Nigel Powell
Nigel Powell is an author, columnist, and consultant with over 30 years of experience in the technology industry. He produced the weekly Don't Panic technology column in the Sunday Times newspaper for 16 years and is the author of the Sunday Times book of Computer Answers, published by Harper Collins. He has been a technology pundit on Sky Television's Global Village program and a regular contributor to BBC Radio Five's Men's Hour.
He has an Honours degree in law (LLB) and a Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA), and his work has made him an expert in all things software, AI, security, privacy, mobile, and other tech innovations. Nigel currently lives in West London and enjoys spending time meditating and listening to music.
Latest articles by Nigel Powell
Open source is crucial for the future of AI — here's why
By Nigel Powell published
Open source models are starting to catch up with those from companies like Midjourney and OpenAI. This is the true powerhouse of the AI scene.
OpenAI tipped to launch its next-gen AI model in December — but Sam Altman calls this 'fake news'
By Nigel Powell published
OpenAI is rumored to be close to releasing GPT-5, or maybe not...
Ollama just made it easier to use AI on your laptop — with no internet required
By Nigel Powell published
Ollama makes it easy to run AI models on your laptop and the latest update allows you to pull them from HuggingFace.
Anthropic just gave Claude AI access to your computer — here’s why this is a big deal
By Nigel Powell published
Anthropic has given Claude the ability to control aspects of a computer, allowing you to interact with a machine through simple text prompts.
Creating AI artwork on your laptop just got easier — ComfyUI launching apps for Mac and Windows
By Nigel Powell published
ComfyUI is launching a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux that will make creating AI locally easier than ever.
I write about AI for a living — here's how to become a true power user
By Nigel Powell published
Using AI wrappers can help you get much more out of artificial intelligence than just visiting ChatGPT.
Illuminate is a new AI podcasting tool from Google — here's how it works
By Nigel Powell published
Google Illuminate is an AI experiment that lets you create an instant, one-click podcast from a science topic of your choice.
OpenAI reveals Swarm — a breakthrough new method for getting AI to do things on your behalf
By Nigel Powell last updated
Swarm is a new framework from OpenAI that is designed to demonstrate how AI could act independently on set tasks.
Will digital watermarking save the world from fake news?
By Nigel Powell published
Companies are actively looking for a way to watermark AI-generated content, but is it necessary?
Suno just got a major upgrade — now you can replace a verse or chorus
By Nigel Powell published
Suno's new 'replace section' feature is an innovative game-changer, which lets users tweak the lyrics at any time without needing a do-over.
I just tried Flux on my Windows PC — and it's absolutely mind blowing
By Nigel Powell published
The Flux AI image generator finally runs on your PC, and it's magnificent. One click install using Forge, superb images with text, and decently fast on a standard GPU. What's not to love?
I write about AI for a living — and NotebookLM is the most exciting tech to arrive since ChatGPT
By Nigel Powell published
Google's new NotebookLM is the start of a revolution in how we interact with information. We'd better get used to it.
I tried Udio's new lyric generator — it’s a game changer for writer’s block
By Nigel Powell published
The new Lyric Writer tool from Udio helps songwriters craft the perfect words for their tracks. It's fast, flexible and lets you add song structure tags too.
A company gave 1,000 AI agents access to Minecraft — and they built a society
By Nigel Powell published
AI agents can be given a large language model brain and left to their own devices. In a recent test researchers left 1,000 of them to run free on a Minecraft server.
I gave four AI image generators a 'realism test' — and the winner surprised me
By Nigel Powell published
Testing AI image generators can be a challenge as they all behave and follow prompts in different ways. Here we've tried it with four random models on realistic prompts.
Hotshot is a new free text-to-video platform — and it’s very good indeed
By Nigel Powell published
Hotshot offers short-form AI video with a degree of photorealism and impressive movement.
I'm a serial entrepreneur — here's why AI is bringing about a golden age for side hustles
By Nigel Powell published
Artificial intelligence makes it easier than ever to get a side hustle off the ground.
Meet LoudMe — a free AI music generator that can make you a whole song in seconds
By Nigel Powell published
LoudMe joins Suno and Udio in the AI text-to-song space with tracks up to three minutes long from a simple prompt.
Leonardo review
By Nigel Powell published
Leonardo is a powerful AI image generator capable of creating graphics, textures and photorealistic pictures from text.
Runway review: One impressive AI video generator
By Nigel Powell published
Runway is the leading AI video generator, offering lip-synching, image-to-video, text-to-video and realistic human motion.
Claude AI review
By Nigel Powell published
Claude 3.5 Sonnet is one of the most impressive AI language models and Claude is a powerful chatbot platform.
AI glossary: all the key terms explained including LLM, models, tokens and chatbots
By Nigel Powell last updated
Artificial intelligence is a rapidly evolving area of technology and with it comes some confusing terms. We've tried to make sense of everything from LLM to tokens.
Nokia AI drones in a box — is this our first taste of Skynet?
By Nigel Powell published
Nokia is providing AI-powered drones to keep an eye on people living in Switzerland.
Sign up to get the BEST of Tom's Guide direct to your inbox.
Here at Tom’s Guide our expert editors are committed to bringing you the best news, reviews and guides to help you stay informed and ahead of the curve!