It’s a matter of personal fit: the best platform for writing European projects is the one that most closely matches your style and way of working — not simply the first one you come across. Just like with colleagues or project partners, it takes time to understand whether there is real alignment: platforms need to be tested, explored and understood in how they “think”.
At the moment, I use six AI platforms on a daily basis — three paid and three with a free account. They are the ones I feel most comfortable with and that offer the highest reliability. I also enjoy using them. I challenge them and catch their mistakes, but I don’t humanise them. Technology evolves, and so does our profession. With curiosity, vision and a touch of irony, we can not only face change, but also have fun with it.
It’s important to test several platforms over days or weeks, working on real project texts, to see how they respond, how they process prompts, whether they correctly understand uploaded documents, and above all whether they maintain accuracy, up-to-dateness and reliability. “Hallucinations” (that is, fabricated or completely invented information) are a real risk, and in EU project design there is no room for imagination: precision and consistency are essential.
Here is an overview of the main options currently available (in alphabetical order):
- ChatGPT – Versatile and intuitive, useful for drafts, summaries and narrative sections. Supports brainstorming, needs analysis, objectives description and content structuring. Requires human revision and adaptation.
- Claude – Designed for coherent and safe text generation; reliable for document summarisation, narrative writing and collaborative drafting. Privacy configuration should be checked before use.
- Copilot – Integrated into Microsoft products, it helps analyse files, generate summaries and manage documents. Useful for partnership coordination and reorganising materials during preparation.
- DeepSeek – Currently subject to restrictions in the EU due to data-processing concerns. Use for document or analytical work should be evaluated with caution.
- DocAnalyzer – Analyses large amounts of text through targeted queries. Useful for extracting summaries, precise citations and research gaps, speeding up comparative analysis.
- Elicit – Academic research tool. Helps identify reliable articles and data on specific topics, useful for strengthening the knowledge base of a project.
- European Project Writer – MGI – A specialised tool with pre-set templates. Useful for structuring objectives, work packages and project logic, though less flexible than more general-purpose AI platforms.
- Gemini – Creative yet precise, ideal for brainstorming and early drafting. Supports the development of innovative proposals and the generation of alternative strategies or objectives.
- Litmaps – Maps scientific citations and visualises links between articles. Useful for discovering new sources, tracking trends and identifying relevant research for thematic analyses.
- Mendeley – Reference manager for organising articles and creating automatic bibliographies. Helps maintain order among sources, ensure correct citations and build solid documentation.
- Mistral – EU-developed models with a focus on privacy and transparency. Good for short texts and targeted summaries; still evolving for more complex applications.
- Notebook LM – Organises and synthesises user-uploaded documents. Useful for structuring long texts, extracting key topics and maintaining narrative coherence across sources.
- OneDrive – Cloud storage to centralise documents and share materials with the team. Useful for coordination, collaborative review and file tracking.
- Perplexity – Conversational search engine combining AI with cited sources. Ideal for retrieving reliable information, comparing data and enriching sections with documented references.
- Writesonic / Chatsonic – Fast at generating drafts, narrative text and descriptions. Ideal for early writing and expanding sections; human supervision is required for accuracy.