of work.

Perplexity. Another AI that can create a summary on a specific topic based on different sources. You can choose the sources yourself – for example, only scientific papers from a specific website.

Consensus. AI tool for selecting articles, but unlike the others, it also shows the "level" of consensus: how confident the scientific community is in a particular fact or connection. Algorithms recognize key statements, hypotheses and conclusions in articles. Then the AI classifies articles by their attitude toward the question (Yes, Possibly, Mixed and No) and calculates the percentage rate.

DMINR. This site will be useful for those working in investigative journalism with a large data set. The site offers many options for fact-checking, and while you can't rely solely on AI for fact-checking, you can use it for research.

Varia. Another large portal for organising your science article library, bookmarks and citations. You can also set up alerts for news from social networks or media, using specific tags (it has a wide network of media, from the Guardian and The Washington Post to the local newsrooms).

Tools to routines

Otter.ai. It is an automatic transcription service that is useful for writers working with audio and video recordings. Otter not only transcribes but also helps you search for keywords.

Napkin AI. If you need to draw a diagram, a graph or something else, but nothing comes to mind, Napkin AI can help. Napkin will make a clear scheme based on your text. It will offer several designs and styles, which will significantly speed up the time it takes to create a scheme. 

ExplainPaper. This service will help you if you can’t understand a term or a paragraph of an article. Just upload the article to the site, highlight the place that confuses you, and AI will help you figure it out.

Several AIs can be used to detect the presence of AI-generated content in text, video, or even audio. Pindrop (audio), RealityDefender, and other AIs will help you.

What AIs have you found useful (or not)? Do let us know via this form.