🔍 Today’s Top AI Tools You Should Know (U.S. Focus)

By Gulam Sibtain | July 2025

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1. Grok‑3 (xAI / Elon Musk’s AI Chatbot)

Grok‑3 is xAI’s flagship model, released recently with 10× more compute than Grok‑2, excelling on benchmarks like AIME and GPQA for reasoning and STEM tasks — rivaling GPT‑4o. Features like “Big Brain” mode enable step-by-step logic, and DeepSearch scours the web & X for answers. Grok‑3 mini offers faster, affordable performance. Access is available in X Premium+ or SuperGrok plans. 1

2. Mistral Medium 3 & Devstral

Mistral AI’s Medium 3 is a high-performance open model—at or above 90% of Claude Sonnet 3.7—and is available via API on Azure, Sagemaker, and Google Vertex. Their Devstral model (Apache-licensed) outperforms models like Gemma 3 on coding benchmarks. These flexible, low-cost tools are gaining traction in 2025. 2

3. Perplexity AI & Comet Browser

Perplexity AI offers an AI‑powered search engine that generates responses with inline citations, ideal for research and fact-checking. They also introduced the Comet AI browser—an agentic, Chromium-based browser which aids research by summarizing content and automating workflows. 3

4. OpenAI Operator

OpenAI’s Operator is an automated agent capable of browsing websites, filling forms, scheduling appointments, and completing online tasks on behalf of users. Released in early 2025 to Pro-tier users, it automates routine workflows using GPT-powered logic. 4

5. Kruti by Ola Krutrim

India’s homegrown agentic AI assistant — Kruti can book rides, pay bills, order food, and generate images. The multilingual assistant supports 13+ Indian languages and uses agent‑to‑agent reasoning to process tasks contextually. It’s scalable for finance, education, and on-ground services. 5

6. Vastav AI — Deepfake Detection for Truth

Vastav AI is a real-time deepfake detection tool used by law enforcement and media. It analyzes metadata, frame integrity, and AI artifacts to identify manipulated photos, videos, and audio—with heatmaps and confidence scores. In 2025, it is offered free for government agencies. 6

📊 Quick Comparison Table

Tool	Primary Use	Best For
Grok‑3	Advanced reasoning chatbot	Research, STEM, Deep Q&A
Mistral Medium 3	AI model/API	Cost-effective dev use, coding (Devstral)
Perplexity AI / Comet	AI search + browser agent	Web research, summaries, agentic assistant
OpenAI Operator	Task automation via web	Users who delegate online tasks
Kruti	Consumer‑facing agentic assistant	Indian multi‑language user tasks
Vastav AI	Deepfake detection	Media, law enforcement, fraud prevention

💡 Why These Tools Matter Now

• Diverse Uses: From reasoning bots to security agents, each tool serves a unique niche.
• Competitive Edge: Public and enterprise access is growing, enabling new product development.
• Trust & Ethics: Tools like Vastav tackle misinformation, while others raise important questions on bias and regulation.

🔗 Further Reading

• Google launches Gemini CLI – Free AI Command Line Tool
• Cyngn stock soars 483% overnight after AI deal

💬 What’s Your Most Useful AI Tool?

Are you using any of these tools today, or chesting to try them out? Tell us your experience in the comments below!