Year in Review: AI Tools and Trends

JournalistsTookBox.AI: “2025 will be remembered as a year newsrooms really began to embrace AI tools and find innovative ways to implement them into their workflow. I’ve featured dozens of examples of award-winning AI projects on the Journalist’s Toolbox cool examples page. The year will also be remembered for Google’s surge ahead of OpenAI in the AI tools race. The launch of Veo, Nano Banana and the vast expansion of NotebookLM tools pushed Google to the forefront.  Some of my fave tools this year:

LLM Journalism Tool Advisor: Friend and AI guru Joe Amditis built this tool that helps you write prompts for specific journalism tasks. It also evaluates strengths and weaknesses of various tools and LLMs. Joe’s work at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University has been transformative. Look for more in 2026.

NotebookLM: I’ve loved this tool since it was created, and it expanded in 2025 to allow web search imports, video creation, mindmaps and more. It’s simple to learn and teach, and my UIC journalism students love using it to create add-on multimedia to their papers and stories. It added in many new capabilities in the second-half of 2025, including the ability to inject questions into podcasts, set the tone of the podcast and generate some slick charts and infographics. For example, I dropped my resume into NotebookLM, hit the “Infographic” button and it generated an accurate visual of my work experience. (Hat tip to Ezra Eeman for the idea.)…”