RESOURCES · A FREE TOOL BY SOCIAL WEAVER
WhichAI? A practical compass for AI in the newsroom.
Tell WhichAI? what you're working on and it returns a short, ranked shortlist of the AI models and tools genuinely worth using for that exact task — right now, in this fast-moving landscape.
What it does
The AI tools landscape changes every few weeks. WhichAI? cuts through the noise for a single use case at a time.
Pick the closest task
Drill down through a journalism-specific tree — reporting & investigation, interviews & audio, verification, data, writing, multimedia — to the exact thing you're trying to do.
Add newsroom context
Story, deadline, format, constraints (privacy, sourcing, budget). All optional, but the more you say, the sharper the recommendation.
Get an unbiased Top 3
Real product names, specific model versions, links, honest watch-outs, and a ready-to-paste starter prompt designed to reduce hallucinations.
See realistic cost in Rand
Monthly cost estimates in ZAR for a single journalist — including free tiers — so you can pick something your newsroom can actually afford.
How it works
- 1
You describe the task
The decision tree narrows the universe of AI tools to a specific journalism job — geolocating a photo, transcribing a noisy multi-speaker recording, fact-checking a statistic. Your free-text context is added on top.
- 2
A frontier model runs the analysis
Your task + context is sent to a current frontier large language model, briefed as a neutral, vendor-agnostic advisor with up-to-date knowledge of the AI tool landscape.
- 3
It shortlists the Top 3
Accuracy and hallucination risk, source confidentiality, attribution transparency, deadline speed and cost are all weighed — then exactly three recommendations come back, ranked best-first.
- 4
Each recommendation is scored
Quality (output quality for this exact task /10), Value (cost-effectiveness /10) and a concrete monthly ZAR cost, plus 2–4 strengths, honest limitations, and a starter prompt that asks for citations.
- 5
A workflow ties it together
You finish with a 2–5 step practical newsroom workflow that combines the recommended tools, ending with a human verification step — because the byline is still yours.
How it stays unbiased
No vendor relationships
Social Weaver is not paid by any AI company. Recommendations are not affiliate links.
Free and open tools count
If a free, open-source or smaller tool genuinely wins on quality or value for the task, it's named — even over the biggest brands.
Honest watch-outs
Every recommendation includes the trade-offs: privacy concerns, hallucination patterns, learning curves, regional availability.
You stay in charge
The output is a starting point for a human journalist, not a finished story. Verification is always the final step.
Keep going
AI For Journalists
Read the archived WhatsApp channel posts — prompts, tools and workflows for responsible AI use in journalism.
Read the postsAI training for your newsroom
Hands-on, newsroom-friendly workshops on using AI responsibly — for reporting, verification, audio, writing and distribution. Online, in-person or hybrid.
Get in touch