Guide 03 · For anyone starting out

Which AI should you actually use?

My mom asked me this, and I could tell she was waiting for me to just name one. This is the longer answer I owed her.

The short version

Pick one of the three big ones and start. Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. For what most people do day to day, any of them is good enough, and the differences between them matter far less than whether you actually open the thing.

If you want my personal pick, I use Claude. That’s a preference, not a recommendation for everybody, and I’ll tell you below where I go somewhere else instead.

If you only read this far, that’s genuinely fine. The rest is for when you want to know why.

What each one is good at

01

Claude

Where it stands out: writing that sounds like a person wrote it, working through long documents without losing the thread, and thinking a problem out with you rather than just answering it.

Why it’s my default: my favorite way to use AI is as a thought partner, having it challenge my thinking and pull ideas out of me that I couldn’t quite reach on my own. Claude is the one I find easiest to argue with. It also built the website you’re reading this on, and I don’t write code.

Where I don’t use it: images.

02

ChatGPT

Where it stands out: image generation, and the sheer size of everything built around it. It’s the one most people have already heard of, it connects to the most other tools, and there are more tutorials for it than for anything else, which genuinely matters when you’re starting.

What I use it for: the portrait of me on this site was made in ChatGPT. When I want an image, this is where I go.

Worth knowing: as of the middle of 2026 it still ranks at or near the top of blind image comparisons, though Google has closed most of that gap.

03

Gemini

Where it stands out: it lives inside Google. If your whole life is already in Gmail, Docs, and Drive, that’s a real advantage and it’s the reason most Gemini users pick it. It also handles very large amounts of material at once and has become strong at editing existing images rather than only making new ones.

Being straight with you: this is the one I have the least personal experience with. I’m telling you what it’s known for, not what I’ve put through its paces myself. If you’re deep in Google Workspace, try it before you take my word for anything.

The part that actually matters

The people getting real use out of this stuff are not the ones who picked correctly. They’re the ones who opened it a hundred times.

That’s the whole difference, and it comes down to reps. I’ve watched people spend more time researching which AI to use than they’ve ever spent using one, and they end up with nothing to show for it. Meanwhile someone who picked the “wrong” one and used it every day for a month is genuinely better at this than they are.

So if you’re stuck on the choice, that’s the thing to hear. What my mom needed wasn’t the right tool, it was permission to start.

If you want a rule of thumb

—

You want to make an image

Start with ChatGPT. Gemini is very close now and better at editing a photo you already have.

—

You want help writing something that sounds like you

Claude. This is the thing I’d hand it first.

—

Your work already runs on Google

Gemini, for the plumbing more than the intelligence.

—

You have no idea and just want to start

ChatGPT, only because there’s more help available when you get stuck. Switch later if you want. Nothing is locked in.

Two things before you go

All three have a free version, and free is enough to find out. The exact limits and prices change constantly, so I’m not going to print numbers here that will be wrong by the time you read this. Check the current plans before you pay for anything, and don’t pay until the free one is annoying you.

Getting the most out of any of them comes down to how you ask. That’s a much bigger lever than which one you picked, and it’s the thing I’d spend your time on instead. I wrote up the way I do it, borrowed from how nurses hand off a patient, right here.