Testing an AI text editor
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels
While researching AI tools I am constantly signing up on waiting lists for early access and beta releases of new tools. And I recently gained access to LEX. Which is a modern text editor that has some embedded AI-powered features. Today I am going to test it out, and share my insights with you.
I’ve written this article using the Lex editor and some parts of this are AI-generated. But I will let you know which ones.
I found and tested this tool myself and am not in any way affiliated with Lex.
With that out of the way, let’s get going!
Features
It offers most of the things you would expect from a text editor. But there are some new features, you will have a difficult time finding somewhere else. Here, have a look at the main toolbar:
screenshot by HungryMinded
Most of these icons are pretty self-explanatory and offer options for formatting. Nothing revolutionary there. But it gets the job done.
AI assistant
But the first two buttons are extras. These are responsible for some AI magic. Let’s try them out!
screenshot by HungryMinded
The first one is “Ask Lex”, when pressed a new window pops up. And you are greeted by your new AI assistant, your research buddy.
screenshot by HungryMinded
As the technology powering LEX is based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 it doesn’t know anything that happened after June 2021.
Let’s try asking Lex some questions.
screenshot by HungryMinded
As you can see it was pretty good at laying out some basic information for me. But it currently doesn’t have access to data newer than June of 2021. So it is clueless about Elon purchasing Twitter.
Now let’s ask Lex for advice.
My question: Give me some recommendations for writing online.
Lex’s response: Here are a few recommendations for writing online:
1.Write in a clear, concise, and easy-to-read style.
2.Use headings and subheadings to break up your text and help readers navigate your article.
3.Find a balance between too much and too little information — provide just enough detail to be helpful without overwhelming your reader.
4.Use images, infographics, and videos to break up your text and add visual interest.
5.Use social media to promote your article — share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
6.Make sure your article is free of grammar and spelling errors.
The list above was generated by AI
Text generation
The second button lets you see the parts in your document, that are generated by AI.
screenshot by HungryMinded
You can have Lex finish your thoughts simply by typing “+++”
Here’s what Lex generated when I did this, during the previous sentence:
And you know what? I kind of agree with Lex. It does work pretty well.
I don’t like the thought of generating entire paragraphs for my articles with AI. But I might sometimes use a feature like this for inspiration, to get my creative juices going.
Generating headlines
While writing online it’s crucial to come up with good headlines. What’s the point of putting in the effort, if nobody’s there to read your work? Headlines need to be informative, concise, and click-worthy.
And Lex has a headline generation function. Up until this point, I haven’t written a headline for this article. Let’s test out this feature.
screenshot by HungryMinded
You can do so, by pushing the button located in the top-right corner of your article.
These are the options Lex gave me. Will I use one of these? Well, you probably know better than I do while I am typing out this sentence.
screenshot by HungryMinded
I didn’t pick one of these, but after pressing generate more a couple of times I found a title I liked and stuck with it.
The title of this article was generated by AI
Sharing
You can also share your writing straight from Lex. And you can choose if the document should be editable. And it’s as simple as that. No setting permission and stuff like that.
screenshot by HungryMinded
Here’s a Lex document with their roadmap.
Voting on Features
The tool is still in its beta phase, and you can vote on the direction it will take here:
My verdict
I enjoyed using the tool. It was easy to use and intuitive and I could see myself using it daily. But I probably will not be switching over to Lex as my main text processor just yet. I find it more convenient to simply write on Medium.
I might do some more testing and playing around as I did find the in-built features convenient.
Stay curious and stay HungryMinded!
Originally published on Medium