Ethical Shoestrings

Anyone else getting started with writing and publishing on a shoestring budget, but wanting to only use ethical tools?

This page lists the “cheap-and-good” ethical tool stack I (Karen Smiley) am using on Agile Analytics and Beyond and

6 'P's in AI Pods

. Unless otherwise noted, I am using FREE plans or licenses for all tools.

I’ll update the page as I get further into my writing adventures and my toolbox evolves. Let me know if you find it useful or have suggestions 😊

My criteria for adding a tool to this shoestring list are simple.

• It must be ethically developed and operated.

• It should be either free or extremely affordable.

• It must add value to my writing for me or for my readers/listeners.

Plant growing in a glass cup of pennies, by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

General principle: AI has been my professional focus for many years. Based on what I know about AI and the ethics (or lack thereof) of AI companies, I don’t use AI to do my writing for me. All of my posts are 100% human-authored and human-illustrated.

Image credit: Beth Spencer

Privacy note: Unless the tool provider’s written policies say otherwise, the safest assumption is that any provider of a free tool is capturing the texts and info you share when using it. They may use your content to make money via ads, for internal purposes (e.g. training an AI model), or by selling it to a data broker.

I plan to use these tools on posts I will publish publicly, and I own all rights to the content. So privacy isn’t a big concern. If your needs are different (or my needs change), free tools may not be a good choice. Always check the privacy and data sharing policies on any tools you consider using.

If a tool is free, “you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” (Tom Johnson, 2001)

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Credits for all digital resources which require attribution are listed here for sixpeas (credits are similar for Agile Analytics and Beyond).

1. Newsletter publishing: Substack

   • If anyone’s interested, I can share insights into my rationale for choosing Substack in a future post. Some big reasons:

   1. It’s free for readers and for writers to get started.

   2. My subscriber list and content are mine to keep; no platform lock-in.

   3. I can control whether external AIs are allowed to train on my content.

2. Website: Simple hand-coded HTML and CSS

   1. https://substackapi.com/ provides a nice way to embed a color-themed Subscribe button directly in an external website (thank you to

      Burk
      for sharing this article which pointed me to it)

3. Document drafts and publication plan:

   • Google Docs (free with G account) - on mobile, when I have off-Substack collaborators.

   • Microsoft Word (old non-cloud retail version) - on laptop, when I’m writing solo. Only because I already have it and it’s free.

   • Notepad++ - Writing on laptop, mostly for snippets, e.g. image attribution credits.

   • Substack editor - Writing directly on laptop (in Firefox).

   • Headlines - Brainstorm 10 ideas and then test them in MonsterInsights Headline Analyzer

     • For good advice on headlines, see this YouTube video interview by

       Kristina God

   • PDF reader: Sumatra PDF - For reading contributed or shared content. It’s free, true open source, and has a small footprint - important on my older Windows laptops with minimal RAM and limited disc space.

4. Writing: All of my posts are 100% human-authored. Other than spelling and grammar checks, I do not intentionally use any AI-based writing tools. My AI usage policy explains why.

5. Search and Research: DuckDuckGo (for privacy).

6. Tasks: Trello (free with Atlassian account, may be user limits?).

7. Icons:

   1. Flaticon (preferred; ok for commercial use without paid account, with attribution).

   2. The Noun Project (non-commercial use only without paid account)

8. Icons and images: I do not use AI-based image generation tools, only images “created with human intelligence”. This ‘Inconvenient Principles’ post explains why. I do use:

   • a few of my own creations (photos and drawings), which I license under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.

     • Investigating: use of Glaze and Nightshade to protect my images

   • Better Images of AI, Unsplash, Pexels, Wikimedia Commons, Library of Congress, Flaticon, Pixabay.

     • I look for ‘public domain’ or CC licenses that allow use with or without attribution, and always attribute when required (and often, even when it’s not required). See links above for Credits.

9. Sound effects:

   1. Pixabay has some simple sounds that work for me, e.g. the short chimes. Free with attribution. See links above for Credits.

10. Image editing:

    • Irfanview (free and open source).

    • GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program).

    • Paint (free on machines running Windows 10/11).

    • Investigating: Affinity by Serif - Adobe alternative for Designer, Photo, and Publisher.

      • Not free, but currently a bargain vs. Adobe subscription cost for a perpetual V2 bundle license ($83).

      • Now owned by Canva; tentatively on this list while I monitor for changes to their Responsible AI policies. Some concerns have been noted about Canva’s AI ethics (

        Johan Brandstedt
        ). Their July 2024 acquisition of Leonardo AI is also concerning,

11. Freehand drawing (mostly with pen on an old Surface Pro tablet; I’m a terrible mouse-drawer):

    • Krita (free and open source digital painting).

    • Inkscape

    • Vectr vector graphics editor (recommended; I haven’t yet tried it)

12. Logo design: Adobe Express is free, but I’m not comfortable with their AI ethics.

    1. These options are truly free:

       • Zarla - logo and many social media images are free, including SVGs; option to pay to build a website with this branding set

    2. These options look ok - they are free to experiment with, and may give you some good ideas, but payment is required to purchase a logo.

       • Logology - $79-$699 to buy

       • Looka Logo Maker - $20-$65 to buy just a logo (more cost insights here).

13. Small data and planning:

    • Microsoft Excel (old non-cloud retail version). Because I’ve had it for years and it’s free and runs locally.

    • Notepad++ (for editing small CSV files).

14. Readability metrics and guidance: (This was one of my actions from my April retrospective. See “Write on! 7 free tools for more readable writing on a shoestring” for details.)

    1. Microsoft Word, initially (use only on plain text files and exclude URLs to avoid inaccurate results). No longer using; see my post for why.

    2. ReadabilityFormulas (RF) - browser UI only, for day to day writing help.

    3. I have a Grammarly free plan and a bookmark for Datayze. I use Grammarly during my monthly retrospectives as a check on RF’s data. I’m monitoring the AI policies of both.

15. Data analysis: Python with:

    • Notepad++ (for quick code editing)

    • Spyder

    • PyCharm Community Edition

16. Data visualization embedding:

    • Datawrapper.de (works well for tables and some charts). See “Adventures in Datawrapping” for my June 1, 2024 evaluation of Datawrapper.

    • Currently looking into Tableau Public for visualizations and chart types Datawrapper doesn’t support, e.g. Pareto charts. (I’m hoping to find guidance and examples in “Tableau Tea Break” and “Tableau Academy” here on Substack, although neither seems to be active anymore.)

17. Audio recording (manual audio voiceovers):

    1. Audacity - used for all of my manual voiceover recordings to date; also used for editing recordings from Zoom calls

    2. FreeConvert - for converting Zoom m4a recordings to MP3 for Audacity

    3. Looking into Ocenaudio as a possible option.

18. Speech to Text (for transcribing audio voiceovers):

    1. ConverterApp and Restream (both free; experimenting with these while I look for info on how they trained their models)

    2. See my Aug. 2024 evaluation here for info on ConverterApp, Restream, and other tools I considered, with some insights on ethics and pricing.

19. Music creation:

    1. Piloting Soundful’s free plan (see my evaluation of features and ethics for 9 Fairly Trained genAI music tools).

20. Voice cloning (for generating audio voiceovers):

    1. Planning to try ElevenLabs ‘Starter’ plan ($5/mo) (see my evaluation of features and ethics for voice cloning).

       1. Update 2024-06-16: Removing because of recent announcements about ElevenLabs music generation. Their ethics appear to have moved in a direction I’m not happy with. I’ll stick with manual voiceover recording for now, and maybe take a closer look at ethics and pricing of Wondercraft.ai if I decide to revive this.

I’d welcome any suggestions or feedback on other tools I should consider!

References

Human Intelligence Badge

Say what? Adding audio voiceovers with AI, ethically

9 ethical genAI music tools [Unfair Use? series, PART 3]