20 genuinely useful AI apps for Android

AI is everywhere right now — but let’s be honest: It’s easy to slap some sort of silly text generation button onto an app and call it “AI.” It’s much more difficult to come up with a truly compelling way this type of technology can actually be helpful.

And once you move away from web-based AI utilities and start focusing specifically on Android, the pool of commendable candidates only gets smaller.

Don’t despair, though: There are some standout Android apps that put artificial intelligence to genuinely intelligent use. They range from multipurpose chatbots to tools for smarter note-taking and reminder-making, image analysis and manipulation, and even personal memory enhancement — among other useful tasks.

Just keep in mind that, by its very nature, much of this generative AI technology is still woefully unreliable and inaccurate. You really have to double-check what it tells you, especially when it comes to more info-oriented uses — and/or you have to think carefully about the best way to interact with it to get the results you need.

But the apps here all have some manner of redeeming value when it comes to professional productivity — particularly if you think carefully about how you’re using them and why. And I’ll try to guide you toward the types of uses that are generally most reliable and beneficial for each specific item.

All of the tools listed here are either free or with a reasonably robust free tier, too, unless otherwise noted.

Shall we?

AI on Android part I: On-demand assistance

We’ll start with the simplest and most well-known form of AI, in this current incarnation, and that’s the humble and at times hilariously off-kilter chatbot.

Within that arena, the first and most easily accessible option is Google’s own (1) Gemini Android assistant (which may well be on your device whether you install it or not). Gemini can do all the standard AI chatbot stuff, in terms of answering questions, generating images, and providing general information — with all the standard asterisks, too, that the info it gives you may not always be entirely accurate — but where Gemini really shines is in its ability to help control your device and interact with your data from various Google services.