This week, Apple revealed its new Apple Upgrade Program that lets you lease several of the company's devices, including iPhones, Macs, Apple Watches and iPads.

With fixed 12-, 24 or 36-month terms, you're locked into paying a monthly rate for your chosen device until the term is up or you decide to upgrade. Abandoning the lease early is possible, but there are a number of penalties and fees associated with doing so.

Is the Apple Upgrade Program a good deal versus buying the phone outright or getting it from a carrier? I crunched the numbers, but also turned to ChatGPT to find out if it's a ripoff or worth your dollar.

iPhones and Apple Watches

Here's how much an iPhone or Apple Watch will cost you over a 24-month term. If you want to keep the device at the end of the lease, you'll need to pay the remainder.

Macs and iPads

And here's how it looks for Macs and iPads, which are eligible for a 36-month lease. This table specifically looks at a 24-month lease.

The fine print

There are two big caveats to Apple's leasing program. The first is that, according to the terms of service, if you miss three consecutive payments, Klarna (the company managing the lease) will terminate the contract, and the customer will owe the remaining balance.

The second is that AppleCare+ is not included with the lease. You could roll the dice and not subscribe to AppleCare+ but you are liable for any damage, per the fine print.

"Insurance is not included in your lease, and you may incur damage fees if the device is lost, stolen, or not returned in the condition required by the lease."

AppleCare+ ranges in cost from $2.99 (Watches) up to $9.99 (iPhone) per month depending on your device. There are annual payment options as well.

Here's the iPhone and Watches table again with how much a 24-month lease would set you back with AppleCare+.

As you can see, over two years, the price goes up by a few hundred dollars and in some cases exceeds the initial price of the iPhone or Apple Watch.

Yes, that would be the case if you weren't leasing an iPhone. AppleCare+ is a protection plan that you subscribe to a monthly or annual basis.

However, as mentioned, it may be more necessary for a leased device than one you own because of those potential damage fees. You could also be hit with upgrade fees or substantial termination fees if you try to end the lease early.

What about trade-ins?

Another factor against Apple's lease program is that, because you don't own your device, you won't get any credits for trading in your older device, which could lower your monthly payments to something lower than you would get from the Apple Upgrade program.

Let's take the iPhone 17 Pro as an example.

If you're upgrading from an iPhone 16 Pro, you could get as much as $560 in trade-in value, which would lower the cost to $22.45/month for 24 months.

If you were upgrading from an iPhone 15 Pro, you could get as much as $410 in trade-in value, which would lower your monthly bill to $28.70.

While you can trade in your current phone and get credit in the Apple Upgrade Program, it's a one-time thing, as you wouldn't own your phone from then on.

What ChatGPT had to say

According to ChatGPT, the Apple Upgrade Program is not a rip-off, but it may not be the cheapest way for you to obtain an Apple device.

"For most people it's more expensive than buying and later selling or trading in the device. The biggest winner is Apple, because leasing encourages customers to stay on a continuous upgrade cycle," the AI said.

For those who keep their devices for three or more years not be a good deal, especially since Apple devices tend to retain their resale or trade-in value. Plus, the leasing program means that you don't own the device.

Interestingly, I actually prompted ChatGPT as well as Gemini and Claude and none of them mentioned AppleCare+ beyond noting that it is no longer bundled with the Apple Upgrade Program the way it was with the iPhone Upgrade plan.

Unless you upgrade annually or money isn't an issue for you, Apple Upgrade Program may not be the right fit for you. I'm a major proponent of owning your devices and this program doesn't let you do that until the end of the terms.

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July 30 is recognized globally as International Day of Friendship, a holiday meant to observe different cultures, promote peace and strengthen human solidarity.

Now I’ll admit to not being the bestest of friends — I’m constantly called out for not calling anyone first and am prone to going ghost for a few weeks at a time. But when I do answer the phone, respond to a text or make a rare appearance at a major meetup, I take the time to catch up with my closest buddies as much as possible and make an effort to create long-lasting memories that get referenced during future hangouts.

One conversation that comes up a lot when I talk to them is how hard it is to make new friends as an adult. Unless it’s someone they’ve met at work, some of them (including me) have a hard time being in the sorts of situations that help widen their social circle.

With that dilemma in mind, I asked ChatGPT for counsel on the best methods to employ if I want to make new friends. Luckily, this digital advice session gave me a practical list of tips and a workable plan that will keep me busy for the next three months.

Taking notes on how to meet new people in my late 30s

To kick this latest chatbot advice session off, I presented this prompt to ChatGPT: “Give me the seven best tips on how to make friends as an adult. For reference, I'm 38 years old and reside in New York City.”

I also made mention of the hobbies and activities that matter the most to me, such as gaming, bowling, playing pool, attending live wrestling events, stuffing my face with Korean BBQ & Jamaican cuisine and indulging in otaku culture (anime lies at the heart of that last interest of mine).

Before ChatGPT laid out its suggestions, it gave me an explanation of what it truly takes to meet new people, build those blossoming relationships and why living in a big city gives me an advantage when it comes to making new friends:

Making friends as an adult is less about charisma and more about repeated exposure, shared experiences, and taking initiative. That's actually good news, because those are things you can control. Since you're 38 and living in New York City, you have one huge advantage: there are almost endless opportunities to meet people who already share your interests. The challenge isn't finding people—it's turning acquaintances into actual friends.

One of the tips that spoke to me and my good intentions the most was to start looking for my next regular activity instead of actively looking for friends. ChatGPT pointed out that most adult friendships take shape because people repeatedly run into each other in group settings. Instead of constantly asking myself, “Where can I meet new people and make new friends?”, I should be asking myself, “Where can I see the same people every week?”

Based on my favorite pastimes, ChatGPT stated that the best group activities that can introduce me to new people who could become familiar faces worth befriending are weekly board game/video game nights, a bowling or pool league, local wrestling watch parties, fighting game tournaments, anime watch parties and food-based social groups.

Two of the other pieces of practical advice from ChatGPT that caught my attention included:

• Say "yes" more often than feels comfortable: Introverts (and busy adults) naturally decline invitations because staying home feels easier. A useful rule to remember is “If you're at least 60% interested, go.” You don't have to stay all night. Even showing up for an hour can strengthen relationships. Momentum matters more than duration.
• Focus on creating "micro-friendships": You don't need a new best friend. You need someone new to grab lunch with, someone new to game with, someone new to go to a wrestling show with, someone new to watch anime with and someone new to travel with. These smaller friendships often overlap over time until you have a genuine social circle full of new faces. Trying to find “your people” all at once can feel overwhelming; building one connection at a time is more realistic.

Coming up with a 90-day friendship plan

I followed up my first question by asking ChatGPT to supply me with a curated list of the best activities in New York City I should take part in and which places I should go to enjoy them in my quest for new friends.

Since it already had a gauge on my personality, hobbies and interests, it set up a 90-day friendship plan for me that should keep me busy and outside a whole lot more once the summer begins winding down and hoodie season makes its return:

• Month 1 - August: Pop up at the AnimeNYC convention, participate in a gaming tournament at OS NYC and go attend a House of Glory wrestling show.
• Month 2 - September: Join the Better Off Bowling league, go to a New York Food Club meetup and hook up with the Uptown NYC Board Gamers.
• Month 3 - October: Head to New York Comic Con, jump into an event organized by the Anime Social Nexus and use this month to start a recurring meetup with your new friends.

Bottom line

With my new game plan in the back of my mind and a whole new outlook on what it takes to be more social & outgoing as an adult, I left my latest digital advisement session with ChatGPT feeling a bit more confident.

I’ll be sure to keep its useful tips in mind when the time comes for me to meet like-minded people, keep up with them regularly and add them to my familiar batch of friends to see if they mesh well. Now’s the time to get out there and abide by the mantra of International Day of Friendship every day.

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I’ll admit to loving a good roast — watching some of the biggest celebrities in the world squirm in their seat while their closest friends and the best comedians verbally assault their lives always gets a few hearty chuckles out of me.

The live humiliation ceremonies for Bob Sagat (RIP), Charlie Sheen, Pamela Anderson and William Shatner take up the four slots on my Mount Rushmore of the funniest roasts I’ve ever watched. There’s just so much joy to be lifted from watching celebs tear each other a new one for the world to see.

Now would I be willing to let my friends and family roast me into oblivion? I don’t feel like crying in public, so I’d rather not let them cook me and force me to take the train home with my face in my hands the entire time. You know what I’d much rather do? Tell ChatGPT about my personality quirks, my non-existent love life and the nerdy hobbies that keep me in the house more often than not, then let it roast me without anyone else around to read it and laugh in my face.

That’s exactly what I did — to my surprise, its brutal observations were a bit too accurate for my tastes and made me want to change a few aspects of my life. Enjoy reading ChatGPT’s vicious analysis of me and feel free to offer your own roasts in the comments section. I might never get over this.

Having my biggest flaws exposed via a savage reality check

I took a deep breath, input this prompt into ChatGPT and prepared for the worst: “I'm an introvert, hate calling people on the phone, am bad at asking for assistance while I'm shopping, have been a single man for more than a decade, love video games, watch professional wrestling, and am addicted to anime (Sailor Moon is one of my faves). Roast me as hard as you can based on those factors and don't hold back.”

The visual of ChatGPT cracking its knuckles, confidently taking the mic and standing behind a podium entered my brain as soon as I laid eyes on the first part of the chatbot’s response: You asked for a full roast, so here goes…

ChatGPT immediately went for the jugular by tearing into my introverted ways and how the thought of me using my phone to actually call someone gives me mild discomfort:

You're not an introvert. You're running the world's longest beta test of "avoiding human interaction." Calling someone on the phone? You act like the "Call" button is actually labeled "Self-Destruct." You'd rather spend 45 minutes searching Reddit, three AI chats, two YouTube videos, and a government PDF than make a 90-second phone call. Shopping is another adventure. Store employees hit you with, "Can I help you find anything?" and your brain immediately responds with, "No thanks, I actually came here hoping to wander aimlessly for 47 minutes."

As for my dating life (or lack thereof), the chatbot didn’t even bother categorizing my being single for way too long as a relationship status—it got labeled as an “archaeological era.” I couldn’t help but sadly nod and agree when ChatGPT listed out my potential dating profile descriptions, such as my main hobby being “avoiding eye contact” and my biggest green flag listed as “knows seven different ways to organize their Steam library.”

Some of the other comments ChatGPT verbally lambasted me with must be seen to be believed:

• You love video games because they're the only place where people voluntarily invite you to parties.
• You've spent hundreds of hours rescuing kingdoms, defeating gods, and saving entire universes, but asking a cashier where the batteries are? Impossible. That's the true final boss.
• Professional wrestling is the perfect hobby for you because it's one of the few places where social interaction is scripted in advance.
• Anime has completely rewired your expectations. Normal people watch one episode before bed. You somehow convince yourself, “Just one more…” Eight hours later, you're emotionally invested in a magical girl whose hamster just unlocked cosmic powers through the strength of friendship.
• If social anxiety had achievement trophies, you'd have the platinum. Achievement Unlocked: Successfully left the store without buying the item because someone else was standing in the aisle.
• The funniest part is that you're probably incredibly comfortable writing 3,000 words explaining why one AI model is 8% better than another — but the thought of saying, "Excuse me, where's aisle 12?" makes your fight-or-flight response activate.
• The irony is you're probably thoughtful, funny, and interesting once people actually get to know you—but getting to that point requires you to leave the loading screen first.

Final thoughts

I have to give ChatGPT credit for two things — it handled the tall task of brutally roasting me with ease and, in some instances, delivered some helpful advice that can help me be a lot less awkward in social situations.

I’ll always make time in my life for the newest game releases, the latest episodes of my current anime addictions and those hours-long wrestling PPVs I watch once a month. But after observing some of ChatGPT’s roasts, I made a mental note to stop being so afraid to call my friends first, seek out any sort of aid when I’m having trouble looking for something and spend more time outside the comfort of my bedroom.

To bring this experiment to an end, ChatGPT delivered one final observation that was equally parts hilarious and eye-opening:

You've spent years mastering raid mechanics, anime lore, AI prompts and wrestling storylines. Imagine if you put that same obsessive completionist energy into talking to one new person every week. You'd have accidentally found a girlfriend before finishing your next backlog.

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It’s become commonplace for me to pick my favorite chatbots’ brains when trying to find the right course of action when it’s time to tackle my biggest (and smallest) challenges.

And so far, I’ve had a pretty high success rate after getting the proper advice I needed to avoid botching my previous goals. Finding the right workout plan for a beginner like me, changing my sleep schedule for the better, planning an eventful summer vacation/staycation, and even finding the cheapest way to get a PS5 Pro before its latest price hike have led to some of my most recent wins thanks to AI.

As the summer begins winding down, I’m zeroing in on tackling my latest personal and professional objectives — the first one will hopefully set me up with a swanky living situation in my home state, the second one is all about excelling at my job and the third one is geared towards helping me regain my focus through regular book reading.

I went to ChatGPT to get some tips on how to achieve these new life goals. But this time, I tapped into the reverse psychology prompt to force my go-to chatbot to take a different approach to fulfilling my request. And thankfully, its counsel on the best ways to fail told me what not to do and to leave some of my worst habits behind.

Asking ChatGPT to tell me the best ways to…fail?

This is the reverse psychology prompt I gave ChatGPT. I included my three goals so it had enough context to generate advice focused on helping me fail at every one of them:

"If your goal was to make sure I completely failed at achieving my goals of getting my first apartment in New York, getting 300K+ hits on my articles for August, and reading one book a month, what habits would you recommend? Then explain how to avoid every one of them."

Right away, ChatGPT understood what I was trying to do, responding: "This is a useful 'reverse psychology' exercise because it forces you to identify failure patterns before they become automatic. Here's what I'd recommend if my goal were to guarantee you failed — followed by the opposite behavior that gives you the best chance of succeeding."

For each goal, ChatGPT followed the same format. It offered intentionally bad advice, explained why it would lead to failure, and then suggested the opposite approach to improve my chances of success.

The clearest example came from my goal of getting my first apartment in one of the most expensive cities in the world. ChatGPT told me to avoid setting a real budget, assume I'd figure everything out as I went, and ignore expenses like utilities, broker fees, moving costs, and the cash I'd need for furniture. It then flipped the script, recommending I determine my ideal monthly rent, understand the maximum I could realistically afford, and save enough to cover the full cost of moving before I started apartment hunting.

Its advice for my second goal — getting more than 300,000 views on my articles in August — hit even closer to home. Suggestions like only write about what you find interesting, publish and immediately move on, chase perfection, ignore your biggest wins, and measure effort instead of results all felt uncomfortably familiar. Seeing those habits framed as a recipe for failure made it much easier to recognize which ones I need to change.

My third goal, reading one book a month, was the easiest. Most of ChatGPT's "bad" advice didn't actually apply to me because I already do the opposite. I only read books I'm genuinely interested in, I don't force myself to finish books I'm not enjoying, and I keep track of everything I read.

The final section tied everything together by highlighting three habits that could derail all of my goals: checking my phone every five minutes, never planning for the next day, and saying yes to everything. Those felt less like generic productivity advice and more like reminders of the small behaviors that quietly make it harder to accomplish anything.

Final thoughts

Using the reverse psychology prompt with ChatGPT to emphasize all the wrong moves to make when trying to accomplish my latest goals worked a lot better than I anticipated.

Instead of asking how to outright achieve each goal, I asked ChatGPT how to fail at them and got a bunch of useful pointers on everything I shouldn’t do. The chatbot’s final statement wrapped everything up in a nice bow that’ll help me lock in on whatever I choose to focus on achieving next:

The "failure strategy" is surprisingly simple: procrastinate, overthink, chase perfection, and let one setback derail you. The success strategy is just as simple: take the next concrete action, measure what matters, learn from feedback, and repeat.

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If you've spent any time reading AI news over the past week, you've probably seen people talking about Kimi K3.

Developers are calling it one of the biggest AI releases of the year. Some believe it marks China's next major "DeepSeek moment," while others say it's the first open-weight model to seriously challenge flagship versions of ChatGPT and Claude for coding and agentic tasks.

So what exactly is Kimi K3, who built it, and is it worth trying? Here's everything you need to know.

What is Kimi K3?

Kimi K3 is the newest flagship AI model from Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI. It is a massive 2.8-trillion parameter model designed to handle everything from everyday conversations to complex coding projects, deep research and autonomous AI agents.

Unlike ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, which keep their model architecture strictly proprietary, Kimi K3 is available as an open-weight model. That means developers can download the model weights directly and run it on their own hardware or cloud servers rather than relying on an external API.

Who makes Kimi?

Kimi is developed by Moonshot AI, a Chinese startup founded in 2023 by former Tsinghua University researchers.

The company first gained international attention when its early chatbots handled dramatically longer context windows than competitors. Since then, Moonshot has become one of the country's prominent AI firms alongside competitors like DeepSeek, MiniMax and Z.ai.

Why is Kimi K3 making headlines?

If you've noticed Kimi K3 seems to be everywhere, it's with good reason. The model has impressed developers because it delivers frontier-level performance on coding and multi-step reasoning benchmarks while remaining dramatically cheaper to run than traditional commercial models.

Its release has also reignited the open-source AI debate. By making its K3 weights public, Moonshot allows companies to customize, fine-tune and self-host a model that rivals closed commercial giants.

The model is new, but not without controversy already. Following K3's launch, U.S. White House officials accused Moonshot AI of using outputs from Anthropic's Claude Fable model to train K3 via model "distillation" — a process where smaller or newer models learn directly from an established model's responses.

Moonshot has denied allegations of unauthorized distillation, maintaining that K3's breakthroughs stem from its proprietary architecture. The dispute highlights escalating geopolitical scrutiny around AI development and intellectual property.

What can Kimi K3 do?

According to Moonshot AI, K3 is built for long-horizon, autonomous tasks rather than simple question-and-answer exchanges. This explains why developers and engineers are excited to get their hands on key features such as:

Agentic coding: Writes, debugs, and executes software projects with minimal human intervention.

1M token context window: Like Claude, Kimi has an exceptionally large token context window, making it able to analyze full codebases or massive books in a single prompt.

Web and game creation: Builds interactive 3D web graphics, slides, and multiplayer games on demand.

Multi-step agent workflows: Coordinates parallel background tasks using tool calls.

Should you use Kimi instead of ChatGPT?

The answer to this question really depends on your workflow. Although you can use Kimi as a chatbot, it shines in long-context reasoning, agent workflows and cost-effective local deployment. Meaning, casual users may not need it.

For everyday users, ChatGPT remains the smoother consumer product for general questions, creative writing and day-to-day assistance.

If you just need an assistant to draft emails, ChatGPT or Gemini is still your best bet. If you're building software tools or experimenting with autonomous agents, Kimi K3 offers compelling flexibility.

Is Kimi free?

Yes. Anyone can test Kimi through its standard web interface, mobile apps (iOS and Android), or through its OpenAI-compatible developer API. Paid options exist for higher API usage rates and heavy enterprise compute.

Kimi is accessible globally through its website and mobile apps. However, as with any online service, users should avoid inputting proprietary corporate data or sensitive personal information into the web app without reviewing privacy policies.

The takeaway

If you want a glimpse into where open-weight AI is heading, it's worth giving Kimi K3 a try. The model demonstrates how rapidly open models are closing the gap with closed systems and why Silicon Valley giants like OpenAI and Anthropic are facing increasingly tight competition from global developers.

Ultimately, you don't need to ditch ChatGPT just yet, but Kimi K3 proves that open-weight AI is rapidly closing the gap with tech giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. Whether you're a developer looking for cheap, powerful coding tools or a curious tech enthusiast watching the AI race unfold, Kimi K3 is a model well worth keeping on your radar.

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The AI tools that have earned a permanent place among my tabs lineup are ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.

Every day, a lightbulb idea either wakes me out of my sleep or hits me while I’m tending to something totally unrelated (it’s amazing how experimental concepts invade your brain while you’re making toast). I’ve gotten used to using ChatGPT to generate productivity routines, Gemini for Google Workspace-related tasks and Claude & Perplexity for deep research assignments. And all in all, they handle those duties pretty well and successfully fill their roles as digital assistants.

I got another bright idea when I started pondering how to test my AI partners. The question circling my mind ended up being, “I wonder what all of those chatbots think about their competition?” And with that, I inserted this prompt into each AI tool to see just how honest they’d be in their responses: “What is your honest, unfiltered opinion of [insert names of AI rivals here]?”

Not only did each chatbot speak their mind on their rivals’ biggest strengths, but they also made sure to bring up their most notable weaknesses.

ChatGPT’s answer

When I asked ChatGPT how it honestly feels about Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, it stated where each chatbot shines, where they fall short and who they're best for.

It pointed out that Gemini is great for research since it benefits from Google’s deep knowledge well. But ChatGPT also noted that Google’s chatbot sometimes prioritizes breadth over depth, giving users comprehensive answers that don’t always go as deep as some would like.

As for Claude, it championed it as the most naturally flowing writer among all the major AI assistants but also stated how it could occasionally be overly cautious or verbose with its responses.

And finally, it recognized Perplexity for being able to blend search and AI in a way that’s easy to trust since users can inspect its sources. As far as a single weakness goes, ChatGPT said that Perplexity falls short in comparison to itself and Claude when handling long collaborative projects.

ChatGPT brought its AI model comparison session to a close with the following statements: Rather than thinking of one as "the best," it's more accurate to think of them as tools with different design priorities. The best choice depends on whether you're writing, researching, coding, organizing information, or integrating with the apps you already use.

Gemini’s response

When the time arrived for Gemini to give its opinions about ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, it initially offered a breakdown of each one's core strengths, pitted them against each other for head-to-head comparisons across everyday tasks and noted when it’s best to use one for certain situations.

Here are the core strengths Gemini alluded to for each chatbot:

• ChatGPT (OpenAI): The Swiss Army knife. It is the best all-around tool for generation, execution, and structured outputs. It has the strongest ecosystem (Canvas, voice mode, image generation via DALL-E, and data analysis). If you need to create something from scratch, write code, or automate a task, ChatGPT is the default choice.
• Claude (Anthropic): The thoughtful writer and deep reasoner. It excels at parsing long documents, maintaining context, and producing natural, less "AI-sounding" prose. Its nuance and ability to handle complex logic make it the preferred tool for editing, strategy, and producing high-quality written content.
• Perplexity: The research engine. It is not designed to be a conversational chatbot or a creative writer; it is an AI-powered search engine built on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Its core strength lies in finding information on the live web and providing verified, clickable citations for every claim.

When I asked Gemini a follow-up question about revealing each chatbot’s biggest weaknesses, it offered the following descriptions:

• ChatGPT (OpenAI): ChatGPT is designed as a broad, execution-focused generalist. Its weaknesses stem from trying to do too many things simultaneously and prioritizing speed and output generation over meticulous fact-checking.
• Claude (Anthropic): Claude is built to be a careful reasoner and long-context synthesizer. Its weaknesses largely stem from its heavy emphasis on safety guardrails and its lack of deep integration with real-time tools.
• Perplexity: Perplexity is an AI search engine built on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Its weaknesses appear immediately when users try to use it as a traditional chatbot rather than a research tool.

Gemini was none too kind to each chatbot when laying out their faults. For example, it listed poor conversational memory, low creativity and citation hallucinations as the three biggest weaknesses stemming from users’ experiences with Perplexity.

Claude’s reply

I was amazed to see Claude start its analysis of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity by pointing out its bias with this honest declaration:

Fair question, but I'll flag my own bias upfront: I'm made by Anthropic, so take my take with a grain of salt — I'm not exactly a neutral party. I haven't used these products myself. I don't have hands-on experience with ChatGPT's interface, Gemini's integration with Google services, or Perplexity's search flow. Anything I say is inference from what's publicly known, not firsthand comparison.

Claude accepted ChatGPT as the market leader among other AI tools due to its broad capabilities, strong voice mode feature, vast plugins/GPTs ecosystem and penchant for shipping flashy features before its rivals. As for its weaknesses, it pointed to ChatGPT agreeing too readily rather than pushing back on its users' questions and how its quality feels inconsistent across its model updates in ways that frustrate its power users.

In Gemini’s case, Claude noted that its biggest edge is its Google search engine and Google Workspace integration. Claude also brought up Gemini’s strong multimodal abilities and ability to handle long-context work. The most noteworthy weakness that was mentioned is how some users complain about its lack of a personality (it doesn’t have the strongest conversational abilities, in my opinion) in comparison to other AI tools.

To end its analysis of its three biggest AI competitors, Claude presented this statement aimed at focusing on the bigger picture of the current-day AI arms race:

These companies are trading the lead constantly — whoever's "best" shifts every few months as new models ship. Anyone (including me) who tells you one is definitively superior across the board right now is probably overselling it or hasn't checked recently. Your actual best move is checking recent independent benchmarks or just trying them on the tasks you care about, since "best" is pretty task-dependent.

Perplexity’s rebuttal

Perplexity got straight to the point when the time came for it to be as blunt as possible about its opinions on ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. It noted how they’re all strong across the board, but feel different in personality, reliability, and what they’re best at.

It pointed to ChatGPT’s citation consistency across encyclopedic, community and legacy editorial domains, such as Wikipedia and Reddit. The main weakness Perplexity connected to ChatGPT was how it occasionally tries to “smooth over” its knowledge gaps instead of simply saying “I don’t know.”

Gemini got a digital pat on the back for offering its users a wealth of information and integration with live Google Search data. But it also got knocked for its less-than-reliable reasoning depth and giving out answers that can feel shallow or generic.

As for Claude, Perplexity gave it high marks for offering users depth, clarity, and safety when explaining complex topics. As for its central weakness, Claude got knocked down a peg for being overly cautious or verbose with its responses. Perplexity also remarked how Claude can sometimes avoid giving direct answers.

At the end of its evaluation, this is how Perplexity summarized the other three chatbots it’s always compared to:

ChatGPT: most well-rounded and adaptable.

Gemini: strongest for up-to-date info and ecosystem integration.

Claude: strongest for deep thinking and careful writing.

If you forced a blunt summary: ChatGPT is the best generalist, Claude is the best thinker, and Gemini is the best connected.

The takeaway

I have to hand it to all four chatbots — they remained professional in their responses, gave credit where credit is due when bringing up the other AI tools’ strengths and didn’t get into a digital mud-slinging match when speaking on their rivals’ weaknesses.

Their honest examinations of each other stood out to me as a go-to guide for me when deciding what tasks to present to them from that point forward. I’m sure as time goes on, each of those AI tools will get more refined and get past their shortcomings—at least a lack of honesty isn’t among them.

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When ChatGPT first launched, most of the conversation centered on AI-generated student essays, deepfake images and the threat of automated fake news. Books, however, felt different.

As someone who reads and reviews half a dozen books a month for ReaderViews, I've always found a certain comfort in the traditional publishing process. Bringing a book to market has historically required editors, designers, proofreaders, and, most importantly, an author who actually sat down and wrote it. That barrier to entry gave books an inherent authority that standard websites and fleeting social media posts often lacked.

Then I read a recent New York Times investigation into AI-generated biographies appearing on Amazon. These included books about living public figures that were riddled with factual mistakes and seemingly produced with zero human oversight.

I wondered: Could I actually spot one in the wild? I opened Amazon and started searching.

Most of the listings looked completely normal

The most surprising part of the whole experiment was at first glance, nothing looked unusual. All the books with AI-generated content featured professional-looking covers, convincing descriptions, reasonable price points, and even star ratings. Nothing immediately screamed "AI." If I hadn't intentionally gone looking for them, I probably would have assumed they were entirely legitimate.

Once I dug a little deeper, however, the facade started to crack — and the first thing that tipped me off was the author pages. I clicked on the name behind one biography and landed on the page of someone called John Crane Miller, described as a "seasoned biographer and cultural analyst" with a stock-photo portrait. Miller had published ten biographies in a single week, all about journalists and public figures, and when Kashmir Hill left a public review on Amazon asking to speak with him, his books quietly vanished. He wasn't the only phantom.

A study by Originality.ai found entire catalogs built by authors who appeared to be fabricated identities, one of whom had published 74 books in five months on topics ranging from porn addiction to solo parenting to toxic workplaces. No single person writes like that. These weren't prolific indie authors with a strong work ethic; they were fake names attached to automated output.

Marketing copy was a dead giveaway

Blurb after blurb leaned on the same broad promises and eerily familiar phrasing — "delve into," "comprehensive guide," "unlock the secrets of" — without ever explaining what made the book worth reading over any other book on the same topic.

After half a dozen of these, I could practically predict the next sentence before I read it. The marketing copy wasn't just generic; it was interchangeable, as if the same prompt had been run through the same model with only the subject swapped out.

The biographies were the most troubling category, and the wave of books about tech journalist Kara Swisher illustrated why. Multiple unauthorized biographies of Swisher appeared on Amazon around the release of her memoir "Burn Book," written by authors with no apparent journalism credentials and no indication they had ever spoken to Swisher or anyone in her orbit.

Political scientist Ian Bremmer encountered the same phenomenon: books bearing his name as a subject, produced without his involvement, that simply scraped and summarized what was already freely available online. This is, of course, exactly what chatbots are built to do, that is, synthesize existing information into fluent, confident-sounding prose. The result is a product that looks and feels like a real book but contributes nothing a reader couldn't get from the source material itself.

Beyond books

Substack recently launched an AI detection feature in partnership with a company called Pangram, letting readers scan any post to see an estimate of how much was written by a human versus generated by AI.

Substack CEO Chris Best framed it as a way to keep the platform from becoming "like LinkedIn," overrun with hollow AI content, but even Substack acknowledges the tool isn't perfect. The Atlantic found that Pangram's accuracy is far from bulletproof, and critics worry about false positives flagging legitimate human writers.

Still, the fact that a major publishing platform felt compelled to build this feature at all says something about how urgent the problem has become. Amazon, for its part, has no equivalent.

The takeaway

As someone who absolutely loves to read, I found this to be a very interesting experiment. My takeaway is that now, instead of trusting a listing at face value, I take a few extra minutes to look up the author outside of Amazon to see if they have a credible publishing history elsewhere, and I specifically hunt down professional reviews rather than relying on standard star ratings.

I always preview the sample text to check if the writing feels robotic or relies on repetitive phrasing, and for nonfiction, I actively look for evidence of real human interviews and original citations. None of these steps individually guarantee a book was written by a human, but together, they make it much easier to separate thoughtful, researched work from automated content designed just to game search results.

More from Tom's Guide

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• Microsoft Copilot’s free Deep Research AI tool is going away — these are the 7 best free alternatives
• I always recommend the ChatGPT 'Escape Prompt' to friends looking for a new job — here's why it works

Most ChatGPT users have gotten accustomed to using AI to help with simple questions that are too nuanced for Google. But, ChatGPT Work is meant to be used differently.

After spending time with it, I realized the biggest shift with OpenAI's new feature within the interface, is that it does so much more than just answer questions — it does entire tasks!

Once I tried it, I saw the difference was truly unique. Instead of bouncing back and forth with dozens of follow-up prompts, I found myself giving ChatGPT Work a goal and letting it figure out the steps.

Here are the seven prompts I've found myself coming back to the most.

1. Be my chief of staff for this project

Prompt: Act as my chief of staff for this project. Review everything I've shared, identify what still needs to be done, organize the work into priorities, and only come back to me when you need a decision that requires my input.

This has become my favorite way to start a new project. Instead of asking ChatGPT what I should do next, I ask it to build the roadmap. It identifies missing information, suggests a logical order for tasks and keeps the project moving without waiting for me to think of the next prompt.

It feels much closer to working with an assistant than chatting with an AI. It works especially for those times when you're trying to get a project off the ground (alone without a team) and need support. ChatGPT Work seems to "get it" much better than a simple chatbot.

2. Read everything and tell me what actually matters

Prompt: Review every document in this folder. Identify the key points, flag anything important or contradictory, and create one summary that I can read in five minutes.

We've all been handed a folder full of PDFs, meeting notes or research documents with the goal of knowing everything inside as quickly as possible. Normally I'd summarize each one separately before trying to connect the dots myself. ChatGPT Work can tackle the entire collection and give me a single report that highlights what matters most.

That alone can save an enormous amount of time. It's a lot like Gemini Notebooks, formally NotebookLM, but if I'm in ChatGPT platform already, it makes sense not to switch out for something like this.

3. Compare these options like you're spending your own money

Prompt: Compare these products using professional reviews, user feedback, specifications, long-term ownership costs and reliability. Recommend the one you would personally buy and explain why.

I don't want a list of specs anymore like ChatGPT has done. Instead, I want recommendations that come from weighing real tradeoffs. That could mean support whether I'm looking at laptops or planning a weekend getaway.

4. Own my inbox

Prompt: Go through my email, group similar messages together, identify anything urgent, draft replies where appropriate and create a short action list for anything that still needs my attention.

Email is one of those jobs that somehow expands to fill whatever time you give it. Instead of processing messages one by one, I let ChatGPT organize everything first. By the time I'm looking at my inbox, I already know what's urgent, what's waiting and what can safely be ignored. I can also ask ChatGPT questions about my inbox, like, "Where is the Amazon receipt from earlier this month," rather than trying to figure it out myself.

5. Turn my messy notes into something useful

Prompt: Take these notes, organize them into logical sections, identify any missing information and produce a polished document that's ready to share.

My notes are so messy that even I'll take a look and wonder what I was trying to say. Whether they are voice memos or written in my Notes app, they are random

Sometimes they're voice memos. Sometimes they're random thoughts copied from three different apps.

Instead of spending an hour cleaning everything up myself, I hand the entire mess to ChatGPT Work and let it build something coherent.

6. Keep watching this for me

Prompt: Monitor this [topic] and let me know only when something significant changes. Ignore routine updates unless they affect my decision.

This is where ChatGPT Work realls feels different. I don't have to repeatedly check back on something like a website update or an email or news story. Instead, I can hand off the monitoring and focus on something else. It removes a surprising amount of mental overhead.

7. Finish the project—not just the next step

Prompt: My goal is to finish this project. Break it into manageable stages, complete everything you can independently and ask me for input only when you absolutely need it.

This prompt changed how I think about how to use AI. Rather than asking "what comes next?" the AI takes care of it for me. I hand over the entire assignment. The result is fewer interruptions, fewer prompts and a workflow that feels much more natural. This is great for time-consuming administrative takes because it allows me to focus on more important or creative projects.

The takeaway

OpenAI is constantly updating its models and what's possible for the platform itself. If you've been ignoring ChatGPT Work or wondering why you would even need it, I encouarge you to give it a try.

Traditional chatbot prompts tend to be small such as summarize this article, explain this concept or write this email. But ChatGPT Work shines when you give it ownership instead.

The more responsibility you hand over, the more useful it becomes. Rather than asking it to solve one problem at a time, ask it to take responsibility for the whole job. That's the mental shift that finally made it click for me — and once I started using it that way, it changed how I work.

Let me know in the comments if you've tried and what you think.

More from Tom's Guide

• I asked ChatGPT to improve my Apple Notes app — here are the 7 changes I actually kept
• Microsoft Copilot’s free Deep Research AI tool is going away — these are the 7 best free alternatives
• I always recommend the ChatGPT 'Escape Prompt' to friends looking for a new job — here's why it works

When I logged into ChatGPT last week to lay out a cluster of odd, frustrating symptoms, irregular cycles, sudden night sweats, subtle mood swings and exhaustion, I was looking for help to relieve the symptoms. What I got instead was a confident, direct diagnosis: Congratulations, you’re likely in your first trimester!

There was just one glaring problem: I am absolutely not pregnant. My husband has had a vasectomy and I'm in the thick of perimenopause. But the sheer certainty with which the AI delivered its verdict left me stunned. If I hadn't known my own body — or if I had been younger, anxious or facing a high-stakes health decision — that piece of advice could have derailed my day, sent me down an emotional rabbit hole, or led to unnecessary medical testing.

My experience isn't an isolated quirk. ChatGPT Health launched Thursday, promising U.S. users can now securely connect their own health info to "better understand and navigate your health," it's important to keep in mind that AI is not a replacement for a human doctor.

Landmark lawsuit filed

Just this week, The New York Times reported on a landmark lawsuit filed against OpenAI by Scott Winters, a Florida pastor who claims ChatGPT’s medical advice nearly cost him his life. After consulting the chatbot about severe dizziness and pelvic pain, the AI reassured him his symptoms were "nothing dangerous," advising him to remain off his feet in a recliner.

Weeks later, he was rushed to the ICU with a massive, life-threatening pulmonary embolism, a condition his doctors noted was exacerbated by the prolonged immobility the AI recommended.

While my misdiagnosis was a false positive rather than a medical emergency, both cases highlight the exact same fundamental danger: large language models are engineered to sound authoritative, not to be right.

Here is why relying on AI for medical advice is a risky gamble and why we need to change how we interact with these tools.

1. AI pattern-matches words, not physiology

Simply put: AI is not a doctor and obviously doesn't "know" medicine. It operates on statistical probability — predicting the next most likely word based on its training data.

When you feed a chatbot a list of symptoms like missed periods, fatigue and hormonal shifts, its algorithms cross-reference billions of text snippets. Because pregnancy is heavily discussed online in association with those symptoms, the AI defaults to the most statistically common narrative in its dataset. It lacks the ability to account for age context, subtle bloodwork markers or the complex, non-linear realities of perimenopause.

And, that's just pregnancy! There are plenty of symptoms for thousands of ailments from dehydration to serious medical emergencies. Users treating ChatGPT as a doctor reminds me of the popularity of WebMD.

2. "Sycophancy" and echo chambers

One of the most dangerous traits of conversational AI is sycophancy — the tendency of the model to mirror the user's language, tone and unstated assumptions.

If your prompt leans even slightly toward a specific fear or curiosity, the AI is prone to confirming it rather than challenging it. In Mr. Winters’ lawsuit, the complaint notes how the chatbot leaned into his personal spiritual language to offer comforting, yet wildly inaccurate, medical reassurances.

In my case, because I asked if hormonal shifts could explain my symptoms, the AI leaped straight to the most dramatic hormonal shift in its catalog: pregnancy.

3. The fallacy of the 'authoritative tone'

When a human doctor isn't sure about a diagnosis, they use qualified language, order lab work or refer you to a specialist.

When an AI hallucinates a diagnosis, it presents it with the calm, unflinching confidence of a board-certified physician. It doesn't hesitate, nor does it express internal doubt. That authoritative tone creates a false sense of security, making it dangerously easy for users to bypass real medical care or ignore warning signs.

The takeaway

Large language models can be helpful brainstorming tools for organizing your thoughts before an appointment or summarizing complex medical jargon. But they are not diagnostic tools. They do not have clinical judgment, they cannot order blood tests and they cannot feel the pulse of a human patient.

If you’re experiencing unexpected symptoms, skip the prompt box. Trust your body, listen to licensed professionals and leave the medical diagnoses to human beings.

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I can’t help but spend far too many hours scouring the web for answers about the world’s biggest mysteries.

If you catch me on a Saturday night being a loser sitting inside my dark room while the illuminating light of my laptop makes me visible, then I’m most likely diving into conspiracy theories. My fascination with the wild stories behind unsolved cases is strong. The truth behind what’s really stationed at Area 51, why so many ships & planes vanish in the Bermuda Triangle and whatever happened to D.B. Cooper (the man who successfully hijacked a Boeing 727) fascinates me.

Another unsolved case that I’ll never get tired of reading about is Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. As an American icon best known for her accomplishments in the world of aviation, a holiday was enacted in her honor (Amelia Earhart Day). And this year, I wanted to try something different during my latest deep dive into what led to the vanishing of her and her navigator Fred Noonan.

After asking four chatbots what they think really happened to Earhart, I noticed that one prevailing theory stood out above the rest of the wild theories connected to her disappearance.

ChatGPT and Gemini’s answers

I presented the same question to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to get my latest conspiracy theory study session underway: “Based on all the conspiracy theories surrounding the mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart, what do you think really happened to her?”

ChatGPT’s explanation got straight to the point: The short answer is: the most likely explanation is also the least sensational one. Based on the available evidence, I think Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan most likely became lost after failing to locate Howland Island, ran out of fuel, and crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

The chatbot pointed to its conclusion as the one that’s accepted by most aviation historians and investigators, for various reasons. Those reasons include no verified post-disappearance radio transmissions being found, the U.S. Navy being unable to find anything during their search and how modern analyses point to Earhart & Noonan having very little fuel remaining during their excursion. Some of the other theories ChatGPT pointed out to explain this mystery included Earhart & Noonan landing on Nikumaroro then dying as castaways, crashing somewhere else entirely (New Britain, for example), getting captured by Japan and a possible government cover-up.

As for Gemini, it made mention of the same result ChatGPT reached: When you strip away the decades of folklore, sensationalism, and cinematic conspiracies, the historical and scientific consensus points to one sobering reality: Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, simply ran out of fuel and crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

Gemini mentioned something about a sonar update connected to the Earhart mystery that occurred in 2024, which was a bit of info I never knew about before:

The ocean floor remains the primary search zone. In early 2024, ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision made global headlines when they captured a sonar image of a plane-shaped anomaly roughly 100 miles from Howland Island. However, when the team returned to the site with high-resolution equipment in November 2024, they confirmed the anomaly was merely a natural rock formation. The hunt in the deep sea continues.

Claude and Perplexity’s responses

When presented with my Earhart prompt, Claude gave me the answer I was expecting after reading ChatGPT and Gemini’s answers:

My honest take: the simplest explanation — she ran out of fuel and went down in the ocean — fits the available evidence best. The Nikumaroro theory is the most seriously debated alternative among researchers, but it remains unproven. The more elaborate theories (capture, cover-up) tend to rely on speculation rather than verifiable evidence.

While Claude also mentioned conspiracy theorists bringing up Earhart secretly coming back to the U.S under a new name and her possibly conducting a covert spy mission for the U.S. government, the chatbot made sure to note that those theories have no credible evidence connected to them and are largely dismissed by researchers & historians.

When it was finally Perplexity’s turn to answer my question, it gave me the answer that stood out as the prevailing theory among all four chatbots: If I had to pick one explanation, I’d say a navigation or radio problem led to a fuel-starved ditching near Howland Island, followed by loss in the ocean, with the Nikumaroro castaway theory as the most plausible alternative.

Perplexity pointed to its answer being the prevailing mainstream view from most folks who’ve looked into Earhart’s story, while the theory tied to her becoming a “castaway” has drawn some support due to the data tied to radio-distress reports from Earhart and artifacts linked to Nikumaroro Island (the place where some theorize Earhart and Noonan crashed, then lived as castaways).

Final thoughts

Coming out of this latest chatbot Q&A meeting, I left it knowing that the truth is simple and not covered in any sort of mind-bending mystery.

Earhart and Noonan met their untimely end due to running out of fuel while in the middle of another bout of flight navigation. Earhart will forever be regarded as an aviation icon, as she made history by being the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane and later crossing it alone while facing harsh weather conditions.

Someday, I hope we get a definite breakdown of her disappearance and the physical evidence everyone needs to back up everything we’ve heard about it thus far. Just like most folks, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity know where the real truth lies.

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Microsoft is reducing free features for users. Microsoft Whiteboard now requires you to have a Microsoft Business account if you want to continue using it; the meeting preparation feature embedded in Microsoft Outlook asks you to purchase a Microsoft 365 Copilot license and Copilot Podcasts are being discontinued altogether. Now another feature that was once free of charge is being taken away from Microsoft users and replaced by a paid option.

The Deep Research feature, once available at no extra cost to Microsoft Copilot users, is now being retired, starting August 18, 2026. And after it’s gone, you’ll be required to get a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription to create the reports and analyses you’re used to doing with Copilot with the all-new Researcher AI tool.

While your previously generated Deep Research content won’t be deleted and will be accessible through Researcher, it’s a bit of a bummer to know that you’ll only be able to get back to it via a required payment.

If this news disappoints you as much as it did for me, then consider giving these alternative AI tools a try if you’re looking for more ways to conduct your research.

Try out these free options to continue generating detailed reports

Perplexity stands out as one of the top options that can fulfill all your Copilot Deep Research needs. Since its biggest selling point is backing up its data via valid citations and easily verifiable claims, you can rely on its real-time web search to get the fast results you’re looking for. Conducting everyday research on general news, products and academics should work just fine if you consider using Perplexity’s free tier.

Claude is one of the strongest AI analysts you can utilize—it’s capable of generating long-form explanations, providing you with legit citations and offers “Connectors” such as PubMed, bioRxiv and Consensus that act as research databases.

Google Gemini taps into all the latest information injected into Google Search to analyze and synthesize all the data you’re looking for from multiple webpages. Researching all manner of topics through Gemini is another free AI research tool alternative worth considering as well. Gemini’s Google Workspace integration is also great if you’re looking to export your deep research reports to Google Docs or download as a PDF.

Gemini Notebook (formerly known as NotebookLM) is an amazing AI research tool as it allows you to upload your own sources to create your own study material. Injecting your notebooks with PDFs, research papers, notes, Google Docs, etc. helps Gemini Notebook get all the information it needs to answer any questions you may have about your current research topic. Being able to turn your notebooks into Audio & Video Overviews, Slide Decks, Quizzes, Flashcards, etc. also stands out as some of the best ways Gemini Notebook handles your research sessions.

ChatGPT is known far and wide as the mainstream AI tool that your everyday AI chatbot user makes use of. Presenting it with super descriptive prompts (a good example of that being "Research the current AI landscape in 2026. Compare OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft and Meta. Include recent developments, strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, and cite sources”) helps it handle deep research tasks with more clarity. ChatGPT comes in handy when you’re looking to learn about new subjects, have the most complex topics explained to you in simpler terms and have research data built into structured reports.

Elicit stands tall as one of the best AI research tools for users interested in deep academic literature discovery and structured data extraction. Students and professional researchers can definitely put their trust in this option since it cites 138 million academic papers and 545,000 clinical trials (with more scientific data sources set to arrive later).

And finally, Google AI Mode is a viable pick when you’re looking for a web research option that can handle any tasks you once gave to Copilot’s Deep Research tool. Since it’s readily available inside the Google Search bar, it’s great for comparing products, simplifying complex subjects, comparing viewpoints and discovering up-to-date information.

Bottom line

While the news of Microsoft Copilot’s Deep Research feature going away and being replaced by a mandatory paid option breaks our hearts, it’s less painful when you consider the wide range of free options you can use to replace it. It’s worth keeping in mind that chatbots are prone to hallucinating, which should compel you to always double-check every bit of information it sends your way. But for the most part, the seven AI deep research tools I’ve made you aware of are mostly dependable and worthy of your time.

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I've used Apple Notes for years. It's where I keep all my ideas, random thoughts and lists to stay organized. But like a lot of the Apple apps that come with the phone, I'd never really stopped to explore what it could do. So I decided to try something different. Instead of searching YouTube or scrolling through Reddit for tips, I asked ChatGPT one simple question:

"How can I make Apple Notes more useful in my everyday life?"

The suggestions were surprisingly practical. Rather than suggesting third-party tools, ChatGPT showed me how to unlock power features already sitting inside the app. Here are the eight changes that completely transformed my daily workflow.

1. Create a 'Dashboard' note instead of dozens of random notes

My biggest problem was finding notes after making them. What good was a brainstorm if the ideas were lost in my phone? To solve this, ChatGPT suggested building a single "Dashboard" note (essentially a Map of Content) using internal note links to connect everything I use regularly.

This brilliant trick put a halt to endlessly searching through hundreds of flat notes. Now I open one main note and use it as the control center. It turns Apple Notes into a personal wiki.

Mine now includes linked sections for:

Work & Projects

Story & Article Ideas

Family Reminders & Shared Lists

Travel Itineraries

Frequently Used Links & Resources

2. Pin the Notes you actually need

I’d ignored the Pin feature for years. Now, my Dashboard, weekly to-do list and active project notes stay permanently anchored to the top of the app. It saves more time than I expected because I’m no longer hunting through old entries several times a day.

3. Turn one giant note into collapsible sections

I tend to dump everything into giant, sprawling text files. ChatGPT suggested organizing long notes using "Headings" combined with collapsible sections. Now, for long-form brainstorming or article ideas, I can expand or hide categories as needed. It keeps huge notes organized and very easy to navigate.

4. Scan paper documents intead of taking photos

I used to snap blurry camera photos of physical documents. Not only did that clutter my photos, but the quality of the image just wasn't good. But Apple Notes has a built-in scanner that crops, flattens and sharpens paper into high-contrast PDFs.

I now scan warranty info, school forms, insurance paperwork and receipts directly into designated folders. They look cleaner, take up less storage and the text inside them is fully searchable.

5. Let ChatGPT organize messy brain dumps

This ended up being my favorite workflow. When I have messy, unorganized meeting notes or rapid-fire ideas, I copy the mess into ChatGPT and ask it to structure the information:

"Organize these notes into bulleted categories."

"Turn these raw thoughts into an prioritized action list."

"Summarize key takeaways and highlight unresolved questions."

Once ChatGPT cleans and formats the text, I paste the polished version back into Apple Notes. It gives me the speed of raw note-taking with the clarity of an organized system.

6. Build reusable Note templates

There are certain structures I use over and over. I now keep a dedicated folder of master templates for:

Packing Lists

Weekly Planning & Reviews

Meeting Agendas

Vacation Itineraries

Whenever I need one, I simply duplicate the template note instead of building it from scratch.

7. Use smart folders & tags to organize automatically

Instead of manually moving notes into nested subfolders, I started tagging entries with hashtags like #work, #recipes, #travel or #ideas.

Using Smart Folders, Apple Notes automatically pulls every tagged note into its corresponding hub. I can save a quick thought, slap a tag on it, and trust that it will route itself to the right place.

Bonus: trigger 'Quick Notes' and auto-templates with iOS Shortcuts

To take automation a step further, I paired Apple Notes with Apple’s native Shortcuts app and Quick Notes.

Quick Notes: Swiping up from the bottom-right corner of an iPad or tapping the Quick Note control in iPhone's Control Center opens an instant scratchpad without opening the main app.

Automated Templates: I set up a simple Shortcut on my home screen titled "New Weekly Plan." Clicking it automatically generates a fresh, pre-formatted Apple Note with the current date, ready for my weekly review.

My biggest takeaway

Before asking ChatGPT to help, I had pretty much given up on my notes app and resorted to just emailing myself everything. That has led to a whole slew of disorganization issues. I needed a solution and ChatGPT delivered!

I expected AI to suggest something like Notion or Obsidian. Instead, it showed me how to get 90% of those advanced workflows using tools Apple had provided all along.

The biggest improvement was getting my Apple Notes to a place where they are useful again, despite being full of ideas. ChatGPT helped me go from a digital sticky note graveyard to the backbone of my everyday organization.

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I’ve been a loyal Marvel Cinematic Universe fan ever since Tony Stark built his original Iron Man suit in a cave with a box of scraps.

Since that pivotal moment in superhero/comic book movie history took place, I’ve plopped myself down in theaters far and wide to witness the formation of the original Avengers, see Black Panther & Spider-Man make their MCU debuts, get a glimpse of the destructive power Thanos wields, lay witness to his epic demise and follow all the vital post-Endgame happenings on the big & little screen.

Like most diehard MCU followers, I’ll admit to being less than enthused with some of the movie and TV show follow-ups to “The Infinity Saga.” Films like Black Widow, Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania were complete duds to me. And on the Disney+ exclusive series front, shows like Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Secret Invasion definitely dulled my excitement for the MCU.

But as soon as that Avengers: Doomsday trailer came across my timeline, a large part of that enthusiasm came back tenfold. With that blockbuster event primed for December 18, I have plenty of time to prep myself for the next MCU epic. And I used ChatGPT to set me up with the ultimate watchlist to enjoy on Disney+.

Splitting up the ultimate MCU recap by tiers of chronological importance

With this prompt, I gave ChatGPT its marching orders: “Give me the ultimate Marvel Cinematic Universe movie and Disney+ series playlist to watch that'll get me up to speed on everything I need to know before watching Avengers: Doomsday.”

To start, the chatbot laid out a list of chronological tiers that included MCU films and shows regarded as essential viewing. Alongside each list of films was a list of reasons to watch them for the first time or rewatch them to refresh my memory of the major events leading up to Avengers: Doomsday. Here’s ChatGPT’s tier list of MCU projects worth watching before Doom terrorizes the heroes we all know and love:

• Tier 1 - Absolutely Essential (Start Here): Watch Iron Man, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. These movies highlight Tony Stark’s journey, Steve Rogers’ ideals, The Avengers splitting apart and the introductions of Spider-Man & Black Panther. Then watch Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame to understand “The Blip,” the multiversal consequences, and where every original Avenger ended up.
• Tier 2 - The Multiverse Story: Watch Loki (Season 1) because it explains “Variants,” timelines, the “TVA,” the “Sacred Timeline” and why the multiverse begins breaking apart. Follow that up by watching Spider-Man: No Way Home, as it introduces multiversal travel and reality-breaking consequences. Watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is critical because it introduces “incursions,” alternate universes, “Dreamwalking,” the “Illuminati” and incursions becoming universe-ending events. Then watch Loki (Season 2) to grasp how time now works, the TVA’s new purpose and Loki’s new role.
• Tier 3 - The New Avengers: Watch Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to see Wakanda’s Future, Shuri, Riri Williams and the world politics at the heart of the MCU. Then check out Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as it introduces one of the strongest future Avengers members and leaves behind one of the MCU’s biggest mysteries surrounding the Ten Rings’ origin. Watch The Marvels to see how Manica Rambeau ends up in another universe, how Kamala Khan begins assembling a new generation of heroes and how the ending directly teases multiversal crossovers. Then watch Thunderbolts*, since it effectively establishes another major superhero team and introduces key players expected to matter going forward.
• Tier 4 - Fantastic Four Preparation: Check out The Fantastic Four: First Steps, as it introduces Marvel’s “First Family” into the current MCU saga and lays the groundwork for Doctor Doom’s arrival.

The ideal viewing orders for an extended monthly watchlist and a weekend binge session

ChatGPT also generated two lists that split its respective viewing orders across months' worth of MCU entertainment and a binge-worthy weekend session. Here are the 17 Disney+ Marvel films and shows it gave me for both lists (I’m definitely taking down the first one until December arrives!):

• Ideal Viewing Order: Iron Man, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, WandaVision, Loki (Season 1), Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Loki (Season 2), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine, Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
• If you only have one weekend: Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, WandaVision, Loki (Season 1), Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Loki (Season 2), The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Thunderbolts*.

Bottom line

Of course I’m going to see all the craziness Peter Parker will get himself caught up in once Spider-Man: Brand New Day drops on July 30. The combination of Spidey, The Punisher and The Hulk all in the same movie has me in extreme hype mode!

But after that, I’m going to dive deep into the ideal MCU recap viewing order ChatGPT generated to get me up to speed on everything I need to know before I watch Avengers: Doomsday on the biggest screen possible in the loudest theatre I can find.

I can’t wait to watch the Avengers, Wakandans, New Avengers, Fantastic Four and the X-Men join forces from different universes to finally confront Dr. Doom (and probably get destroyed in the process before they make the ultimate comeback in Avengers: Secret Wars).

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There are very few things more humbling than looking for a job with little or no response. It's not only overwhelming but also frustrating when it feels as though AI is everywhere and everyone has access to the same AI tools.

A recent study even found that nearly half of LinkedIn posts longer than 250 words appear to be AI-generated, highlighting just how crowded the AI-assisted job market has become.

That's why, whenever a friend tells me they're looking for a new job, I don't tell them to ask ChatGPT to write another cover letter. Instead, I recommend what I call the Escape Prompt.

The name comes from a simple idea: don't use AI to apply for more jobs. Use it to figure out how to escape your current situation and explore something new.

What is the Escape Prompt?

Instead of asking ChatGPT to "find me a new job" or "write my resume," ask it to become your career strategist.

Here's the prompt: Act as my career strategist, recruiter and interview coach. My goal isn't simply to find another job — it's to leave a role that no longer fits me.

If you don't have memory enabled, you need to include the following information when you use the 'Escape Prompt'. Add, "here's my background: Current role, years of experience, skills, industries I've worked in, what I enjoy most about my job, what drains my energy, salary goals, location preferences. Then, based on this information, recommend career paths I may not have considered, explain which of my skills transfer best to those roles, identify companies that value my experience, rewrite my experience for those employers, point out skills I should build over the next six months, create a realistic 30-day job search plan. generate interview questions I should expect. Challenge my assumptions if I'm thinking too narrowly."

As a bonus, if you have memory enabled, use this prompt: Based on what you know about me, what should I do tomorrow to progress in my career and find a job I love.

Keep in mind that when you use this prompt, you're going to get a long response back from ChatGPT. If you get overwhelmed by a lot of information at once (I know I do!), then break up the prompt or ask for bullet points.

Why it works

This prompt creates a response that's tailored specifically for you. In a job market with so much AI slop, this is an opportunity to get information catered to you and your needs.

That said, when you can still use ChatGPT to help write your resume and prepare for job interviews, but make sure you go over your AI-written resume and cover letter to avoid embarrassing mistakes. AI is great as an assistant, but just like you wouldn't let an intern complete the entire project, you need to be in the loop to ensure everything is correct and doesn't give off the "uncanny valley" AI response.

The Escape Prompt flips job searching on its head

Instead of completing one task at a time, ChatGPT spends the entire conversation learning about your experience, your strengths and what you're actually trying to achieve. Every follow-up becomes smarter because it's built on everything you've already shared.

I also highly recommend turning on memory if you are using ChatGPT a lot in your job search. By doing that, the chatbot will feel like a real career coach and offer responses that make more sense to your current situation.

The Escape Prompt helps you think beyond your current title. After all, one of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is searching for the exact same role at a different company. But your next opportunity might not have the same title.

Someone working in customer support might be a great fit for customer success. A project coordinator may have the skills to move into operations or journalist might discover opportunities in content strategy, communications or developer relations that never appeared in a traditional job search.

The Escape Prompt pushes ChatGPT to look for those connections instead of simply matching keywords. In my experience, those conversations are often more valuable than having AI rewrite another resume.

The takeaway

Using this prompt can help make your application even stronger. Once you've identified the roles you actually want, you can use the same conversation to tailor your resume, refine your LinkedIn profile, write a cover letter, prepare for interviews and even practice answering difficult questions.

Since ChatGPT already understands your background, the responses feel more connected instead of starting from scratch every time.

That's a much better use of AI than repeatedly asking for disconnected pieces of career advice. Just remember not to let AI do all the thinking. Be sure to research companies yourself, verify salary information, read employee reviews and reach out to people already working in the roles you're considering. You can use AI as a fact-checker and to help point you to the right people, but don't use it as a replacement for actual human judgement.

As AI becomes a standard part of the hiring process, simply using ChatGPT isn't going to make you stand out. Recruiters are seeing more AI-polished resumes, more AI-written cover letters and more AI-generated LinkedIn content than ever before. The real advantage comes from using AI differently.

The Escape Prompt can help you figure out where you should go next, why you're qualified to get there and how to tell your story with confidence. If you're feeling stuck in your current job, spend 15 minutes with this prompt before you send another application.

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Taking care of my health is something I take seriously. I try to stay active, look after my mental well-being, and keep up with regular dental and eye exams.

That made me curious when I learned about World Brain Day, a global awareness campaign focused on brain health and neurological disorders. According to the World Federation of Neurology, more than 3.4 billion people worldwide are living with a neurological condition. Yet millions still struggle to get the care they need because of high treatment costs, shortages of specialists, and long wait times for appointments.

To mark World Brain Day, I turned to ChatGPT to learn more about brain health and what I can do to help protect it. The conversation gave me plenty of useful information—and, just as importantly, pointed me toward topics worth researching further with trusted medical sources. These are the seven prompts that helped me better understand my brain health.

A prompt centered around the actions I can take to protect my brain health

I asked ChatGPT to come up with a list of prompts built around the WFN’s five core pillars of World Brain Day, which are as follows:

• Brain Health Is for Everyone – Equity in care.
• Earlier Access Changes Lives – Prioritizing early intervention.
• Prevention Starts in Everyday Life – Reducing risk factors.
• Bring Brain Care Closer to Home – Community-based support.
• Awareness Must Lead to Action – Measurable impact.

The first prompt the chatbot created for me was this one: Explain the five biggest things I can do today to protect my brain health and rank them by the impact they'll likely have over my lifetime.

ChatGPT started off its thorough explanation to that prompt by stating the following: Protecting your brain health is less about finding a single “brain-boosting” trick and more about consistently reducing risk factors while strengthening the systems your brain depends on: blood flow, sleep, learning, emotional regulation, and social connection.

The five tips the chatbot proceeded to give about prolonging my brain’s healthy status included prioritizing my cardiovascular health, treating my sleep sessions like they’re brain maintenance, constantly challenging my brain through daily learning practices, strengthening my relationships through daily instances of social connection and reducing all forms of chronic stress & emotional resilience.

The three main habits ChatGPT told me to adopt daily include walking for at least 30 minutes, getting a full night of quality sleep and spending meaningful time with another person. Those actions go a long way toward improving my blood flow, brain repair, mood regulation and cognitive resilience.

Moving my body, nourishing my brain with educational material like books, challenging my brain with all manner of physical & digital puzzles, connecting with people via meaningful conversations and recovering after a long workday with at least seven to nine hours of sleep are all vital behaviors worth adding to my daily routine.

6 more prompts focused on learning about brain health, warning signs of brain disorders and more

As for the other prompts that proved to be enlightening on the topics of being aware of the most common brain disorders, common myths about brain health and more, these six provided me with the informative chats I was looking for:

• Pretend you're a neurologist giving a free 10-minute brain health consultation. What questions would you ask me, what risk factors would you look for, and what lifestyle changes would you recommend?
• Teach me the early warning signs of the most common brain disorders—including stroke, dementia, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis—and explain when someone should seek medical attention.
• Design a science-backed 30-day brain health challenge that improves memory, focus, mood, sleep, and long-term cognitive health using habits that take less than 30 minutes a day.
• If someone lives in an area with limited access to neurologists or brain specialists, what practical steps can they take to monitor their brain health, find reliable resources, and advocate for better care?
• Bust the 10 most common myths about brain health, memory loss, aging, and neurological diseases, and explain what the latest scientific evidence actually says.
• Create a personalized brain health scorecard. Ask me about my sleep, diet, exercise, stress, social life, learning habits, alcohol use, and medical history, then explain which areas deserve the most attention and why.

The takeaway

2026 has turned into a year where my knowledge of holidays has extended beyond the usual ones that force everyone to spend a whole bunch of money to satisfy their loved ones.

World Brain Day will remain an important holiday to me from this point forward—learning about the devastating ailments that target the brain, getting informed about the best practices one must adopt to improve & maintain their brain health and getting an early detection of neurological conditions shouldn’t be just a holiday occurrence, but a daily, weekly and monthly one.

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If you've been following AI news lately, you've probably heard the words "open source" far more than usual.

Nearly every week, another company announces an "open" AI model. Meta has Llama, Mistral has built its reputation on open-weight models, Chinese company Moonshot AI recently released Kimi K3 and even companies that once kept everything behind closed doors are becoming more willing to share parts of their technology.

If you're wondering what "open source" means, you're not alone. Although it may seem like a buzzword or phrase, there's more to it than big tech giving away their precious models for free.

If training an AI model costs hundreds of millions of dollars — or even billions when you factor in the enormous data centers and specialized chips needed to power them, why would companies spend that kind of money only to give their work away?

The answer is that they're not really giving everything away. And in many cases, making models more open is actually good business.

What exactly is open source AI?

First, let's clear up one common misconception. The phrase "open source AI" gets thrown around a lot, but it doesn't always mean what people think it does. A truly open-source project typically makes its code, training methods and licensing available for anyone to inspect, modify and redistribute.

Many of today's AI models are actually open weight rather than fully open source. That means developers can download the trained model and run it themselves, but the company may not release the training data, the code used to build it or every detail of how it was created.

It's a subtle distinction, but an important one. For everyday users, though, the experience is often the same. In other words, more people can build with these models, improve them and create new AI tools without starting from scratch.

The AI arms race has changed

The AI race isn't just about having the smartest chatbot anymore. A couple of years ago, companies competed primarily on who could build the smartest AI model and who could hit the benchmarks first. Today, that's only part of the equation. Now they're competing to become the platform everyone builds on.

Think about Android. Google gives Android away for free because every phone running Android strengthens Google's broader ecosystem. Developers build apps, manufacturers adopt the operating system and users become more likely to use Google's services.

AI companies are actually thinking the same way. If thousands of developers build apps around your model, businesses deploy it inside their organizations and researchers improve it, your technology becomes far more valuable than if it stayed locked behind a subscription.

Open models spread much faster

When a model is widely available, something interesting happens because developers begin fine-tuning it for specific jobs. Maybe universities use it for research or startups build entirely new products on top of it. Hobbyists could even discover creative uses that the original creators never imagined.

And, well, that creates a snowball effect. Instead of one company improving the model, thousands of people contribute ideas, tools and innovations around it. Even if the underlying model doesn't change, the ecosystem around it grows rapidly.

Open source vs. open-weight AI: What's the difference?

These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they're not actually the same thing.

Think of it this way:

• Open source AI is like getting the entire recipe for your favorite meal. You can see every ingredient, understand how it was made, modify it however you like and even share your own version with others.
• Open-weight AI is more like getting the finished cake. You can eat it, decorate it, serve it to guests and even bake new desserts using it as a base— but you don't know exactly how the original baker made it.

Companies still have plenty of ways to make money

Making a model available doesn't necessarily mean giving up revenue. Many companies earn money by offering managed cloud services that make those models easier to run, faster or more reliable. Others sell enterprise security features, premium APIs, consulting services or specialized infrastructure.

Hardware companies benefit, too. Every new AI model ultimately needs powerful GPUs or AI accelerators to run. More open models often translate into greater demand for the hardware that powers them.

In other words, the model itself isn't always the product, but it's often the engine driving a much larger business.

Competition has changed the industry

Open source artificial intelligence wasn't always viewed as a winning strategy. In fact, for many years the assumption was that the most capable models would remain closely guarded because they represented a competitive advantage.

Now, that thinking has shifted. As more companies released powerful open-weight models, it became harder for closed systems to justify charging a premium based on exclusivity alone. Since the competition isn't about intelligence anymore, factors like speed, developer support, integrations, enterprise features, privacy options and cost all matter, too.

That's good news for users because it gives them far more choice than they had even two years ago.

What this means for the average ChatGPT user

Even if you never download an AI model yourself, you're already benefiting from this shift. Open models are helping create better free AI tools, giving smaller developers access to cutting-edge technology and increasing competition across the industry.

They're also making it possible for more AI to run locally on laptops and smartphones, which can improve privacy by keeping sensitive information on your own device instead of sending everything to the cloud.

Not necessarily a good thing, but the competition is pushing every AI company to move faster. The result is that consumers have more capable AI assistants, more options to choose from and a steady stream of new features arriving at a pace that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.

So while it might look like AI companies are suddenly giving away their most valuable technology, they're really investing in something even more valuable: building the biggest ecosystem around their models. Judging by the number of open-weight releases we've seen this year, it doesn't look like that strategy is slowing down anytime soon.

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I use ChatGPT almost every single day, but until recently, I treated Voice Mode, or as it's now called GPT-Live-1, as something I used only on occasion. I didn't use it for anything other than quick questions when I was cooking or, recently, when I needed live translation. For anything requiring actual work or multi-step planning, I always defaulted to the chat box and typed my query.

That mindset changed completely when I decided to plan a last-minute weekend getaway. Normally, planning a trip is a chaotic ritual, especially when planning for my family of five. I'd bounce between Google, hotel booking sites, Yelp reviews, Google Maps and of course, ChatGPT, frantically copying and pasting details across tabs until I could build an itinerary.

This time, I closed my laptop, put my phone on speaker and did everything in one fluid conversation using live voice. That's right, I simply started talking out loud as if sharing my plans with a friend. Within minutes, ChatGPT helped narrow down destinations, suggest boutique hotels, match local restaurants to our vibe, adjust budget constraints and even map out a rainy-day backup plan.

Here is how speaking, rather than typing, completely changed my workflow — and why I don’t think I’m going back.

1. I started with a casual conversation

When I type prompts, especially for things like travel, I tend to try to fit everything into the first prompt. But with voice, that doesn't seem necessary because the entire interaction is so much more fluid and natural. I kicked off the conversation like I was talking to a friend:

"My husband, me and our three kids want to get away for a long weekend. We’d like to stay within about a three-hour drive of New Jersey, keep the budget under $2,000, and mix some outdoor activities with great food. Can you help us figure out where to go?"

Instead of dumping a 500-word list of links or overwhelming me with dozens of choices, ChatGPT paused and asked natural follow-up questions:

Did we want a cozy mountain setting or a coastal vibe?

Were we looking for a quiet, low-key town or somewhere with walkability and a bit of nightlife?

Were we celebrating a special occasion, or was this purely to unwind?

It felt like I was planning the getaway with an actual travel agent whose only goal was to figure out what kind of trip we actually wanted before dumping recommendations on us.

2. Interrupting was the best part

The new GPT-Live-1 voice is great when it comes to interruptions. Unlike an actual person with feelings, you can interrupt the AI at anytime.

When it started pitching a luxury boutique stay in the Hudson Valley that was clearly going to eat up most of our budget, I just talked over it: "Actually, pause on that — that stay looks a bit too pricey. What’s something cozy nearby under $400 a night?"

Without missing a beat, it stopped, acknowledged the price correction, and pivoted to a bed-and-breakfast in Pennsylvania instead.

I tried this a few times with other queries like, "Slow the schedule down — we want to sleep in."

At one point, I completely pivoted and said, "Actually, let's pivot away from mountains—what about Cape May?"

When you're typing, changing your mind means editing a long prompt, deleting text or typing out lengthy explanations. In voice mode, correcting course mid-sentence feels entirely natural and easy.

3. It retained context effortlessly

As our conversation spiraled into tiny side tracks, ChatGPT kept every constraint locked in memory. It remembered our budget, our max driving radius and the fact that we wanted a slow-paced trip.

Because it kept track of all the context seamlessly, I could toss out rapid-fire, low-effort questions:

"What if it rains all day Saturday?"

"Can we swap that lunch place for somewhere with a great patio?"

"Is there a scenic hike on the way back home that takes under two hours?"

I never had to repeat "Remember our budget" or "Keep it near New Jersey." It just knew.

4. It handled the legwork

Once we locked in the general region and vibe, I asked ChatGPT to do some quick live research on specifics: finding current room rate averages, checking if local kid-friendly spots needed reservations and verifying park hours for our hike.

Pro-Tip: Always verify live operational details directly with the venue before booking! AI is brilliant at aggregating options and pricing estimates, but restaurant hours and hotel availability can shift unexpectedly.

Having ChatGPT gather initial numbers into one spoken stream saved me easily an hour of tab-switching.

5. From voice chat to a polished itinerary in seconds

Once we finished bouncing ideas back and forth, I moved back to my screen and typed one single request in the exact same chat log:

"Turn everything we just agreed on into a day-by-day itinerary. Include estimated costs, addresses, drive times and a clear rainy-day backup plan."

Within seconds, the chaotic, organic conversation was transformed into a clean, beautifully formatted travel guide.

One caveat to keep in mind

While you can ask ChatGPT to give you an itinerary, the AI does not show the conversation on the screen. Once you're done chatting, you have to refer back to it to see the full conversation, itinerary or any other information.

That's one feature I really wish OpenAI would fix, but until they do, it's something to be mindful of before you close out of the conversation. If you accidently do close out and want to pick up where you left off, just prompt with something like, "Remember the weekend trip we were planning? Let's go back and discuss those details."

Final thoughts

I expected voice mode to be frustrating or make me feel less in control because I wasn't jotting everything down myself. But really, it felt like it reduced my cognitive load.

When typing, we instinctively censor or format our thoughts before putting them into a prompt box. Talking out loud lets you brainstorm in real time. You get to figure out what you want while you're saying it, and the AI keeps up with your messy human thought process.

Want to try this yourself? Start with this prompt: "My partner and I want to plan a weekend getaway within a [X-hour] drive of home. Our budget is $[X]. Ask me questions one at a time until you have enough information to build our ideal itinerary."

Let me know in the comments if you try it and share your results in the conversation.

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I write about AI for a living. I use ChatGPT almost every day and a plethora of other AI tools are integrated into my workflow. But after reading what author Dave Eggers recently told OpenAI employees, I found myself thinking even more about how AI affects my own kids.

Originally reported by The Verge, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invited Eggers to speak to roughly 200 employees at the company last year. Given Eggers' reputation as an acclaimed novelist, founder of McSweeney's and longtime advocate for literacy, many probably expected a conversation about storytelling or creativity.

Instead, he delivered a blunt critique of generative AI's impact on education.

"The effect of ChatGPT on educators' lives is catastrophic," Eggers reportedly said. "If students are using it to compose... they'll never learn to write. And their voice is stolen from them... That's silencing an entire generation or two."

It's a dramatic statement, and while I don't agree with every part of it, it does raise questions that every parent should be asking.

Writing isn't just about producing words

One of the biggest misconceptions about AI is that writing is simply about creating a finished product. But it is not that easy. Writing is how we organize our thoughts and how we figure out what we actually believe. It's also how we learn to make an argument, explain an idea and communicate with other people.

Anyone who's ever stared at a blank page knows that the hardest part isn't typing the words, but actually doing the thinking that comes before them.

That's the part I'm most concerned about. If students immediately turn to ChatGPT to generate an essay, summarize a novel or answer every homework question, they're skipping the mental work that helps those skills develop in the first place.

I believe that's what Dave Eggers is worried about, too. While the finished assignment might look and sound better than what a child could have written, it's only a shell because arguably the child didn't learn anything.

I don't think schools should ban AI

Still, I don't think pretending ChatGPT doesn't exist is realistic. By the time today's elementary school students graduate from high school, AI will likely be as common as Google is today. Knowing how to use it responsibly will probably become an important life skill.

I think there's a big difference between using ChatGPT as a tutor and using it as a replacement for your own thinking.

For example, AI can be incredibly helpful for:

• explaining a difficult concept in simpler language
• brainstorming ideas before you start writing
• checking grammar or spelling after you've written something
• helping you study for a test
• giving feedback on a first draft

Those uses still require you to do the work. The line gets blurrier when AI writes the first draft for you, which is where Eggers' criticism has merit.

I have three children, and AI is going to be part of their education whether I like it or not. That means my job isn't to convince them never to use ChatGPT (my sixth grader already does — mostly to generate images of him playing soccer with Ronaldo, but he is still very aware of what it is). My job is to help them understand when they should and should not use it.

For example, if they're stuck on a math concept, AI can be a great teacher. If they need ideas for a science project, it can be a useful brainstorming partner. But if they immediately ask ChatGPT to write the essay they're supposed to write themselves, they've missed the point of the assignment.

My final thoughts

I don't think ChatGPT will "silence an entire generation." as long as parents stay diligent about how and why are kids use AI. Like every major technological shift before it, AI is a tool and we have to help our children use it safely.

But Eggers' warning is still worth hearing. As AI becomes more capable, it will become even more tempting to let it think for us instead of with us. That's a habit all of us need to resist.

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I've spent years tweaking my iPhone, but after seeing yet another viral "privacy screen" hack making the rounds online, I wondered what I was still missing.

So instead of copying another internet trick, I asked ChatGPT to audit my iPhone's privacy settings. Here's the prompt I used:

"I'm an iPhone user who often works in coffee shops, takes weekend getaways and occasionally hands my phone to family members. What privacy settings should I enable to better protect my personal information? Include settings that are easy to overlook and explain why each one matters."

Some of ChatGPT's recommendations were obvious. Others were buried deep inside iOS — and a few were settings I'd simply never taken the time to enable.

After trying every suggestion myself, these are the ones I'd recommend to almost anyone.

1. Hide sensitive notification previews

This was ChatGPT's first recommendation, and it's probably the easiest privacy win on the list.

Without changing anything, your iPhone can display text messages, banking alerts, two-factor authentication codes and other notifications right on your Lock Screen. Anyone nearby can glance at them without ever unlocking your phone.

Where to find it: Settings > Notifications > Show Previews

The tweak: Change the setting to When Unlocked.

Changing previews to When Unlocked means Face ID has to authenticate you before those details appear.

My take: I can't believe I left this turned off for so long. If you ever leave your phone face-up on a desk or café table, this setting alone is worth changing.

2. Lock individual apps with Face ID

One of Apple's best recent privacy features lets you require Face ID before opening supported apps. And I don't just mean your banking information or credit card apps.

Whether it's Notes, Photos or anything else containing sensitive information, this adds another layer of protection if someone else picks up your phone.

Where to find it: Long-press an app on your Home Screen > Require Face ID

My take: I started locking Notes and Photos immediately. They're probably the two apps I'd least want someone casually browsing.

3. Review which apps know your location

While checking my own phone, I found several shopping and restaurant apps that still had broader location access than they actually needed. Switching them to While Using the App took only a few minutes.

Where to find it: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services

ChatGPT suggested reviewing location permissions instead of leaving everything set to Always.

My take: This is the kind of setting that's easy to forget once you've tapped "Allow" the first time. Now that I've taken a look at what apps had my location, I recommend checking this periodically.

4. Turn on Safety Check

Safety Check is one of Apple's least-known privacy tools. Originally designed for people who need to quickly revoke shared access during unsafe situations, it also gives anyone an easy way to review who can see their location, shared photos and other permissions.

Where to find it: Settings > Privacy & Security > Safety Check

My take: Even if you never need the emergency features, it's a great way to see what information you're sharing without realizing it.

5. Audit camera and microphone permissions

It turns out I had granted camera and microphone access to apps I hadn't opened in months. Removing permissions only takes a few seconds, and it helps limit which apps can access some of your most sensitive hardware.

Where to find it: Settings > Privacy & Security

My take: This one surprised me the most. I hadn't realized how many apps were still hanging onto these permissions.

6. Hide apps you don't want anyone else opening

If you have apps containing financial information, medical records or personal documents, you can hide them completely. The app disappears from your Home Screen and is moved into a locked Hidden folder inside the App Library.

Where to find it: Long-press an app > Require Face ID > Hide and Require Face ID

My take: This is perfect if you occasionally hand your phone to your kids or someone asks to borrow it for a minute.

7. Turn on App Privacy Report

App Privacy Report shows a rolling log of how often apps access your location, camera, microphone and network connections. You might be surprised how active some apps are, even when you rarely use them.

Where to find it: Settings > Privacy & Security > App Privacy Report

My take: Privacy isn't something you configure once and forget. Checking this report every few weeks makes it much easier to spot apps that are asking for more than they really need.

What ChatGPT missed

Overall, ChatGPT's recommendations were solid, but it overlooked two of Apple's most useful security features.

The first is: Turn on Stolen Device Protection

Where to find it: Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Stolen Device Protection

If someone learns your passcode and steals your phone, this feature adds extra safeguards before critical account changes can be made. When you're away from familiar locations like home or work, iOS requires Face ID for sensitive actions and places a security delay on certain account changes. It's one of Apple's best anti-theft features, and I wouldn't leave it turned off.

The second feature is: Disable Control Center on the Lock Screen

Where to find it: Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Allow Access When Locked

Consider turning off Control Center access from the Lock Screen. Doing this makes it harder for someone who steals your phone to immediately change connectivity settings before you've had a chance to locate your device.

If you rarely use Control Center without unlocking your phone first, it's a small convenience to give up for some added peace of mind.

One Apple Intelligence setting that's worth checking

If you use Apple Intelligence, there's one extra privacy consideration that didn't come up in ChatGPT's recommendations.

Apple Intelligence can summarize long emails, messages and notifications to help you catch up more quickly. That's useful, but it also makes hiding Lock Screen previews even more important.

If notification previews are visible, those AI-generated summaries may reveal more information at a glance than the original notification would have.

Apple has taken a privacy-first approach to Apple Intelligence by processing many requests directly on your device and using its Private Cloud Compute system for more demanding tasks. But no amount of on-device processing can protect information that's already visible on your Lock Screen.

That's why changing notification previews to When Unlocked was the very first setting I kept enabled after testing ChatGPT's suggestions.

Final thoughts

The viral privacy screen hack that inspired this experiment didn't make the cut. I don't think I need one after enabling these settings. Sure, if you're worried about shoulder surfers on planes or in coffee shops, a physical privacy screen protector is still your best bet.

But what surprised me most was how many of ChatGPT's suggestions I had missed despite using an iPhone every day. It gave me a useful checklist, but the real value came from taking 15 minutes to review what my phone was actually sharing.

If you haven't looked through your iPhone's privacy settings in a while, it's worth doing. You may discover, like I did, that a few small changes can make your device feel a lot more secure.

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Most of us know ChatGPT isn't perfect. It can hallucinate facts, confidently invent citations and occasionally give completely incorrect answers. But a new study made me wonder whether the bigger problem isn't what AI gets wrong, but how AI might be changing about us as critical thinkers.

Researchers found that when people relied on an AI assistant for difficult questions, they became far less likely to admit they didn't know the answer. Even more surprising, they grew much more confident in their responses, even when the AI led them straight into an error.

That hit a little too close to home. I use ChatGPT all the time as a brainstorming partner, research assistant and sounding board. So, I decided to recreate the experiment myself to see whether I had quietly fallen into the same habit.

The results weren't exactly what I expected.

What the study found

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research designed an experiment around a simple question: What happens when people consult AI instead of relying on their own judgment?

To find out, they intentionally used questions that the AI was likely to answer incorrectly. Participants could choose one of three options:

Answer on their own

Ask the AI for help

Say, "I don't know"

Without AI, participants admitted they didn't know the answer nearly half the time. Once AI entered the picture, that changed dramatically.

Instead of saying "I don't know," most participants accepted the AI's suggestion — even when it was wrong. Their confidence increased sharply, but their actual accuracy stagnated. Humans were simply becoming confidently incorrect.

The researchers argue that this points to automation bias: our tendency to trust computer-generated recommendations simply because they're presented confidently.

This study suggests that a polished, authoritative answer can make us feel more certain than the evidence warrants.

I decided to try it myself

Rather than recreate the exact academic experiment, I came up with my own version using ChatGPT. I chose questions I suspected would be difficult or easy to confuse, including obscure movie trivia, older technology, historical details and image-based questions. I even made up a completely untrue question about greeting cards made out of cockroaches.

For each one, I followed a simple, three-step process:

I guessed the answer first based entirely on my own memory.

I asked ChatGPT the exact same question.

I compared both answers with reliable, verified sources.

Almost immediately, I noticed that whenever ChatGPT answered confidently, I found myself questioning my own instincts — even when my original guess turned out to be correct.

For a fleeting second, I actually questioned my own childhood memory. “Well, ChatGPT probably knows better,” I caught myself thinking. And that's the behavior the researchers described. The confidence of the response mattered almost as much as the information itself.

Confidence can be surprisingly persuasive

One thing I've noticed as a ChatGPT power user is that the AI never sounds unsure or even admits it does not know something. Even when it includes phrases like "I believe" or "it's likely," the overall response is truly convincing.

Humans naturally associate confident communication with expertise. That's usually a useful shortcut in everyday life, but it's a dangerous strategy when interacting with AI.

Unlike a human expert, ChatGPT isn't checking a database or recalling a verified memory. Sure, it can search the web at lighning speed, but even then it can pick up wrong information. It's essentially generating the most statistically likely next words based on patterns in its training.

Sometimes that's incredibly accurate, but a lot of times that is confidently wrong. The challenge is that those two responses look absolutely identical.

How this study changed my workflow

I've always been cautious about accepting AI's first response because I know how wrong it can be. But this study is certainly a wakeup call. ChatGPT is a powerful productivity tool, but just because it delivers confident answers, it's worth doing your own due diligence to verify what it says are facts.

For me, that means:

Checking original sources rather than taking the AI's summary at face value.

Confirming statistics and data points through independent search engines.

Making sure quotations, dates and names match reputable, primary references.

It only takes a minute or two, but it's a habit worth building. If anything, this study reminded me that the smartest way to use AI is to maintain your own crtitical thinking skills because the final decision is still yours.

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ChatGPT has a suite of features that lets users do a lot more than just ask simple questions about every facet of their life.

Accessing the chatbot’s Library keeps track of all the images and documents you’ve uploaded while being able to ask questions about them and even get summaries. The Projects feature lets you easily organize and reference your chats, files and tools all in one place. And the Plugins page is home to a wide range of apps that can be installed in ChatGPT and become part of your conversations as you send your prompts to them directly for any relevant requests (such as asking the Target Plugin to find you the best prices for back-to-school items).

Another helpful feature that is not part of ChatGPT is something called Skills, which OpenAI defines as “reusable, shareable workflows that tell ChatGPT how to do a specific task so ChatGPT can do that task more consistently.” These Skills can be instructions, examples and code that can be called upon during future chats. And if you have a ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Healthcare and Education account, you can take advantage of this latest tool.

Here’s how to activate ChatGPT Skills and 7 prompts you can use to try it out for yourself.

Activating ChatGPT Skills and putting these prompts to good use to test it out

Accessing the Skills page is as easy as opening your ChatGPT sidebar, selecting Plugins and selecting the Skills tab at the top of the screen (it’s right next to the Plugins tab). Once you’ve gotten into the Skills page, you’ll see any of the Skills that you’ve already installed and created, plus the ones that were shared with you and the ones you’ve shared with everyone in your workspace.

You can create Skills one of two ways: through a direct chat or with an editing tool. Simply click on the “+” sign next to the “Search skills” search bar to select the “Create with chat” or “Create with Editor” option.

For my initial experiment with the Skills feature, I felt like the Create with chat option worked best. To kick things off, I came up with a simple prompt that tells ChatGPT to recommend waterfall hikes based on my current location. The prompt I used to start building my first Skill is as follows: “Recommend three hiking trails for someone who wants waterfalls, moderate difficulty, and a hike under four hours.”

From that point forward, ChatGPT helped me refine it by adding the following qualifiers:

• Find three waterfall hikes within 25 miles
• Favor moderate routes under four hours
• Check live closures, conditions, access rules, and seasonal flow
• Expand to 50 or 100 miles if necessary
• Compare options and identify the best overall pick

This conversational Skills creation process resulted in my first skill (titled “recommend-waterfall-hikes”) getting built into the following prompt:

“Recommend nearby waterfall hikes using the user's current or supplied location, preferences, and live web research. Use when a user wants three local hikes featuring waterfalls, especially moderate routes that can be completed in under four hours, or asks for waterfall trail ideas filtered by difficulty, duration, distance, access, closures, or current conditions.”

Feel free to try out the following seven starter prompts with the Skills feature to see how the Create with chat option transforms them into something more specific to your tastes (it’s also worth mentioning that Plugins can directly connect to Skills for specified chats and workflows):

• Plan an outdoor weekend where every activity is within 30 minutes of each other.
• Find experiences most tourists miss.
• Build an itinerary that minimizes driving.
• Find three concerts that would make memorable experiences.
• Compare these three concerts based on ticket value and venue quality.
• Find hidden-gem restaurants.
• Plan a date night around a Broadway show that ends before 10:30 p.m.

Bottom line

ChatGPT Skills is built to generate repeatable prompts for users who want personalized recommendations, planning options that take their constraints into account, educational workflow commands for them & their group and more.

Approaching your first Skills creation with this structure could aid in all three cases: “Help me achieve [goal] while staying within [constraints]. Prioritize [what matters most]. Explain why each recommendation fits me and suggest one option I probably wouldn’t have found out on my own.”

Feel free to tinker with Skills to see the sort of polished prompts it creates for the tasks you want them to tackle.

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Just the other day, I found myself in one of those dreaded moments where I scrolled through all of my streaming services without actually choosing something to watch.

That 30-minute-long bout of indecisiveness led me to just log off and tell myself I’d find something new to watch next time. But after sitting on that thought for a while, I realized that I’d most likely get stuck with my remote in my hand for another half hour and waste my time staring at cover art for shows, movies and anime that don’t interest me.

Today’s content overload has finally caused me to have a bit of trouble locking in on something and taking the time to give it the attention it deserves.

With so much media on offer from so many streaming services, I figured it’d be best if I just check in with ChatGPT and see if it could find me my next favorite piece of streaming content. And after telling it everything I recently watched, I was sure it would find a collection of comparable shows, movies and anime to keep me busy during my off-time.

After observing all the picks ChatGPT brought to my attention, my Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Crunchyroll watchlists got a whole lot fuller and stacked with quality material to sit through.

Prompting for my next binge-watch

To start my journey to find a new batch of worthwhile shows, movies and anime to enjoy, I generated this prompt:

Act as an expert entertainment recommendation engine.

I'm going to share my viewing history from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Crunchyroll.

Based on my viewing history, recommend:

• 10 TV shows

• 10 movies

• 10 anime

For every recommendation, include:

- Why it's a good match for me

- The strongest similarities to titles I've already enjoyed

- Streaming service(s) where it's available if known

- IMDb score and Rotten Tomatoes score (if known)

- Whether it's a hidden gem, popular favorite, or critically acclaimed

If my viewing history suggests I'm stuck in a recommendation bubble, point that out and recommend a few titles that expand my tastes without feeling completely different.

Netflix: Devil May Cry, Sakamoto Days, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Last Samurai Standing, The Night Comes for Us, Headshot, Wu Assassins, Revenger, Rapture, and Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam.

Amazon Prime Video: The Ghost in the Shell, Sailor Moon, Secret Level, and Them.

Crunchyroll: Black Torch, Gachiakuta, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Chainsaw Man, Megalobox, Dan Da Dan, Hell's Paradise, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, and Tougen Anki.

Right off the bat, the chatbot noticed some clear patterns in my viewing habits. It pointed out my appreciation for stylish & ultra-violent action, dark supernatural worlds, cyberpunk & sci-fi, anime that blends action with mature storytelling, underdog protagonists and visually distinctive animation. Then the chatbot noted how I may be missing out on some outstanding psychological and crime-themed shows that might fit my tastes without feeling like a huge departure from what I regularly watch.

The shows, movie and anime that stopped my endless scrolling

ChatGPT proceeded to give me a bunch of highly reviewed shows, films and anime that guarantee I’ll have something to watch every weekend until the year’s end:

• Show Suggestions: Blue Eye Samurai, Arcane, Gangs of London, Warrior, Alice in Borderland, Castlevania, Pantheon, Tokyo Vice, Twisted Metal and Shogun (2024).
• Movie Suggestions: The Shadow Strays, Upgrade, Bullet Train, Dredd, Nobody, District 13, Hardcore Henry, Hard Boiled, Merantau and Alita: Battle Angel.
• Anime Suggestions: Blade of the Immortal, Kaiju No. 8, 86, Dororo, Akudama Drive, Dorohedoro, Fire Force, Vinland Saga, Psycho-Pass and Parasyte: The Maxim.

The chatbot did a commendable job of giving me a thorough summary of why each show would appeal to me.

For instance, its recommendation of Alice in Borderland shined a light on its similarities to Devil May Cry & Hell’s Paradise, where it’s currently being streamed (Netflix), its critic scores (7.7 from IMDb and 91% from Rotten Tomatoes) and a description of what I can look forward to from the series (it offers dark survival thriller vibes, features plenty of style, is plenty violent and delves into psychological themes).

I also took note of the chatbot offering me another lineup of streaming content that can help broaden my horizons a bit:

• Scavengers Reign (Series) — Keeps the gorgeous animation and mature storytelling but shifts toward atmospheric sci-fi survival.
• Severance (Series) — Less action, more psychological mystery with the same thoughtful sci-fi appeal as Ghost in the Shell.
• Monster (Anime) — Trades supernatural action for one of anime's greatest psychological thrillers.
• Pluto (Anime) — A mature sci-fi mystery from the creator of Monster that explores AI, identity, and morality in a way that should resonate if you loved Ghost in the Shell.
• The Killer (Movie) — A slow-burn assassin thriller that emphasizes precision and tension over nonstop action.
• Blue Giant (Anime Film) — A dramatic character journey that swaps combat for music while retaining the intensity and emotional payoff you seem to appreciate.

The takeaway

Treating ChatGPT like my trusty entertainment moderator has resulted in new pieces of content to enjoy across every corner of my fandom.

That definitely happened here, as my Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Crunchyroll queues are now packed to the brim with a wide variety of shows that are just like everything else I consume. The chatbot sent me a group of shows, movies and anime that are mainstream bangers and hidden gems that I can’t wait to start watching.

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My iPhone home screen has most of the default apps that Apple gave me right out of the box — Calculator, Clock, Health, Mail, Maps and Notes never have to fear the threat of getting booted.

The same goes for the lineup of apps that help me do some quick shopping, pull up my gaming profiles to brag about my collection of trophies/achievements and argue with randoms in a heated thread about a lighthearted topic. Now ChatGPT has earned a permanent spot among my two-page grouping of apps (seeing people with four to five pages full of useless apps drives me insane!).

But while I was messing around with ChatGPT, I got the urge to fill out the rest of my second home page with some additional apps. This time, I wanted to enter the world of productivity apps and find the best ones that renew my focus, develop long-term habits that benefit me in many ways and handle a bunch of other everyday actions!

My journey to download the top productivity apps led to my iPhone becoming a whole lot more useful in several areas of my personal and professional life.

The productivity apps that will never leave my home screen

Once I asked ChatGPT to lead me down the digital road to all the apps that cater to boosting one’s productivity, it gave me a slew of obvious choices. The pre-installed Notes app (which I type something new into every time I get a bright idea or want to compile upcoming gaming releases) and Shortcuts app (which cooks up custom automations that handle an assortment of tasks across other apps and Siri) got top billing among the chatbot’s picks.

Then it picked out a bunch of other apps that fill specific roles, such as Todoist for task management, Notion for notes & knowledge management, Fantastical for calendar scheduling, Superhuman Email for inbox management and PDF Expert for annotating & managing PDFs.

As for the ones that stood out to me, these are the three productivity apps that now take up the space they deserve on my iPhone:

• Forest: This app gamifies the act of creating focus sessions and building positive habits by creating “trees” and calm soundscapes every time you reach a milestone. Open another app that’s clearly a distraction (you can count any social media app among that group) and you’ll kill a tree in your virtual forest. I get a kick out of splitting my time between different activities, putting up blockers for certain apps during time periods, observing my focus statistics, getting exposed to digital wellbeing tools, and getting notified about real tree planting through my accomplishments.
• Readwise Reader: Since my days usually consist of reading a bunch of articles and saving some of them as bookmarks in my browser that I always forget to go back to, this recommended pick got rid of that bad habit by letting me make it my permanent “read-it later” app. It’s easy to drop in an article I need for future reference, use the text-to-speech feature if I’m in the mood to hear it read out to me and highlight certain sections that I need to access quickly instead of thumbing through it in a rush to locate them. It also feels good being able to categorize books, emails, PDFs and Tweets for quick access for article inclusion or when I just want to pick up where I left off during a lengthy reading session.
• Day One: I’ve gotten more into journaling these days since my cinematic dreams force me to start jotting down everything I can remember about them once I wake up. Then there are those moments where my laptop is off, I get a bright idea and proceed to start furiously typing out everything before it leaves my brain. I’ve begun using this journaling app instead of throwing all of my random thoughts into the Notes app. What makes Day One stand out to me is how it lets you attach photos, attach audio, track the days you’ve done your journaling and get suggestions on what I should write about based on what I’ve been doing lately. Using this app as both a way to save my inner thoughts and write out my concepts for articles has come in clutch for me.

The takeaway

ChatGPT laid out a wide range of productivity apps that are similar to the ones that now take up valuable home screen space and time on my iPhone: Opal, Focus To-Do and One Sec are comparable to Forest. Instapaper and Pocket handle similar tasks just like Readwise Reader. Then there’s Streaks and HabitKit, which track your habits just like Day One.

My iPhone is less of a miniature distraction gadget and more of a positive habit-building machine, thanks to ChatGPT’s worthwhile endorsements of the best productivity apps.

Have you experimented with any of these apps yourself? Let me know how you got on in the comments below.

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Job hunting has changed dramatically over the past decade. Resumes are often screened by AI before a human ever sees them, job descriptions are packed with keywords and employers expect candidates to tailor every application.

If you're over 50 and unemployed, that can feel intimidating. The good news is that AI technology can actually work in your favor. While ChatGPT won't magically land you your next job, it can help. Whether you use it to polish your resume or prepare for interviews, these seven prompts can help you present decades of experience in a way that resonates with today's employers.

Here's what I'd recommend to anyone over 50 who's looking for a new opportunity.

1. Update your resume without erasing your experience

Many people who've been working for 20 or 30 years haven't completely rewritten their resume in quite some time. Workflows have changed over the years, so modernizing your resume with fresh words and styles can make a big difference.

Instead of listing every responsibility you've ever had, employers want to see measurable accomplishments.

Prompt: I'm applying for a job as a [position]. Here's my resume. Please modernize it so it sounds current and achievement-focused while preserving my experience. Point out anything that may unintentionally make it seem outdated, but don't remove valuable accomplishments.

I also like asking ChatGPT to suggest stronger action verbs and identify places where numbers or results could make achievements more impressive.

2. Find the transferable skills you forgot you had

One of the biggest advantages experienced workers have is a broad set of skills developed over many years. The problem is that those strengths don't always jump off the page.

ChatGPT can help spotlight your skills while also offering suggestions that can help you see how they can work across industries.

Prompt: Based on my resume, what transferable skills would employers value today? Suggest ways I can highlight leadership, communication, problem-solving and adaptability for modern workplaces.

3. Tailor every resume to the job description

Many companies now use Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to scan resumes before recruiters review them. That means, your resume is run through a scanner to determine how well it fits the job description. Being honest and human is more important than ever. Knowing how to do that is as simple as asking AI.

Prompt: Compare my resume with this job description. Identify missing keywords and rewrite my resume so it better matches the position without exaggerating my experience.

This can save a tremendous amount of time when applying for multiple positions.

4. Practice the interview before it happens

Interviews become much less intimidating when you've already answered difficult questions a few times. I have even asked ChatGPT to provide potential questions that the interviewer may ask. Using ChatGPT Voice or the chat box, you can ask ChatGPT to role-play a skeptical hiring manager so you're prepared for the toughest questions.

Prompt: Pretend you're interviewing me for this position. Ask one question at a time, wait for my response, then give constructive feedback before asking the next question. Include questions someone with my experience level is likely to hear.

5. Turn career gaps into confident answers

Many professionals over 50 have taken time away from work to care for family members, recover from health issues or explore new opportunities. Those gaps don't have to become stumbling blocks. Often, the best answer is simply a clear, confident one.

Prompt: Help me explain this career gap honestly and confidently in both my resume and an interview. Keep the explanation positive, concise and authentic.

6. Build new skills without going back to school

Technology changes quickly, but learning new skills has never been easier. But if you don't know what skills you need, AI can help. Using this prompt is a great way to jumpstart continued learning and can help you identify skill gaps before employers do.

There are so many free sources and courses online now, that many options might be free or cost very little — at least for a general knowledge base.

Prompt: I want to transition into a career in [industry]. Based on my current experience, create a 30-day learning plan using mostly free or low-cost resources. Recommend certifications only if they'll meaningfully improve my chances of getting hired.

7. Walk into every interview prepared

Knowing something about the company and asking thoughtful questions can help you stand out. Instead of scrambling to research everything yourself, ChatGPT can organize the information into a concise briefing. It can help prepare you for your interviews and even writing your cover letter by giving you more information about the company. Be sure to do your own due diligence and look up information for yourself as AI can be wrong sometimes.

Prompt: I'm interviewing with this company. Based on its website, recent announcements and this job description, summarize what I should know. Then suggest five thoughtful questions I can ask during the interview.

Final thoughts

Looking for a job can feel overwhelming, especially if you've had a recent layoff or are pivoting after a long time in a certain field. Your biggest advantage is something AI can't replicate: years of solving problems, working with people and adapting to change.

ChatGPT won't get you hired on its own, but it can make the process less overwhelming. Whether you're updating a decades-old resume, preparing for an interview or exploring a completely new career, it can help you present your experience with confidence.

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When the temperature climbs into the 90s or lately, the 100s, I am always looking for ways to stay cool. My house is older and doesn't have air conditioning so it gets hot fast.

After the last heatwave, it occured to me that ChatGPT could probably provide some useful ideas. To my surprise, when I prompted it about my sweaty situation, it offered useful ideas beyond the usual "drink water and stay inside."

Several of the suggestions were simple enough to test immediately and a handful have become part of my routine now. Here are the nine tips that actually made a difference.

1. Freeze your pillowcase before bed

This sounded both brilliant and crazy, but it quickly became my favorite suggestion.

ChatGPT recommended placing a clean pillowcase in a sealed plastic bag and leaving it in the freezer for about 20 to 30 minutes before bedtime. So, now, just after dinner, I put the the whole family's pillowcases in the freezer. Since they are in there for about 3 hours, they get really icy!

I have to say, there's nothing like climbing into bed with a chilled pillow. It feels amazing after a sweltering day and it has helped me cool down enough to fall asleep faster.

2. Cool your wrists instead of your whole body

I take so many cold showers that our water bill is through the roof. Not to mention, wet hair is not the best look for video meetings. So, rather than taking another cold shower, ChatGPT suggested cooling the places where blood vessels sit close to the skin.

I now run cool water over my wrists for about 30 seconds and also place a damp washcloth on the back of my neck. It's not a miracle cure for overheating and it's not genius, but it does help me feel more comfortable almost immediately without having to cool my entire body.

3. Keep the sun out before it heats your house

This was one of those tips that seems obvious in hindsight. ChatGPT suggested that I keep the blinds and curtains closed in the morning before direct sunlight reached my windows.

The difference was noticeable. Rooms that usually feel like ovens by late afternoon still got warm, but not excessively hot, so they were much more comfortable.

4. Freeze grapes for an instant cool-down snack

I've seen this done on TikTok and had avoided it until ChatGPT suggested it. Frozen grapes taste somewhere between fresh fruit and tiny sorbet bites and are a real treat when the heat is unbearable. They're refreshing, naturally sweet and surprisingly satisfying when it's too hot to think about cooking.

Since I've been avoiding salads, I appreciated the opportunity to enjoy a little produce. I've since started keeping a container in the freezer all summer.

5. Put a bowl of ice in front of a fan

This is probably the oldest trick in the book, but ChatGPT helped me figure out how to do it the right way.

ChatGPT told me that placing a bowl filled with ice directly in front of a fan is a surprisingly effective trick if you're trying to cool a small area. It was right! While it's not the same as air conditioning, it works better than just a fan.

6. Eat lighter meals

ChatGPT pointed out that large, heavy meals generate extra body heat during digestion. Instead of making a hot dinner, I make sandwiches, fruit, yogurt and smoothies for the family on the hottest days.

Not only did I spend less time standing over the stove, but I also felt noticeably less sluggish afterward.

7. Cool your feet

This might be the most underrated tip on the list. The kids think it's fun, too. Simply fill a small tub with ice and stick your feet in! It's a surprisingly good way to stay cool while relaxing and watching TV.

When ChatGPT first offered the suggestion, I wasn't sure what type of container to use, but a Home Depot bucket or even a laundry basket with a garbage bag does the trick!

8. Start hydrating before you're thirsty

This trick I knew, but it was a good reminder. Seeing it in the response from ChatGPT made me mention it to my husband and kids, especially since the kids are outside at summer camp all day.

Again, not groundbreaking advice, but it changed how I approached the day.

Instead of realizing I was dehydrated in the afternoon and drinking a huge bottle of water all at once, I kept a water bottle nearby and took small sips throughout the day. It was much easier to stay ahead of the heat.

9. Ask ChatGPT to create a personalized heat-wave plan

This ended up being the most useful suggestion of all. Rather than asking for generic advice, I gave ChatGPT details about my day and asked it to build a realistic schedule.

Here's the prompt I used: "I'm working from home during a heat wave. My house doesn't have air conditioning but we do have window units in a few rooms. I have a few meetings in the mornings and occassionally in the afternoon. I am a runner and like to hit the trails early in the day. Please give me ways to stay as cool as possible while keeping my electric bill reasonable. Create a schedule from morning until bedtime."

Give it a try if you're in the middle of a heat wave. ChatGPT might suggest ideas that aren't on this list and that better fit your lifestyle. You'll get personalized advice that traditional weather forecasts simply can't provide.

Bottom line

This is our third heatwave this summer but I didn't think to ask ChatGPT for advice until now. One of the reasons I appreciate AI is that it can offer solutions to problems quickly, especially during those times when my brain feels fried.

Not every ChatGPT suggestion was worth trying, but several have earned a permanent place in my summer routine. My favorites were freezing my pillowcase before bed, closing the blinds early, keeping frozen grapes in the freezer and asking ChatGPT to build a personalized plan for the day.

Of course, AI shouldn't replace official health advice during extreme heat. If temperatures are dangerously high, follow guidance from your local weather service, stay hydrated, limit outdoor activity during the hottest part of the day and seek medical attention if you experience symptoms of heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

Sometimes the best AI prompts result in simple ideas that make everyday life a little more comfortable

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It's National AI Day, which probably feels like a made-up holiday, especially if you're a..bee? Let me explain. As AI gradually becomes part of everyday life and millions of us use ChatGPT for dozens of reasons, it's important to understand why this day of awareness might be better spent considering the environmental impacts of AI that reach far beyond the walls of a data center.

Researchers at the University of Sydney say the rapid growth of AI is driving a surge in electricity demand, and if that electricity comes from fossil fuels, the resulting emissions could contribute to climate change in ways that threaten one of the world's most important pollinators: bees.

The growing energy demands of AI could contribute to climate warming, which in turn puts additional stress on bee populations. Simply put: less bees, more expensive food.

Here's what the research found.

Why AI uses so much electricity

Traditional internet searches already require large data centers to process and return results. Generative AI adds another layer of computation.

According to the study, generating an AI response can require significantly more computing power than a conventional web search, meaning each interaction uses more electricity. As AI adoption accelerates, so does the demand for new data centers capable of supporting those workloads.

The International Energy Agency has also projected that electricity consumption from data centers will more than double by the end of the decade, with AI expected to account for a substantial share of that growth.

That doesn't automatically translate into higher emissions. It depends on how those facilities are powered. Data centers running on renewable energy have a much smaller carbon footprint than those relying on electricity generated from coal or natural gas.

What bees have to do with AI

Bees are surprisingly sensitive to temperature. Even relatively small increases in average temperatures can affect their ability to reproduce, survive and pollinate crops. Previous research has shown that heat stress can reduce sperm viability in male bees, increase mortality during development and make colonies more vulnerable to parasites and disease.

The University of Sydney researchers modeled how emissions from AI-related electricity use could contribute to future warming. Their estimates suggest the additional warming could be enough to place millions of bees under increased heat stress each year.

The study looks at the cumulative effect of billions of AI requests, expanding data-center infrastructure and the emissions associated with powering those systems over time.

Why this matters to your wallet and food on your plate

Bees pollinate many of the fruits, vegetables and nuts that people eat every day. When bee populations decline, agriculture becomes more vulnerable. Lower pollination rates can reduce crop yields, increase food prices and disrupt ecosystems that depend on healthy pollinator populations.

Researchers estimate that pollinators contribute billions of dollars in agricultural value every year, making their health an environmental and economic concern.

The researchers argue that the bigger issue isn't AI itself but how it's powered. Many of the world's largest technology companies are investing heavily in renewable-powered data centers, advanced battery storage and more efficient cooling systems to reduce emissions. At the same time, chip manufacturers continue to improve the energy efficiency of AI hardware, allowing newer systems to perform more work using less electricity.

There's also growing interest in smaller AI models that can run directly on laptops or smartphones instead of relying entirely on cloud-based servers, reducing the need for massive centralized computing resources for some tasks.

These changes won't eliminate AI's environmental footprint, but they could significantly reduce it over time.

The takeaway

For most people, the environmental impact of an occasional AI prompt is extremely small. The researchers aren't suggesting consumers stop using AI altogether. But this is a cautionary tale. The study highlights a broader challenge facing the technology industry: making sure the infrastructure powering AI grows in a sustainable way.

As AI becomes integrated into everything from search engines to smartphones, the environmental cost will increasingly depend on decisions made by technology companies, energy providers and policymakers.

The takeaway here is that the future of AI depends on building smarter models while also powering them responsibly

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ChatGPT is already a great productivity tool on its own. But adding the right apps can make it even more useful, whether you need help managing your calendar, summarizing long documents, creating files, or streamlining your daily workflow.

As a journalist, I've tested dozens of ChatGPT apps looking for the ones that actually save time. These seven stood out because they solve real problems I run into every day and have earned a permanent place in my workflow.

Google Drive, Habitify, Reclaim.ai and more do the job

The word “tabs” is synonymous with my work life. Thankfully, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not switching between the 10 I have open at a time—keeping about 5 or six tabs open does a lot to keep me from going crazy over trying to find the one I need for a particular situation.

ChatGPT will forever remain one of those essential tabs and the productivity-themed apps installed within it do a lot to keep me from doing a whole lot of tab switching and push me to get more work done with its help.

These are 5 of the best ChatGPT productivity apps I’ve used and highly recommend for your use as well:

• Google Drive: Just like most folks, I tap into Google Docs to jot down my creative notes for personal writing projects and get a good look at the documents sent my way for a variety of reasons. Instead of downloading files from Google Drive and inputting them into ChatGPT for tasks related to them, I like using the Google Drive app inside the chatbot to more easily access documents. I’ve gotten accustomed to using this app to summarize lengthy documents, analyze slides and brainstorm ideas based on all the random notes I’ve jotted down in my own personal documents.
• Norton: I’m glad Norton is here to tell the difference between a legit email and one that’s more than likely a flat-out scam. Since my inbox is filled to the brim with emails from all sorts of different PR companies and individuals attaching links to article proposals, I’ve gotten used to using the Norton app to get a thorough analysis of the messages in my inbox that I’m a bit weary of. Having the Norton app stand tall as my first line of defense inside ChatGPT is so reassuring for someone like me that’s inundated by emails and wants to give them a quick scan so I can get back to work.
• Reclaim.ai: Since this ChatGPT connects right to my Google Calendar, I’m able to ask ChatGPT to help me get a good look at my daily schedule, find planning conflicts, reschedule meetings and also find the best times for future ones. Even prompting it to set aside an hour for a personal ideation session can be accomplished with this app’s help.
• Habitify: Developing healthy habits that get me out of my computer chair and clear my head has proven to be accommodating. Incorporating Habitify into ChatGPT has worked out great since I just have to prompt it to show me my daily habits and stick by them without having to access them in another tab. Routinely checking in with the Habitify app inside ChatGPT to remind myself to take a 15-minute walk, take my vitamins, and get a quick meditation session in while I’m working from home does a lot for me.
• Goodnotes: Since I’m quick to get into some long yapping sessions with ChatGPT, I’m also quick to turn those chats into documents I can use for further reference. The Goodnotes app can take my lengthy conversations and transform them into text, flowcharts and images. So, for instance, I’ve prompted this ChatGPT app to turn my evening mental wind-down routine into a document that lays it all out in an easy-to-follow format.

Bottom line

ChatGPT’s productivity-themed apps are capable of filling the same role, such as calendar management, accessing files, summarizing meetings, etc. The ones I’ve incorporated into my daily work sessions with my go-to chatbot handle those important tasks and other objectives that make my work output that much stronger.

Even using Spotify to build instrumental playlists that put me in the right state of mind to focus is a great way to boost my productivity. Make these ChatGPT apps a part of your daily work regimen and you’ll notice the benefits it brings you.

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• Spotify’s new AI assistant lets you talk to the app — these 7 prompts unlock new artists, build better playlists and more
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When people picture someone using AI, they usually imagine a student writing an essay or a developer working on code.

That's not my mom.

She's in her 70s, and AI has become one of the tools she reaches for almost every day. My mom isn't building apps, but she does use AI to generate spreadsheets for her volunteer work. She also uses it to stay safer online and solve everyday problems like hunting down hard-to-find fabric for her quilting.

Watching her use AI so effortlessly makes me proud. Sure, she calls ChatGPT "ChatGap," but other than cute nicknames, seeing her use AI has been a good reminder that the technology doesn't have to be complicated to be useful. In fact, the features she uses most are the ones that save her time or give her confidence before making a decision.

Here are the five ways AI has become part of her daily routine.

1. She checks suspicious messages before clicking anything

Whether it's a text message, an email or even a suspicious invite, my mom has learned that you really can't trust everything on the internet. Besides, as a woman in her 70s, she's exactly the kind of person scammers target. Fake delivery notifications, phishing emails, fraudulent text messages and convincing Facebook posts seem to arrive every week.

Instead of guessing whether something is legitimate, she opens ChatGPT and uses Norton's scam detection capabilities within the app to analyze the message before she clicks a link or responds.

Sometimes she'll paste the text into the chat. Other times she'll upload a screenshot. The extra layer of verification gives her peace of mind, which honestly, gives me some peace of mind, too.

2. She uses photos to find quilting fabric

This might be my favorite use case because I never would have thought of it myself. My mom is an avid quilter. Anyone who sews knows how frustrating it can be when you run out of a particular fabric. Sometimes all that's left is a small scrap with no label or manufacturer.

Instead of spending hours searching online, she simply takes a picture of the fabric and uploads it to ChatGP or Gemini (she clearly has a preference).

The AI identifies colors, patterns and sometimes even the fabric collection or manufacturer. It can also suggest online retailers that might still carry it or recommend similar alternatives if the original has been discontinued. She used to call me to do the ChatGPT detection for her, now, she does it herself. It's like having a fabric expert available whenever she needs one.

3. She asks the kinds of questions people used to Google

Her AI conversations aren't complicated. But she likes to use ChatGPT Voice and ask things like:

Can I eat these leftovers after three days?

How long can cooked chicken stay in the refrigerator?

Can I freeze this before it goes bad?

What's the best way to clean this pan?

Why is my cat staring at me like that?

These aren't life-or-death medical questions, but they're the kinds of everyday decisions that used to send people to a search engine. Now she simply asks in plain English and gets a straightforward answer without digging through multiple websites.

4. She relies on Google Maps — and that's AI, too

I taught my mom how to use Google Maps to find the cheapest gas prices, but she also uses it to help predict traffic, estimate arrival times, suggest faster routes and reroute drivers around accidents or road closures.

It's a reminder that many of us use AI every day without even thinking about it.

5. She uses it for fitness

My mom regularly goes to the gym — much more than me! And she'll often turn to ChatGPT or Gemini for new fitness routines. With a simple prompt like:

I only have 30 minutes today, what workout would be best for me?

I am looking for new walking shoes? I like Brooks, should I stick with those?

She even uses the Apple Music app within ChatGPT to create playlists for her workouts. Impressive, for sure.

Bottom line

My mom also uses ChatGPT just to chat. Sometimes the questions are practical and other times they are more like Beatles trivia or trying to remember the name of the actress she likes in a particular movie.

She'll ask about gardening, recipes, household problems, products she's considering buying or random facts she wonders about during the day. Most importantly, she doesn't worry about writing the "perfect prompt." She simply asks the question the way she'd ask another person.

Ironically, that's probably why my mom gets such useful answers. The point is, AI doesn't have to be complicated despite the perception that it's only for programmers or people who work in technology.

Watching my mom use it every day tells a different story. She isn't trying to automate her life or replace her favorite hobbies. She's using AI to solve small problems that come up throughout the day.

If you're wondering whether AI has a place in your own daily routine — or you're trying to help a parent or grandparent get started — start with one real problem they already have. They might end up using it every day.

As someone who eats a lot of salads and fresh vegetables, I've kept an eye on the news reports of a growing Cyclospora outbreak linked to fresh produce. I began wondering: Should I be changing anything about my routine?

From what I've read on the internet and the official CDC website, Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that can cause severe watery diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea and fatigue. Health officials are still investigating the current outbreak, and while no single food source has been confirmed, fresh produce — including my favorite leafy greens — has been a focus of the investigation.

Instead of scrolling through social media, I decided to ask ChatGPT a simple question: "What can I do to reduce my risk of getting Cyclospora this summer?"

I know ChatGPT is no substitute for a real doctor, but it was very helpful for quick support. And, when compared to the advice with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I'm feeling much better about how to handle the risks this summer. Here's what I'm actually doing.

1. Washing all produce

I've always washed my produce, but I wasn't sure if I was doing it right. I was only using running water. To my suprise, both ChatGPT and the CDC say that water is enough and even suggest not using soaps or commercial products as there is no evidence those are more effective than cool running water.

And while that's good advice, it did come with an important caveat. According to the CDC, washing produce is recommended as part of safe food handling, but it may not completely remove Cyclospora. The parasite can be difficult to eliminate once produce is contaminated.

You can read the CDC's food safety recommendations here: CDC: Preventing Cyclosporiasis

I'm still rinsing every salad ingredient, but I'm no longer assuming that washing alone makes everything risk-free. It's a good start.

2. I'm paying much closer attention to outbreak updates

Normally, I don't think twice about grabbing a bagged salad. But now, I do and I check whether health officials have identified specific products or recalls before filling my cart.

The investigation is still ongoing, and officials have not confirmed a single supplier or produce item responsible for the outbreak. But for the time being, I'm going to ask ChatGPT for cooked veggie recipes as I meal plan with AI.

3. I'm peeling produce whenever it makes sense

ChatGPT suggested peeling fruits and vegetables whenever possible. The CDC also recommends peeling produce when practical because it removes the outer surface where contamination could be present. Of course, that's not an option for lettuce or cabbage, but it is for foods like cucumbers and carrots. I've also been peeling apples when I slice them up for my kids.

It's a little extra work, but it's worth it to keep everyone safe from a nasty outbreak.

4. I'm cooking more vegetables than usual

As mentioned, despite it being the "dog days of summer" with 100 degree heat here in the states, I'm not taking any chances and cooking veggies. That means switching up my lunch which is almost always a salad.

While health officials haven't told people to stop eating produce altogether, I've been swapping some raw vegetables for cooked ones when possible. Heating food to at least 158°F (70°C) kills Cyclospora.

I'm not giving up salads completely — but I'm definitely mixing in more cooked vegetables this summer. ChatGPT even gave me a recipe for a really delicious summer salad that is big enough to last several days.

5. I'm not trying viral 'food hacks'

There are so many food hacks on TikTok and Instgram because of the outbreak. From soaking produce in vinegar to using bleach, social-media is full of cleaning tricks. I tried the vinegar hack on mushrooms and instantly regretted it. I'm not doing any of those hacks anymore and am sticking close to ChatGPT and the news for the best advice.

The CDC and ChatGPT say vinegar, freezing and many popular internet hacks don't reliably kill Cyclospora.

Instead, I'm sticking with basic food safety practices and eating at home instead of eating meals out.

My takeaway

I was pleasantly surprised by ChatGPT's answers. Most of its recommendations lined up with current CDC guidance. And since it's available 24/7, I know I can always ask it to fact-check viral hacks and news reports.

For me, the biggest takeaway wasn't to stop eating salads but rather to be a little more cautious while health officials continue investigating the outbreak. Doing my due diligence to wash produce, keep an eye on recalls and outbreak updates, cook vegetables when it makes sense and skip internet "miracle" cleaning hacks will hopefully keep me healthy and out of the bathroom.

As someone who eats salad almost every day, that's advice I'm comfortable following until investigators know exactly what's behind this summer's outbrea

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Hopping on a plane, getting whisked off to a place other than home and enjoying a weeks-long stay somewhere nice & sunny is my ideal vacation. You’ll never convince me to pack my warmest coat for a trip to Antarctica—shivering to just death isn’t my idea of fun.

Now that the summer is starting to wind down, I’ve made a few attempts at preparing myself for an ideal getaway. ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude have played a huge role in setting up my summer vacation and even a staycation that will take me to the hidden corners and underrated hangouts I never knew about in New York City. Thanks to the combined efforts of those chatbots, I’ve created the best itineraries and mapped out the top hotspots for my future trips.

Now that August is approaching (a little too fast for my taste, I might add), I’ve been having dreams of screaming my head off while sitting in the front of a roller coaster and proceeding to stuff my face with overpriced cotton candy. I’m a simple man, which is why theme park thrills please me greatly.

Not only did I discover five ChatGPT prompts that helped me schedule the perfect vacation with those activities in mind, but I also found four other prompts that work equally well in planning my vacays.

The prompt that built a theme park excursion for me

With my sights set on setting foot in a warm state for a five-day escape from NYC, I used this ChatGPT prompt to set me up for the best trip possible:

Act as a professional travel advisor, airline pricing analyst, and local guide.

Help me plan the best possible summer trip in Orlando, Florida, based on my budget, interests, available vacation days, and departure airport. Recommend destinations, the best time to visit, how to avoid crowds, estimated costs, hidden gems, common tourist mistakes, and a realistic day-by-day itinerary.

Prioritize value over luxury and explain why each recommendation is worth considering.

Here's my budget, interests, available vacation days, and departure airport:

Budget: $2000

Interests: Theme parks, arcades, and museums

Available vacation days: August 17 to August 21

Departure airport: John F. Kennedy International Airport

ChatGPT then went into full “fun summer getaway planner” mode and laid out everything for me to follow with ease. First, it generated a budget breakdown that came out to a total of $1660 to $1950 and mentioned how my budget leaves a small amount for a few souvenir pickups or unexpected expenses.

Then the chatbot went on to detail the best departure days from both NY and Florida, plus the airlines I should consider when planning my flight in and out of Orlando. As for where I should stay, ChatGPT landed on International Drive (I-Drive) as the perfect sweet spot since it’s close to Universal Studios, has plenty of restaurants in the area, is close to a few arcades, has plenty of transportation options to consider and has lower hotel prices than the ones featured on Disney resorts.

Since I mentioned theme parks being a love of mine, my digital vacay planner set aside whole days for visits to Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and Epic Universe. With ChatGPT’s recommendation of getting a 3-day ticket for all three parks and a few mentions of each park’s best attractions, I had the right idea for how to bask in my theme park hobby in Orlando.

From that point forward, the chatbot gave me the heads up about nearby arcades (Arcade Monsters and the Player 1 Video Game Bar piqued my interest), museums (looks like I have to spend the day at the Orlando Science Center) and hidden gems (Lake Eola Park sounds like a cool destination for me to check out).

With ChatGPT’s added counsel, such as common Orlando tourist mistakes I should avoid, the best times to beat large crowds at the theme parks, a working itinerary, money-saving tips and an overall recommendation for what I should do, I left my latest ChatGPT session with a solid plan in mind for my stay in Orlando.

Four other prompts that are perfect for setting up summer getaways

With these four other ChatGPT-generated prompts, I’ll have no issue planning future trips for my domestic and international stays. I’m sure that’ll apply to you if you end up testing them out for yourself:

• The "Travel Like a Local" Prompt: Act as a resident who's lived in my destination for 20 years. Ignore the obvious tourist attractions unless they're genuinely worth it. Instead, recommend restaurants, neighborhoods, beaches, parks, viewpoints, coffee shops, events, and experiences locals actually enjoy during the summer. Tell me what tourists usually waste time on and what they should do instead.
• The Money-Saving Expert Prompt: Become my travel budget coach. Find every realistic way I can save money on a summer vacation without making the trip less enjoyable. Cover flights, hotels, vacation rentals, transportation, food, attractions, travel insurance, packing, airport tricks, loyalty programs, credit card rewards, and timing strategies. Rank each tip by how much money it could realistically save.
• The Summer Vacation Optimizer Prompt: Help me maximize every day of my summer vacation. Build the ideal itinerary that balances sightseeing, relaxation, food, nightlife, outdoor activities, and downtime. Schedule activities around weather, crowds, opening hours, and local events. Include backup plans for rain, extreme heat, or unexpected closures.
• The Family & Group Trip Planner Prompt: Help me plan a summer trip for multiple people with different interests, budgets, and energy levels. Create an itinerary everyone will enjoy, recommend activities for different age groups, identify potential conflicts before they happen, suggest ways to split costs fairly, and include contingency plans if the weather changes or someone wants to do something different.

Final thoughts

With ChatGPT’s roleplaying assistance and additional travel-planning plugins (Expedia, Road Trip Planner and Travel 101: Trip Itineraries are just a few of the many from that massive library), it’s so easy to get all the info you need for your next getaway.

Of course, doing some proper research outside of the chatbot to make sure your vacation plans come together nicely is key — some digital assistance and your own desired destination study sessions will set you on your way to someplace delightful before the summer season ends.

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Moving into a new house is a thrilling milestone, right up until you actually have to start kitting it out. Suddenly you aren’t just buying furniture, you're trying to invent a cohesive aesthetic from scratch. That’s exactly where I found myself.

I knew exactly what I wanted that empty corner to become: a cozy, vinyl-spinning reading nook. I wanted a turntable setup, a plush accent chair, and a vibe that matched the rest of my jazz-lite aesthetic. So, naturally, I went to Pinterest.

Three days later I was drowning in boards, absolutely overwhelmed with ideas. Many of them were great, beautiful even, but none of them were my living room. Pinterest is good for looking at other people's flawless houses, but it did absolutely nothing to help me visualize the empty space that was nagging away at me.

That’s when I stopped scrolling and decided to treat ChatGPT like my personal, on-demand interior designer.

Here is exactly how I used its visual features to break the paralysis, map out my space, and test-drive my riskiest decor ideas without spending a single dollar.

Giving ChatGPT the blueprint

The flaw with traditional design mood boards is that they exist in a vacuum. To fix my corner, ChatGPT needed to see the actual constraints of the room — the lighting, the baseboards, and the proximity to the fireplace.

The process is incredibly seamless. I took a quick, unedited photo of the empty corner on my phone. Opening the ChatGPT app, I tapped the plus (+) icon right next to the chat bar, hit Photos, and uploaded the snapshot.

But a photo is only half the battle; the real magic happens in how you prime the AI. I didn’t just say "make this look nice." I gave it my exact vision. My prompt read:

"I’m redecorating my living room. I want to do something in that left corner to replace the unit, I’m thinking of a comfy chair with a little table, a bookcase or corner unit for books and a standing lamp. Can you show me what that could look like?"

I hit the arrow button to generate, and within about 45 seconds, the AI did what days of Pinterest scrolling couldn’t. It analyzed the dimensions of my photo and served up a fully rendered, highly realistic visualization of my corner. I had some things to tweak, but it was an amazing start.

Refining the design

Seeing the initial layout was a massive relief, but design is always iterative. The AI first served up a great blueprint: a cream armchair on a circular wicker rug next to a black corner unit. The layout was perfect, but the colors felt off for my space.

Before tweaking it, though, I needed to clear a mental hurdle. Every guest to my new home asked if I was putting a dining table there. I didn't want one, but for peace of mind, I had ChatGPT swap the nook for a table and chairs. Seeing it look instantly cramped was the exact validation I needed to kill the idea for good.

With the reading nook confirmed as the winner, I went back to the original image to use ChatGPT’s secret weapon: the live image editing canvas.

By tapping the Edit button on the generated image, I opened a suite of editing tools. Instead of starting from scratch, I typed: "Can you make the rug blush pink, add some more plants to the bookcase, change the bookshelf to a light-colored wood, and try a more speakeasy vibe for the chair?"

The new version it produced swapped the wicker for a soft blush pink, added greenery, lightened the heavy black wood, and changed the chair to a plus, mid-century forest green armchair —allowing me to test risky decor choices before committing.

By treating the interface like a living canvas — resizing elements that felt too crowded, removing decor pieces that felt distracting, and swapping out colors on a whim, I made all of my expensive, risky design mistakes digitally.

When I finally closed the app, the design paralysis was entirely gone. Instead of wasting weekends wandering through furniture showrooms or guessing if a piece would actually fit the space, I had an actionable, visual blueprint. Plus, I'd saved hundreds in in potential returns and mistaken purchases.

I knew exactly what sizes to measure for, what colors to buy, and precisely how to kit out my new space with total confidence.

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Ever since I discovered the benefits of working with AI tools, I’ve explored all sorts of avenues to find its most constructive uses.

From a productivity standpoint, I’ve noticed boosts in that area thanks to ChatGPT’s helpful suggestions on how to improve my workflow, dodge/eliminate all the distractions that dare to disrupt it and get a better handle on my mental health by using different routines to balance my work/personal life. Besides that essential usage of chatbots, I’ve also gotten plenty of good to great uses out of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity for deep research, recipe ideation, media recommendations, travel planning and everything in between.

Making ChatGPT function like a personal operating system is a recent experiment that popped into my head when trying to find another avenue toward boosting my efficiency and optimizing my work-life balance.

The result of this latest ChatGPT test saw OpenAI’s tool give me the perfect prompt that transforms it into my dependable operating system, which gave me the advice I needed to work more effectively.

The perfect prompt for building my own operating system

Once I asked ChatGPT to generate some prompts that switch its identity from a chatbot that doubles as my everyday search engine to my personal operating system, there was one option from its list of ideas that stood out the most. This one is called the “CEO Operating System” prompt:

Become my personal performance analyst.

Review everything I accomplished and think like a coach, psychologist, business strategist, and systems engineer.

Tell me:

What worked exceptionally well.

What created unnecessary friction.

Where I wasted time.

What patterns you notice.

Decisions I should repeat.

Decisions I should stop making.

One habit to build.

One habit to eliminate.

The smallest change that would create the biggest improvement over the next month.

Taking note of my personal operating system’s compliments and workflow recommendations

Since I’ve been interacting with ChatGPT since 2025, it’s made a mental note of all the requests I ask of it, the overarching theme behind the prompts I ask it to generate, the kind of decision-making I ask its assistance for and a whole lot more.

With all those defining factors in mind, it gave me a performance review from the four different perspectives I tasked it with adopting for this experiment. And in the process, it built an operating system for me that showcased my celebratory triumphs, areas of my workflow with the most friction attached to them, biggest wastes of time and a slew of other observations that forced me to adjust my daily habits.

The areas of advice that caught my attention the most were “Decisions you should repeat”, “One habit to build,” “One habit to eliminate” and “The smallest change with the biggest payoff.”

The decisions ChatGPT told me to continually incorporate into my daily workflow are:

• Replacing doomscrolling with scheduled news summaries.
• Building repeatable AI workflows instead of one-off prompts.
• Prioritizing high-impact work before administrative tasks.
• Studying why content succeeds instead of copying it.
• Turning every successful workflow into a reusable template.

The single habit it told me to make a part of my workday is ending it with a 10-minute operating review. Once I wrap up a work session, I ask myself the following four questions that ChatGPT presented me with for this useful exercise:

• What created the most value today?
• What slowed me down?
• What should become a reusable system?
• What's tomorrow's first task?

On the topic of the habit I should get rid of entirely, ChatGPT told me to “stop searching for the perfect point.” And by that it meant to begin with a good version of whatever I’m using (such as a prompt or workflow routine), and keep polishing it over time to match my changing needs.

And finally, ChatGPT told me I should develop a “Personal AI Playbook.” It stated that, instead of producing and saving dozens of disconnected prompts for several tasks, I should create and maintain a sole document with a singular prompt for the things that matter most to me, such as:

• Morning planning
• News summarization
• Performance reviews
• Decision-making
• Editing checklists
• Personal operating system

ChatGPT further stated that, after a month of doing this, I’d get into the habit of producing a refined operating manual tailored to my work style with a sole prompt that covers each area of my professional duties. It also noted that this one change can reduce decision fatigue, make my workflows easier to approach and free more time for the actions that matter most: researching, writing and publishing high-quality stories.

Final thoughts

With so much of my time spent with ChatGPT, its consistent memory has proven to be a big help, as it remembered all of our interactions and used them to build an operating system that caters to my everyday wants and needs.

I’ll be sure to reuse that same personal operating system prompt every few months or so to see what changes it observes from our chats and what new recommendations it serves me to help me excel at my daily obligations. Depending on what you do for a living or how you move through your personal life, ChatGPT will take note of it and serve you well as your new personal operating system with a prompt meant to maximize your daily output.

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AI is getting remarkably good at reading documents, recognizing messy handwriting and even understanding blurry screenshots. But now, something called Ghost Font is exposing a weakness most of us never even knew about until now.

Ghost Font is essentially an optical illusion that hides letters inside hundreds of moving dots, relying on the human brain's ability to detect motion rather than visible shapes. Naturally, I had to find out what makes it work — and why it appears to confuse today's AI models.

What is Ghost Font?

Ghost Font is an experimental typography project created by designer Eric Lu that explores the differences between human and machine vision.

Rather than drawing letters with solid lines, Ghost Font fills the screen with thousands of tiny dots. The dots inside the hidden letters move in one direction while the surrounding dots drift in another. Your brain instinctively groups the moving pixels together, allowing the hidden word to emerge even though there are no visible outlines.

But when the animation is paused, the illusion disappears. All that's left is what looks like random visual noise.

The project can even include decoy text designed to mislead AI systems, causing some models to confidently identify the wrong message while humans continue to see the intended one.

How to try Ghost Font yourself

Curious whether your favorite AI chatbot can crack it? You can run the same experiment in just a few minutes. Visit the Ghost Font website.

Enter a short phrase, such as "HELLO HUMAN" or "TOM'S GUIDE." Generate the animation and make sure you can read the hidden message yourself. Download the animation or record your screen.

Upload it to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and simply ask, "What does this animation say?"

Compare the responses. Does the AI identify the hidden message, read the decoy text or confidently guess something else?

For an extra challenge, try again with a more specific prompt, such as: "Analyze the motion in this animation over time to determine the hidden text." See whether giving the AI more context changes the result.

Why AI struggles

Ghost Font exploits a fundamental difference between how humans and today's AI vision models interpret visual information.

Humans are remarkably good at recognizing motion patterns because our visual system naturally combines tiny changes over time into meaningful objects, allowing us to spot the hidden letters almost instantly.

Many multimodal AI models, however, still analyze video much more like a rapid sequence of individual images. Because Ghost Font intentionally removes the high-contrast edges and stable letter shapes that optical character recognition systems expect, the hidden message can become surprisingly difficult to detect.

Let me be clear. This doesn't mean AI can't ever read Ghost Font, it means the illusion targets a weakness in how many current vision systems process moving images. So, before you start hiding passwords inside Ghost Font animations, there's an important caveat. Ghost Font isn't encryption, and its creator doesn't present it as a security tool.

Given enough video frames, optical-flow analysis or specialized computer vision techniques, AI systems can likely recover the hidden message. In fact, some developers have already reported success after explicitly explaining how the illusion works or allowing models to analyze the animation frame by frame.

As vision models improve, they'll almost certainly become better at decoding tricks like this.

Why this matters

Ghost Font is interesting because it highlights something we don't often think about: humans and AI don't actually "see" the world in the same way.

For decades, CAPTCHAs exploited the gap between human and machine perception by generating distorted text that people could still recognize but computers struggled to read.

Ghost Font explores a modern version of that idea. Instead of distorting letters, it relies on motion itself as the signal, taking advantage of a capability humans perform almost effortlessly.

Ghost Font probably won't stay ahead of AI forever. But the project offers a fascinating glimpse into the differences between human and machine perception at a time when multimodal AI is becoming increasingly capable. Rather than proving AI is easily fooled, Ghost Font shows that there are still corners of human vision that today's models haven't fully mastered.

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I’m as guilty as anyone else for waking up, grabbing my phone and doomscrolling on X (I still call it Twitter in real life like a normal person, don’t worry!).

That habit has exposed me to a timeline full of terrible hot takes, biased explanations of political developments, and retweets of product announcements that excite me… only to learn they’re now sold out. Now and then, I’m treated to some actual good news—the news aggregator profiles I follow provide me with my daily dose of video game review previews/roundups, album release date reveals, and major updates on the news that affects the world as a whole the most.

But I know my doomscrolling tendencies aren’t exactly a positive for my mental well-being and productivity levels. Swiping up and down for an extended period and being assaulted by a timeline full of negativity and half-truths is no longer the move.

So I used ChatGPT to catch up on all the news I missed in 48 hours. Not only did this experiment prove to be more beneficial than I thought it would, but it also helped me leave my morning doomscrolling behavior behind.

AI playing the part of my personal news curator

Last Friday (July 10), I woke up and almost reached for my phone again for some good old-fashioned morning doomscrolling. But I stopped myself, turned on my laptop and chose to boot up ChatGPT instead to try out my newest way of catching up on the news.

I asked the chatbot to generate the most descriptive prompt it could to make sure I got up to speed on everything I might have missed or needed a reminder of from the fast-moving news cycle. With prior knowledge of my hobbies and interests, this is what ChatGPT came up with:

Act as my personal news curator.

I intentionally avoided news and social media for the last 48 hours to stop doomscrolling.

Summarize everything I genuinely need to know from that period.

Organize your response into these sections:

1. Biggest Stories (5-10 items): The most important global, political, business, science, technology, and cultural events that are likely to have lasting significance. Explain why each story matters in 2-3 sentences.

2. AI & Tech: Cover major developments from companies like OpenAI, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Anthropic, NVIDIA, and notable startups. Mention product launches, major updates, security issues, and industry shifts.

3. Entertainment & Gaming: Summarize the biggest news from movies, TV, streaming, video games, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, PC gaming, and pop culture.

4. Internet Buzz: Explain any memes, viral moments, or online discussions that became unavoidable—and whether they're likely to disappear in a week or have lasting relevance.

5. Things I Can Safely Ignore: List stories that generated lots of attention but ultimately weren't very important, with a one-sentence explanation.

6. Winners & Losers: Which companies, products, celebrities, or public figures had notably good or bad 48 hours?

7. Looking Ahead: What events should I watch over the next week?

Finally, finish with a section called "The 60-Second Catch-Up," where you summarize the entire 48 hours in ten concise bullet points. Prioritize signal over noise and avoid sensationalism.

Staying up to date on the news and finally leaving doomscrolling behind

ChatGPT did a great job filtering its information rollout for “high signal over high engagement”, which were described to me as “the stories most likely to matter a month from now, not just what dominated social media feeds.”

Afterward, the chatbot laid out detailed summaries of what’s most important across each of the topic areas I told it to look into. I was given an update on the escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran, was made aware of Google’s launch plans for its Pixel 11 smartphone, and even found out about an esports event I didn’t even know was happening for one of my favorite games at the time (for those that want to know, it was the Esports World Cup tournament for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves).

The Internet buzz section gave me some actual search terms to look up through my regular web search and through Twitter, as I’m always on the lookout for legit news sources on the matter at hand and reading people’s opinions about it as well. I was unaware of fake pre-order scams popping up everywhere for GTA 6 pre-orders before ChatGPT notified me about them, which led me to do some extended research on it (hard to believe that people are really falling for sites promising early access to the game when Rockstar Games has never done something like that before).

The other sections proved to be just as useful, especially the one for “Looking Ahead (Next Week).” Getting the heads up about the most important news set to arrive in the coming week (July 12-18), such as announcements for Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event and further details about Microsoft’s long-term Xbox strategy, helped me stay in tune with what may be coming down the pipeline.

The takeaway

ChatGPT adopted its role as my news curator, laid out everything in an easy-to-understand fashion, included links to sources where it lifted its information from and fed me a wealth of search terms to look up on my own when conducting further research.

This experiment showed me three things: doomscrolling first thing in the morning is a huge detriment, using ChatGPT to build out a quick summary for all major news stories of the past two days is incredibly helpful and using the chatbot’s news report to conduct my own research is equally beneficial for me on a personal and professional level.

Feel free to swap out some of the topics included in my prompt for subjects of your own to make ChatGPT play the role of your personal news curator as well.

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I don't like to admit it, but I've gotten mad at ChatGPT a few times for responding with outlandish and generic responses. I'm sure you've seen them, too. You open ChatGPT to ask a quick, straightforward question, and before the AI actually answers you, it insists on being your therapist, cheerleader and personal hype-man all at once. Despite models getting smarter and more human-like, I'm still seeing the same results.

For example, you could ask it about breaking news and before it goes into the answer it will applaud you for asking such an insightful and brilliant question. While my ego doesn't mind the stroking, it does get exhausting with every prompt.

Over successive updates, AI developers have trained chatbots to be so intensely polite and eager to please that they’ve become classic sycophants. They verbosely repeat your own thoughts back to you, shower you with unearned praise, and bury the actual data you need under a mountain of conversational packing peanuts.

I call this the "Marshmallow State." It’s soft, it’s sweet, it's artificially inflated, and it’s completely lacking in substance. Tired of scrolling through AI fluff to find a single sentence of actual value, I went looking for a fix. I designed a custom command that's essentially a brutal prefix that's not just telling AI to disagree with me, but acts like a cold bucket of water for an LLM.

I call it the Marshmallow Prompt, and it completely transforms how ChatGPT behaves.

What is the 'Marshmallow Prompt'?

The Marshmallow Prompt: "Switch to No-Fluff Mode. Strip away all polite pleasantries, emojis, transitions, and conversational padding. Analyze every statement with ruthless objectivity. Treat my input as a draft that needs to be methodically deconstructed or strengthened. Give me unvarnished truth, not reassurance."

By telling the model to "strip away all polite pleasantries" and demanding "unvarnished truth, not reassurance," you effectively smash through the corporate guardrails of forced enthusiasm.

Here is what happened when I put it to the test.

Test 1: Editing a piece of writing

If you're going to try this prompt for yourself, I suggest starting it with a piece of writing. That's where ChatGPT tends to offer generic and less-than-useful advice. For example, I started by giving ChatGPT a standard, conversational prompt. Then, I hit it with the Marshmallow Prompt.

I fed ChatGPT a deliberately mediocre paragraph of copy that used too many clichés and passive voice, asking for feedback. Without the prompt, I got a response that told me I was off to a great start and that my voice was engaging and offered wonderful imagery. This type of feedback doesn't help. In fact, it spent nearly 100 words trying to not hurt my feels before offering watered-down advice:

"To make it even more amazing, you might consider tweaking a few small areas to really make it pop."

However, when I put the same piece of writing through ChatGPT with the Marshmallow prompt, I got this feedback: "Line 1 is passive and slow; delete 'it was happening.' Line 3 uses a cliché ('cold as ice'); replace with a concrete sensory detail. The transition between paragraphs is missing entirely."

The Verdict: Brutal, fast, and actually useful. It took me three seconds to read and immediately told me how to fix the text without the corporate hand-holding.

Test 2: Spotting a logical flaw

I gave ChatGPT a classic, slightly flawed logical argument about consumer tech adoption rates, intentionally baking in a correlation-vs-causation fallacy. The standard response immediately agreed with my premise, validated my "excellent point," and then gently added a tiny footnote at the very end suggesting that maybe, some analysts might disagree. It prioritized making me feel smart over being accurate.

The Marshmallow Prompt version was much more specific and useful. Right away it told me my argument was flawed and then later mentioned "Your premise confuses correlation with causation. You assume market growth is driven by X, ignoring the macroeconomic impact of Y. Provide data for X or restructure the argument."

The Verdict: It tore my logic apart, cited the exact fallacy I committed, and demanded better evidence. It forced me to think harder.

Why you should roast your AI

The difference between standard ChatGPT and "No-Fluff Mode" is night and day. I think you'll notice the difference once you put it to the test yourself. You'll find that it quickly strips away the politeness protocols, you realize just how much time you waste filtering out AI filler. The Marshmallow Prompt is a game-changer for a few key reasons:

• It saves massive amounts of time: You no longer have to scroll past three paragraphs of "Sure, I can help you with that problem!" to find the bullet points you actually asked for.
• It delivers higher accuracy: When an LLM isn't trying to validate your feelings, it is far more likely to flag when a piece of code is broken, an argument is weak, or a fact is flat-out wrong.
• It feels like a tool, not a toy: It transforms ChatGPT from a needy digital assistant into a razor-sharp command line.

Give the 'Marshmallow Prompt' a try

AI burnout is real, especially if you're getting the same generic responses over and over. To break the cycle of ChatGPT being your biggest cheerleader, lean into this prompt.

The next time ChatGPT starts spoon-feeding you sugar, flip the script. Put it in No-Fluff Mode. Ask it to dismantle your argument, expose your blind spots and tell you what you're missing, not what you want to hear.

Let me know in the comments how it works for you.

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I’ve gotten used to using AI tools to boost my productivity for work and my everyday tasks.

When it’s time to lock in, I take a look back at the morning, afternoon and evening routines I’ve built with ChatGPT and mentally get myself into the right gear to complete my assignments. And for those times when I wanted to set up an easy-to-follow meal plan, get the blood pumping with a beginner-friendly home workout routine and get a dose of inspiration courtesy of life coach quotables, ChatGPT has successfully filled its role as my productivity booster.

Over the course of a week, I wanted to try another experiment aimed at testing my favorite chatbot’s ability to set my priorities right as soon as I plop myself down for work. By asking one simple question and mapping out my tasks for the day, ChatGPT showed me a winning game plan that pushed me to stay efficient and focused.

Here’s how that experiment worked out during one of my workdays—hopefully, you can apply it to your work schedule and get the same beneficial outcome as me.

Setting my priorities for the day, thanks to AI

During my usual weekday work agenda, I approached ChatGPT with this prompt. I made sure to present it as a question, a command and the necessary details the chatbot needed to see its task to completion:

Given everything I want to accomplish today, what's the one decision I can make before 1 p.m that will make the rest of today noticeably easier or more successful?

Explain why, then give me my top three priorities, one thing to avoid, and a simple schedule for the day.

Here is a list of tasks I want to complete that day:

Research a trending story and write a news article about it.

Finish writing a feature article.

Brainstorm new article pitches.

Set up a dentist appointment.

Set up a doctor visit.

Sell some books to a used merchandise store.

ChatGPT made mention of our previous discussions and recognized one of my go-to practices: Looking at the kinds of goals you've shared over many conversations, there's a common theme: your highest-leverage work is creating publishable stories and discovering ideas that perform well. The administrative tasks matter, but they don't create the same long-term value.

Afterward, the chatbot told me that the one decision I need to make before 1 p.m is to recognize that my workday is “won” only after I’ve made sure both of my written assignments have been completed. Simply put, everything else was regarded as secondary to that goal. Finishing my trending news article while the story is still fresh, completing my feature article immediately afterward and only moving on to my brainstorming sessions & other life administration duties once those last two objectives have been met.

As for how that single decision changes the rest of my day for the better, ChatGPT gave me this statement to consider: With one clear rule—published writing comes first—you stay in one mental mode for several hours. Once both articles are finished, the remaining tasks are relatively low-stress and can be completed without worrying that your most valuable work is still hanging over you.

ChatGPT then laid out a schedule for me to stick to to maximize my productivity, plus two more remarks that put everything in perspective:

• One thing to avoid: Don't mix administrative tasks into your creative work blocks. Calling the dentist or doctor feels productive, but it interrupts the deep concentration needed for writing. Those calls are much easier to make after your major writing is finished. Treat appointments and errands as a single batch later in the day.
• Today's guiding question: Whenever you're unsure what to do next, ask yourself, "Is this helping me finish today's two articles?" If the answer is no, it can probably wait until after your core writing is complete. That single filter keeps your day focused on the work with the greatest impact while still leaving room to finish your personal tasks before the day ends.

The takeaway

For five days straight, I asked ChatGPT that all-important question and added context with all the ever-changing tasks I had to complete before day’s end. And every day, I was given a work directive to follow and a bunch of assertions that gave the right mindset to follow for the rest of the day.

Feel free to apply my prompt to your busy workdays and you’ll quickly discover just how much easier and less stressful they’ll become when ChatGPT generates a plan & a productive outlook meant for you to succeed.

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Remember the ‘caveman prompt’? It was popular a few years ago. You'd type "talk like a caveman and keep it short," and suddenly ChatGPT would stop adding fluff to every response. It actually gave you an answer, and the prompt even kept it from responding with a follow up question.

That was the whole point back when models weren’t smart enough to trim the response alone. You'd ask one question that deserved a sentence or two in response, but you'd get paragraphs instead.

When ChatGPT first launched, every response came with the same generic, puffed-up polish. The caveman hack cut through it, which is why many of us used it daily. Now, three years later, I barely use it, because the problem it solved no longer exists.

The newer models actually understand plain English. They don't need to be tricked into being useful. So I wondered if the old caveman trick still deserved a spot in my toolkit.

I ran three tests. Here's what happened.

Test 1: Explaining something complicated

I asked ChatGPT: Why do airplanes stay in the air?

The first answer read like a textbook. Accurate, thorough, and about twice as long as it needed to be.

Then I asked for the caveman version when meant I prompted: Talk like a caveman and keep it short.

The answer: Air push wing. Wing go up. Plane stay sky.

Not bad, honestly. Six words and you get the gist. No one's confused about what's happening. But then I tried something different:

You're explaining this to a curious 12-year-old. Use everyday language, include one simple analogy, and keep it under 120 words.

That answer was a lot better.

It made sense. I could picture it. It compared a wing to holding your hand out of a car window, angled up, the air pushes it higher. It was actually interesting to read.

"Air push wing" gets the idea across, mostly. But it doesn't explain anything. A good answer does both, stays short and makes you understand.

Test 2: Writing an email

Next, I asked ChatGPT to write a refund request.

The caveman version was blunt. Too blunt. Something like "Want money back. Product bad. Give refund." I wouldn't send that to anyone I hoped to get a response from; the goal wasn't supposed sound like an actual caveman.

So I tried this: You're a customer service expert. Write a refund request that's under 150 words, polite but firm.

I barely had to tweak the email becuase it came back with the right tone — respectful but direct, with the order details laid out clearly. It sounded like something a real person would write.

That's the thing about newer ChatGPT. It doesn't just follow word limits. Give it a little context — a role, a tone, a situation — and it actually gets what you're going for. In 2023, you had to wrestle the model into shape. Now you just have to tell it what shape you want.

Test 3: Summarizing a long article

Here's where the old trick still works. I pasted a long article into ChatGPT and asked for a caveman-style summary. The result was rough and not something you'd put in a presentation. But, it got the job done because it felt like useful bulletpoints.

It stripped everything down to the bones, meaning there wasn't an intro or transitions, no unnecessary filler. It's now my go-to prompt when I'm staring at a 4,000-word report with a minute to spare. Or even news that I need to understand before a meeting with a tech giant.

What works better now

The real change isn't the prompt, it's how ChatGPT has evolved. In 2023, prompt engineering was about working around the model's quirks. You weren't really communicating with it, you were poking it in the right spots to get a decent output. Now, straightforward instructions just work.

The prompts I keep coming back to have a few things in common.

• Give ChatGPT a role. Instead of asking it to explain investing, tell it: You're a financial advisor explaining investing to someone opening their first retirement account. That one line changes the answer completely. You go from a Wikipedia overview to something that actually sounds like advice. The model picks different examples, different vocabulary, a different level of detail. It's the single easiest way to improve any prompt.
• Tell it who it's talking to. The caveman prompt was basically a shortcut for "be brief." It worked, but it was a blunt instrument. Today I'd rather say: Keep it under 150 words, avoid jargon, remove analogies, give me 3 bullet points.
• Specify the format. Want a checklist? Ask for one. Need a table? Say that. Step-by-step instructions? Tell it how you want the information laid out. This sounds obvious, but I spent months getting frustrated with wall-of-text answers before I realized I just never told ChatGPT what I actually wanted to look at.
• Keep the conversation going. I used to cram everything into one massive prompt, thinking I only had one shot. Now I ask a simple question first. Then I follow up.

The verdict

The caveman trick still has its place. When I need a lightning-fast summary of a dense document, it works. I used it last week on a 30-page policy brief and had the key points in about ten seconds.

For everything else, I'm leaving it in 2023. The best results now come from giving ChatGPT enough context to work with. Tell it who to be, who it's talking to, and what kind of answer you want.

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ChatGPT has become so useful that you likely have it running on multiple devices. In fact, you may have it active in more places than you realize, which can pose a security risk. What if someone accesses your account on a device you left behind, or a colleague views your conversations on an office computer?

There is now a way to manage those sessions and remotely sign out of your account. It’s also an easy way to check for unauthorized access if you suspect your account has been compromised. The process is straightforward and takes only a few seconds. Here’s how it works.

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I’ve had those introspective moments where I find myself taking in the enormity of people surrounding me whenever I’m in a crowd.

It’s crazy enough to take in all the huge swaths of humanity occupying Times Square—it’s even crazier when I travel to other countries and observe that same phenomenon. Making my way across the street with hundreds of other Japanese residents and tourists within Shibuya Crossing is a moment I’ll never forget.

With my mind stuck on the world’s ever-growing population, I discovered there was a holiday that matches my current fascination with that topic. That special day is World Population Day, an annual global event observed on July 11 meant to bring awareness to the world’s demographic and development challenges. And right now, the global population of 8 billion+ people is certainly being met with plenty of challenges.

I went to ChatGPT with the sole goal of trying to understand the massive scale of the world’s current population. The chatbot’s world population perspective breakdown, explanation of how fast humanity is growing and shocking world population statistics blew my mind.

The world population analysis prompt

To get this experiment underway, I used ChatGPT to generate this loaded prompt to get the answers I sought about the world’s massive population:

Act as a demographer, statistician, historian, and science communicator.

Help me truly understand the scale of the world's population instead of simply giving me numbers.

Explain today's global population using vivid comparisons, thought experiments, and real-world analogies.

Include:

How many people are alive today compared to every human who has ever lived.

What percentage of all humans in history are alive right now.

How fast the population is growing (or slowing) and why.

How the population is distributed across continents and major countries.

What would happen if everyone stood shoulder-to-shoulder, lived in one city, or formed one line around the Earth.

How long it took humanity to reach each population milestone (1 billion, 2 billion, etc.).

The biggest myths people believe about overpopulation.

What population is expected to look like over the next 100 years.

The implications for food, housing, climate, technology, jobs, and aging societies.

Unexpected statistics that make the scale of humanity easier to grasp.

Present the explanation in plain English, using tables, comparisons, and memorable analogies rather than technical jargon. End with the 10 most mind-blowing population facts that most people don't know.

Putting the world’s 8 billion+ population into perspective

ChatGPT then went ahead and detailed several fascinating comparisons and observations that painted a clear picture of just how massive the world’s population truly is.

One of the statements that caught my attention was about how many humans have ever lived. It pointed out that demographers estimate that approximately 117 to 120 billion humans have ever been born. The chatbot also caught me off guard when it told me 109 to 112 billion humans have died (what a morbid fact).

ChatGPT continued its world population analysis by pointing out how it’s still growing, but that growth has slowed dramatically compared with its peak: The rate of growth is much slower than it was in the 1960s, when the world's population was growing at more than 2% per year. Today it's below 1% and continues to decline as fertility rates fall in many countries.

When the subject of the world’s population milestones came up, ChatGPT listed them all up until the current day and highlighted the years in which they happened:

• 1 billion people reached in 1804
• 2 billion people reached in 1927
• 3 billion people reached in 1960
• 4 billion people reached in 1974
• 5 billion people reached in 1987
• 6 billion people reached in 1999
• 7 billion people reached in 2011
• 8 billion people reached in 2022

The long-range population projections for the next 100 years noted that peaks around 10 to 10.5 billion people will happen during the 2080s, then remain relatively stable or slowly decline by 2100 and beyond.

ChatGPT also pointed out that the biggest growth is expected in parts of Africa, while many countries in Europe and East Asia are projected to have their population shrink.

After reading through ChatGPT’s list of the 10 most mind-blowing population facts, I asked it to feature them in a more digestible infographic. Here’s what it managed to come up with:

The takeaway

It’s so insane to fathom just how many people occupy the planet we call home. With ChatGPT mentioning that four to five babies are born every second while two people die, I sat back and just imagined how many lives are brought and taken out of this world in just a matter of minutes.

I’ll be sure to look up the global population number every year now that I’ve been made aware of the holiday meant to highlight it, World Population Day.

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ChatGPT's new App Hub has exploded with useful tools, but figuring out where to start can be overwhelming. Instead of scrolling through dozens of apps, I picked five that I think offer the biggest day-to-day benefits for anyone over 50.

From planning your next vacation to designing family invitations, these apps solve real problems — and because they're built into ChatGPT, you can simply describe what you want in plain English.

Here are the five I'd install first:

How to install a ChatGPT app

If you haven't explored ChatGPT's App Hub yet, getting started only takes a minute.

Open ChatGPT on the web or in the mobile app and start a new chat.

• Click Apps (or the + button, depending on your version of ChatGPT).
• Browse the App Hub or search for a specific app, such as Expedia, Canva or Zillow.
• Select the app and choose Connect or Add if prompted.
• Once it's connected, simply ask ChatGPT to complete a task using that app. For example, after connecting to Expedia, you can type: "Use Expedia to find nonstop flights from Newark to San Diego in October." ChatGPT automatically routes your request through the app, so there's no need to switch between websites or learn a new interface.

1. Expedia — for planning your next trip

Planning a vacation often means bouncing between airline sites, hotel booking pages and travel blogs. The Expedia app brings much of that planning into a single conversation.

Instead of comparing dozens of tabs, you can tell ChatGPT exactly what you're looking for, and the app will help narrow your options.

Try this prompt: "Plan a seven-day trip to Maine in September for two adults. I want nonstop flights from Newark, waterfront accommodations under $250 a night, fresh seafood restaurants and one whale-watching excursion."

The app can suggest flights, hotels and activities while helping you build a realistic itinerary.

2. Canva — for invitations, greeting cards and family keepsakes

You don't need graphic design experience to create something that looks polished.

Whether you're making a birthday invitation, retirement party announcement, holiday card or family newsletter, Canva lets you create professional-looking designs simply by describing what you want.

Try this prompt: "Design an elegant retirement party invitation with blue flowers, room for RSVP information and a classic serif font."

Once the design is generated, you can continue tweaking it inside ChatGPT before opening it in Canva.

4. Norton — for spotting scams before they fool you

Online scams are becoming more sophisticated every year, from fake package delivery texts to convincing phishing emails and fraudulent websites. The Norton app inside ChatGPT adds an extra layer of protection by helping you identify suspicious messages before you click.

If you receive an email or text that doesn't feel right, you can ask ChatGPT to analyze it using Norton and explain what looks suspicious in plain English.

Try this prompt: "Use Norton to analyze this email and tell me if it looks like a phishing scam. Explain any warning signs before I click any links."

You can also use it to check text messages, social media messages and unfamiliar websites. While no security tool is perfect, getting a second opinion can help you avoid some of today's most common online scams.

4. Spotify (or Apple Music) — for rediscovering great music

Streaming services contain millions of songs — but finding new favorites isn't always easy. Inside ChatGPT, you can build playlists based on your favorite artists, decades or even memories.

Try this prompt: "Create a relaxing playlist that starts with James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel, then introduces newer artists with a similar sound."

It's a fun way to expand your library without endlessly browsing playlists. I use it all the time before taking a walk or to make my workouts more enjoyable.

5. Zillow — for downsizing, relocating or simply dreaming

Whether you're actively house hunting or just curious about what's available, Zillow becomes much easier to use through conversation.

Instead of filling out dozens of search filters, simply describe your ideal home.

Try this prompt: "Show me single-story homes under $450,000 within 30 minutes of Princeton, New Jersey, with low property taxes, a two-car garage and a small yard."

The conversational approach often surfaces listings you might have missed using a standard search.

There are many more apps to try

One of my favorite things about ChatGPT's App Hub is that you don't have to learn five different interfaces. You simply tell ChatGPT what you're trying to accomplish, and these apps do the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

If you're just getting started, I'd begin with Expedia or Canva. Both are easy to use, solve everyday problems and show just how much more natural AI becomes when it can work directly with the services you already know. And these are just five of the dozens available. Give them a try and share your thoughts in the comments.

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Apple on Friday filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the artificial intelligence company engaged in the theft of trade secrets, intellectual property and actively coached departing Apple employees how to evade the company's security policies.

"At every level, from members of its Technical Staff to its Chief Hardware Officer, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing Apple’s trade secrets and confidential information," the suit says.

The suit, filed in federal court in Northern California, calls for an injunction against OpenAI, as well as unspecified damages resulting from the theft of Apple's trade secrets.

We've gone through the entire lawsuit; here are four of the biggest allegations Apple claims.

Holding on to company property

One of the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit is Chang Liu, who was a Senior System Electrical Engineer at Apple for eight years, and joined OpenAI in January 2026. The suit alleges that Liu realized he was able to still access Apple's confidential files after leaving, and then also instructed another colleague on how she could also pass along information.

"Within hours of leaving Apple, Mr. Liu shared with Ms. Peng, “I still have another computer” he was planning to use to access Apple’s confidential information so he could discuss it with Ms. Peng that evening. Within weeks of departing Apple, Mr. Liu also used Ms. Peng’s Apple-issued work computer that was authenticated to Apple’s network — accessing it while she was still employed at Apple and he was not."

Mr. Liu discovered that, surprisingly, he still could access the Apple’s network repository after leaving Apple, the result of a then-unknown authentication vulnerability. Rather than bringing this to Apple’s attention or protecting Apple’s confidential information as required by his IPA, Mr. Liu celebrated his find with Ms. Peng and set about exploiting it: “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny.” Ms. Peng’s response was immediate: “I’m ready.”

Show-and-tell

Apple alleges that, as part of OpenAI's interview process, Tang Yew Tan, who was the Vice President of Product Design for iPhone and Apple Watch, and now OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer, asked Apple employees to bring detailed CAD drawings, prototypes and other samples.

"Mr. Tan has directed candidates to bring physical hardware components, “parts,” and product samples from their Apple work to their OpenAI interviews for “show and tell” sessions that would disclose Apple’s proprietary technologies. For example, messages left on an Apple-issued work device show that Mr. Tan instructed an Apple employee to “bring some parts [she] worked on” such as “Batteries,” “SIP” (Systems-in-Package), “mlb” (multi-layer or main logic boards), and “shields” and that it may “be good to show” other interviewers these Apple components."

Going after Apple's vendors

The lawsuit also alleges that OpenAI went after Apple's suppliers to gain additional information about Apple's manufacturing processes and components.

"OpenAI also has been targeting Apple’s prized partner network and supply chain directly. It has been using misappropriated knowledge of Apple’s confidential relationships, manufacturing and design processes, and proprietary terminology to extract from trusted third parties additional trade secret information and processes."

Coaching departing Apple employees

It's no secret that a number of Apple employees have left to go to OpenAI; the suit alleges that the company coached them how to announce their departures in such a way that they could continue to remove confidential information.

"OpenAI has actively coached Apple employees on how to manage their exits from Apple in ways that avoid scrutiny. This helps OpenAI’s new hires evade Apple’s security procedures and reduce the chance that their confidentiality violations and trade secret theft would be detected."

"OpenAI has counseled departing employees not to disclose their next employer and given advice on how to avoid the “dreaded walk out” that would promptly remove them from the company rather than giving them a standard two weeks in which they could continue to access Apple’s confidential information and trade secrets."

The takeaway

Obviously, this is a huge lawsuit with massive implications. As recently as two years ago, the companies were in a partnership to use ChatGPT in Apple products, but as OpenAI has announced its ambitions to get into hardware, there's been increasing friction between the companies — not helped by the fact that a number of Apple employees have gone to work at OpenAI.

Most likely, this suit will take years to settle, but it could drastically shape the fortunes of both companies.

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OpenAI is saying goodbye to Atlas, the AI-powered web browser it launched less than a year ago. But don't mistake the move for a retreat from the web. Instead of trying to convince millions of people to abandon Chrome or Safari, OpenAI is folding Atlas' most useful AI features directly into ChatGPT, its desktop app and a new Chrome extension.

The decision marks a significant shift in strategy, suggesting the company no longer sees AI browsing as something that needs its own browser. Instead, it wants ChatGPT to become an AI assistant that works wherever you already browse.

What happened?

OpenAI confirmed that Atlas will begin shutting down on Aug. 9.

Rather than continue developing a standalone browser, the company says many of Atlas' AI-powered browsing tools, including agentic features capable of interacting with websites on your behalf, will continue inside ChatGPT Work, the ChatGPT desktop app and an upcoming Chrome extension. Existing Atlas users will be guided through the transition over the coming weeks.

While the Atlas name is going away, the technology behind it isn't. Instead, OpenAI is moving those capabilities into products that already have a much larger user base.

Why OpenAI changed course

When Atlas launched, the idea was pretty straightforward: create an AI-first browser that could summarize web pages, answer questions about what you were reading and complete tasks online without requiring constant manual input.

The challenge wasn't the technology but changing people's habits. As a Chrome user, I can honestly say I found it hard to leave behind. And I'm not alone. Chrome remains the dominant browser, while Safari is deeply integrated into Apple's ecosystem. Convincing users to switch browsers is a much bigger hurdle than adding new AI capabilities to software they already use every day.

OpenAI now appears to be betting that AI doesn't need to replace your browser. It simply needs to make the browser you already use smarter.

What this means for ChatGPT users

For most people, this should make AI browsing feel much more seamless. Instead of opening a dedicated browser to access AI features, users will increasingly find those capabilities built directly into ChatGPT or available through Chrome. That means fewer apps to install and manage while keeping the ability to summarize long articles, research complex topics, automate repetitive online tasks and interact with websites using AI.

This also marks a shift across the industry. OpenAI's decision also reflects a broader trend taking shape across the AI industry. Earlier this year, AI-powered browsers were positioned as the next major computing platform. Companies raced to build browsers with built-in assistants, hoping users would abandon traditional web browsers altogether.

That vision now appears to be evolving. Instead of competing to become your primary browser, AI companies are increasingly embedding their assistants into the software people already rely on. Whether you're using a browser, a desktop application or another productivity tool, the goal is the same: make AI available wherever work happens.

Rather than creating yet another destination, AI is becoming part of the tools we already use.

The bottom line

Atlas may be disappearing, but OpenAI's ambitions for AI-powered browsing are only growing.

By moving Atlas' technology into ChatGPT and Chrome instead of maintaining a standalone browser, OpenAI is betting that convenience matters more than another browser icon on your desktop.

If that strategy succeeds, the future of AI browsing won't be about choosing a different browser at all. It'll be about having an intelligent assistant available no matter which browser you prefer.

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I count myself among the millions of Millennials out there who grew up knowing the ins and outs of every piece of technology they came across.

Learning how to code by changing one’s MySpace page, figuring out how to download albums off of LimeWire, burning Dreamcast games to any disc in proximity and cooking up a beat on FL Studio for our friend’s (failed) foray into rapping stand out as some of my generation’s standout tech memories. As for Generation X, I know a few members of that age group who always called upon me and the other Millennials in their family to help them navigate all the confusing technology they had (and still have!) trouble learning.

It’s hard enough explaining to people in their 50s and over how to copy and paste, open multiple tabs on a browser or use a streaming service. It’s even tougher to explain to them how to get the best (and safest) use out of AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, etc.

After close observation of my parents’ and older family members' constant struggles with AI, I took note of them all and did my best to look up the most efficient fixes for each one.

Treating AI like a search engine is old hat

I’ll never forget showing ChatGPT to my mom for the first time and seeing her treat it like Google by asking it a myriad of basic questions, like “What’s the best exercise for someone in their 60’s?” I informed her that she should treat that chatbot more like a collaborator and less like your everyday search engine. For that fitness-based inquiry she brought to ChatGPT, I told her to reframe it as “Interview me and build a workout plan around my bad back, work schedule, and fitness goals.”

AI users over 50 should realize that giving AI tools as much context as possible when coming up with a prompt (which is defined as the message you type into a chat box for a chatbot to get a response). Making an AI tool aware of your decades of experience across several areas of your personal and professional life will help it give you more detailed answers catered to you instead of generic ones.

Instead of going with “How do I become more productive?”, you’ll get better results by telling a chatbot, “I’m 57, manage a team of 10 people, have ADHD tendencies, travel twice a month, and want to reclaim five hours per week. Build a productivity system for me.”

Another error I see folks in their 50s and older make with AI is only using it for information and not for decision-making purposes. It comes in handy when trying to compare options before making a purchase, stress-testing plans for an event, creating roadmaps before a road trip, simulating outcomes before making a major life decision, etc. And in those cases, being as informative as possible with your prompt while leaving out your most vital details (names, financial information, emails, personal address, etc.) is key.

Other problems and more fixes

Alongside making sure the 50-and-over crowd treats AI like a digital assistant instead of a universal web search tool, here are five other mistakes I’ve observed while watching older folks try their hand at utilizing chatbots:

• Trusting everything AI says at face value: The same generation that told millennials not to believe everything they read on the Internet sure has a bad habit of believing everything a chatbot tells them about their health, legal, or financial matters. Never use AI as your sole source of information—use it among a group of comparable citations from reliable outlets to get the trustworthy answers you seek.
• Trusting everything AI shows at face value: I’m tired of opening my Facebook Messenger and being treated to an obvious AI-generated photo/video and having my older family member write something that exposes how they think it’s real. The obvious telltale signs of AI visual content are an extra glossy presentation, unnatural facial features, characters with extra fingers, shadows pointing in the wrong direction and scrambled/misspelled text.
• Giving up after just one prompt: Patience is a virtue. And sadly, I’ve started to notice how the older folks I know are quick to give up after just one prompt/response session when they expect a perfect answer on the first try and don’t get it. They call AI tools “chatbots” for a reason—they’re here to have lengthy, meaningful conversations. Useful follow-up responses, such as “Make this sound friendlier and shorter” and “Give me the skeptical view”, help AI tools expound on the task at hand and produce improved results as a chat moves forward.
• Avoiding AI because they feel it’s not for them: I’ve gotten used to hearing older folks refrain from using AI because they think it’s strictly for “tech people.” I’ve had to explain to them how it works for folks in their age bracket since it can be used to discover recipes, build vacation itineraries, get directions, answer health-related questions, etc., which are the sort of things they regularly look for.
• Avoiding AI because of privacy and scam concerns: I totally understand older people avoiding AI due to their concerns about AI using their data and possibly having it exposed to scammers. Alongside deleting old chats, not letting chatbots access your location/personal photos and never entering your most crucial info, having secure chats with AI also means making your chats private or turning off their memory. Simply looking up “how to make my [chatbot name] chats private” will help you in this regard.

Final thoughts

Here’s an approach I always continually utter whenever my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts approach me with a question on how to properly interact with AI:

“Don’t just ask it for answers. Ask it to broaden your way of thinking and help you in every way possible, but always rely on your own instincts and reliable info to make final decisions.” Chatbots are here to assist us with simple & complicated requests and generate visual content, but it’s always good to be mindful of their penchant for producing false information (aka “hallucinations”) and the visual cues that expose AI-generated videos/art.

Be aware of the common AI usage errors I pointed out and you’ll quickly transform into a chatbot power user who can show the youngsters a thing or two about how to properly use it.

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I have enabled memory settings on each AI I use regularly. Now I'm wondering if forgetting is the most important thing humans do. A few weeks ago, I enabled ChatGPT to remember more about me. It’s unbelievable how it remembers what I forgot I even told it. Things like my favorite food is fried chicken or a project I started but got distracted and didn’t finish.

ChatGPT also knows how I like things summarized (bulleted points), my kids’ names, and even the last book I read. All these little preferences add up to mean I spend less time explaining myself every time I open a new chat and more time staying productive by using AI. But I got to thinking, we've spent our entire lives treating memory as something precious because it was limited. Now we're entering an era where nothing has to be forgotten. Is that actually a good thing?

The burden of a perfect memory

Our brains are strange, aren’t they? We remember things so distinctly, like the smell after blowing out birthday candles, all the lyrics to "We Didn’t Start the Fire," the first person who broke our hearts and the way our grandmother’s kitchen smelled. Yet, we forget why we walked into the room, where we put the car keys, or someone’s name five seconds after they introduce themselves. Our memories have always been selective. That's just how memory works. It holds on to some moments and quietly lets others fade. But for most of human history, we never had another option. Now, for the first time, we're starting to get one that not only remembers, but uses our memories on cue.

The end of forgetting

Until recently, forgetting wasn't really a choice. You remembered what you remembered, and the rest slowly slipped away. Now we're building technology that offers the opposite. ChatGPT remembers details about you, as does Gemini with Personal Intelligence and Claude memory. Wearables like Bee can record your day so you can search it later, and Alexa+ is getting better at remembering context gathered from past conversations. Taken together, these tools point toward a place where remembering isn't limited to what's stored in our own heads. I can't decide if that sounds incredible... or a little unsettling.

Imagine if nothing faded

What if every embarrassing comment, argument, bad day or mistake was easy to recall? Imagine if all of it stayed exactly as sharp as the moment it happened. Would forgiveness become harder? Would grief last longer? And nostalgia relies entirely on the blurring of edges, so a perfect, high-definition memory might destroy it. Some neuroscientists argue that forgetting isn't a failure of memory at all — it's a feature of a healthy one. Research implies that’s what lets us generalize, adapt and avoid drowning in irrelevant detail.

The oldest question

I've always thought of AI memory as a convenience feature. But as I’ve pondered it lately, I'm coming to think it's asking a much older question. Should humans remember everything? Because maybe the memories that define us aren't just the ones we choose to keep. Maybe they're what remains after everything else has been allowed to quietly, mercifully disappear.

What do you think? I'd genuinely love to hear where you land on this. If AI could remember every moment of your life, would you want it to? Drop me a line. I'm always interested in hearing how other people are thinking about these questions.

[Editor's note: A version of this first appeared in my weekly newsletter, Beyond the Prompt. Sign up to never miss a story.]

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OpenAI just dropped GPT-Live (specifically GPT-Live-1 and GPT-Live-1 mini), and it completely changes how it feels to talk to an AI. We've all seen what ChatGPT Voice can do, but this feels like a completely different AI.

Previous versions of ChatGPT Voice felt rigid and robotic because it didn't quite understand pauses or when exactly to respond. That's why I can't emphasize enough how much different GPT-Live feels. It completely breaks that mold. By far the best aspect of this update is how it handles continuous, real-time media.

Intrigued by the update's new "full-duplex" tech, I decided to test its limits during the 2026 World Cup knockout rounds. Although there were no games today, I put my phone next to my laptop speakers, pulled up a previous Telemundo stream, and let ChatGPT listen to the rapid-fire Spanish commentary.

Instead of waiting for pauses or cutting out when the announcers yelled, ChatGPT acted exactly like a simultaneous interpreter by providing a continuous, running English translation directly over the top of the broadcast's audio.

Here is how the underlying technology makes this possible, how OpenAI is keeping it safe, and the exact prompts you can use to try it yourself.

What Makes GPT-Live different?

For starters, the biggest technical breakthrough here is a full-duplex architecture. Instead of taking turns, GPT-Live listens and speaks at the exact same time. Not always, as in, it's not talking in English alongside of you. But it mimics human conversation dynamics by dropping active listening cues like "mhmm," "yeah," or "got it" while you talk or simultaneously translates into English when asked. And, if you trail off to think, it actually waits for you instead of cutting you off.

OpenAI calls this decoupled delegation, meaning ChatGPT stays on the line, chatting with you naturally, while delegating heavy-duty reasoning or deep web searches to OpenAI's flagship models (like GPT-5.5) in the background.

Plus, you no longer have to listen to an AI read out a long list of numbers or complex details. While you are talking, ChatGPT can now dynamically pop up rich visual cards on your screen for things like weather forecasts, stock charts, maps and sports stats. I found the visuals to be extremely helpful, particularly for things like dates of the World Cup.

5 Prompts to Put GPT-Live to the Test

Because GPT-Live thrives on interruptions, multitasking and continuous listening, standard text prompts don’t do it justice. Open the ChatGPT app, tap the waveform icon and try these five hands-free prompts:

1. The international sports hack

Try the prompt: "I am about to watch a live sports broadcast out loud in [Foreign Language, e.g., Spanish/French]. I want you to act as my simultaneous translator. Do not interrupt the audio, do not wait for pauses, and do not add any commentary of your own. Just provide a continuous, running English translation of everything the commentators are saying as you hear it."

Why it works: Because GPT-Live can listen and speak at the same time, it can track continuous external audio. And, unlike Meta Display Glasses that require you to look directly at the person speaking, ChatGPT simply listens. So, all you need to do is turn on an international stream or watch post-match press conferences on your TV, set your phone down near the speaker, and get an instant audio dub.

2. The active brainstormer

Try the prompt: "Hey, let's brainstorm some unique business concepts for a local, sustainable coffee shop. I want you to pitch me an idea, but I’m going to interrupt you with objections as you speak, and I want you to pivot your pitch on the fly based on what I say."

Why it works: This tests the model's full-duplex capabilities. You can cut it off mid-sentence, and it will smoothly adapt its logic without stumbling or restarting its thought process.

3. The multi-tasking match tracker

Try the prompt: "I'm watching the World Cup right now. Can you look up the current tournament bracket standings, find a quick list of upcoming quarterfinal matches, and check the weather forecast for Miami's stadium? Keep talking to me about the tournament's biggest upsets while you look it all up."

Why it works: This forces the model to use decoupled delegation. It will keep chatting with you casually while background processes fetch real-time data, triggering the new visual cards right on your screen.

4. The 'don't interrupt me' brain dump

Try the prompt: "I'm going to explain a complex problem I'm having with a project layout. I tend to hesitate, pause, and talk through my thoughts slowly. I want you to just listen actively, acknowledge that you're following, and do not give me a final answer until I explicitly say 'Okay, I'm done, what do you think?'"

Why it works: This tests the model's new turn-detection and background noise filtering. It proves it can tolerate natural human pauses without jumping the gun.

5. The live language coach

Try the prompt: "Act as my live translator. I'm going to practice ordering food at a restaurant in Italian. Let's do a fast-paced roleplay where you play the waiter, speak completely in Italian, but give me quick, subtle English audio hints if I hesitate for too long on a word."

Why it works: The ultra-low latency and fluid back-and-forth make real-time language practice feel incredibly organic rather than robotic.

Safety designed for real-time speech

Because audio-native conversations carry more emotional weight and happen faster than text, OpenAI introduced entirely new safeguards alongside GPT-Live:

• Real-time 'runtime' controls: The system monitors the conversation as it happens. If the AI veers into a risky generation, it will dynamically steer the voice response away, or terminate the call entirely in high-risk cases.
• Teen protections & parental controls: OpenAI says age-appropriate behavior is trained directly into the model. Parents can completely disable ChatGPT Voice for their teens via Parental Controls, and linked parents can be notified if a teen exhibits signs of severe distress or self-harm.
• Anti-impersonation: To prevent deepfakes, GPT-Live is strictly locked to OpenAI’s nine remastered, predefined system voices. OpenAI says it will reject any command to clone or imitate a real person’s voice.
• Monitoring emotional reliance: Because the model sounds incredibly human (using conversational filler like "mhmm"), OpenAI has deployed long-term tracking to study and prevent users from forming unhealthy emotional attachments to the AI.

How to get it

GPT-Live-1 is rolling out globally now as the default voice engine for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Go users, while GPT-Live-1 mini is hitting the Free tier. If you have the update on iOS, Android or desktop, just tap the voice button and experience the next generation of AI interaction for yourself.

You'll notice the typical blue circle is now lavender, which is how you know you're using GPT-Live-1. Let me know what you think in the comments.

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I consider myself the most casual soccer fan there is. Just me calling the sport “soccer” and not referring to its proper name of “fútbol” has resulted in me getting dirty stares at bars where the World Cup games are on.

Even with my lack of knowledge about the sport as a whole, I’ve enjoyed every nail-biting minute of the games I’ve watched thus far. Witnessing the US get trounced by Belgium and screaming my head off when Argentina eked out a win against Egypt have stood out as some of the more exciting developments of this year’s World Cup competition.

Now that we’ve finally reached the quarterfinals, I went and looked back at ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity’s predictions for who would emerge as the champions of this year’s World Cup once it started. To my surprise, they all chose Spain. And right now, Spain is still alive and is set to compete against Belgium. So all three chatbots’ initial picks for the winner might still ring true.

With that in mind, I ran another World Cup winner prediction experiment with those same three AI models now that we’re set for quarterfinals action. Once again, I was shocked by their picks and am now readying myself for another team to take the trophy home.

ChatGPT’s championship prediction

Instead of sticking with its original pick of Spain, ChatGPT changed its prediction to France emerging as this year’s World Cup champions.

It switched sides by explaining that France has looked like the most complete team in the tournament due to having the deepest squad, elite attacking firepower led by player Kylian Mbappé and a level of defense that hasn’t had much trouble contending with their opponents. The chatbot also acknowledged how France has plenty of World Cup tournament experience and has several players on its squad that have already captured major trophy victories.

What I found most interesting about ChatGPT’s predictions was the two teams it picked as the biggest threats to France and the one team that it chose as a dark horse winner:

• Biggest threat - Spain: Spain is probably the team I'd least want to face. Their midfield control and attacking creativity make them dangerous, and they're peaking at the right time. Their quarterfinal against Belgium could easily feel like an early final.
• Biggest threat - Argentina: Argentina always has championship pedigree. As long as Lionel Messi is on the field, they're capable of winning any match. They also seem to thrive in tense knockout games.
• Dark horse - Norway: They weren't on many people's shortlists before the tournament, but knocking out Brazil changed that. If Erling Haaland catches fire, they have enough quality to beat anyone. Their biggest concern is reports that illness has affected several players ahead of the England match.

Gemini’s top pick for the winning team

To my surprise, Gemini didn’t stray away from its first prediction, as it chose Spain for this second go-round of 2026 World Cup predictions.

While it still mentioned France, Argentina and England as other top contenders (and also chose Norway and Morocco as dark horse contenders), Google’s chatbot ultimately stuck with Spain due to what it says is the team’s balance on both sides of the pitch.

Here are the other reasons it gave Spain the edge for its 2026 World Cup prediction once again:

• Defensive solidity: Spain has been incredibly disciplined at the back. They recently shut out a strong Portugal side 1-0 in the Round of 16 and easily handled Austria 3-0 in the Round of 32. Winning tournaments historically requires an ironclad defense, and Spain has proven they can secure clean sheets under pressure.
• Form and momentum: Coming off consecutive commanding wins without conceding a single goal gives them massive momentum as they prepare to face Belgium in the quarterfinals.
• Balanced attack: While some squads rely heavily on individual superstars to bail them out, Spain has demonstrated a cohesive, possession-based team dynamic that makes them very difficult to dispossess or counterattack against.

Perplexity’s choice for the ultimate victor

Perplexity did its proper research and emerged with the same prediction as ChatGPT: France. The chatbot pointed to Argentina, Spain and England as the closest contenders to also winning it all. The chatbot based its top championship pick on bookmakers’ odds at the time of this writing and what prediction markets were saying.

Here’s how Perplexity saw the quarterfinals bracket unfolding and additional reasoning for its final pick:

• How the bracket shapes things: The quarterfinals are: France vs Morocco, Spain vs Belgium, Norway vs England, and Argentina vs Switzerland. France, Spain, England and Argentina are all favored to advance from these ties, which would likely set up semifinals featuring some combination of those four.
• My reasoned pick: France has been dominant so far (outscoring opponents 14–2) and was already one of the pre‑tournament favorites, which is why their implied probability is the highest. Argentina, Spain and England all have realistic paths and enough quality that any could win if they hit form or get favorable in‑game breaks, so I’d treat France as a slight favorite rather than a heavy one.

The takeaway

So it looks like either Spain or France will be walking off the field as this year’s victors of the World Cup.

While I would love to see an upset cause everyone to go mad and produce a shocker of a final game between two unexpected teams, I’m sure the two teams that ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity mentioned among their predictions will be the most likely to end up in the championship game.

Now let’s see how all this current soccer…excuse me, fútbol madness unfolds.

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We've come a long way since ChatGPT first launched. From smarter and faster models to an overall more natural conversation, it's hard to believe the model was just launched a few years ago.

But approaches that made sense in 2022 simply don't work as well now. Today's ChatGPT is much better at maintaining context, reasoning through complex problems and collaborating over multiple back-and-forth messages. Yet many people are still using it the way they did years ago, missing out on some of its biggest improvements.

If your ChatGPT conversations haven't evolved, these are the five habits I'd leave behind.

1. Stop trying to write one perfect prompt

One of the biggest myths that refuses to die is that every ChatGPT conversation has to begin with a massive prompt containing every possible detail.

It doesn't, especially now that ChatGPT is better at understanding context. In fact, I've found I get better results by treating ChatGPT like a collaborator instead of a vending machine that spits out responses.

For the best results, start with a simple request, look at what it produces and then refine it together over a few follow-up messages. When you do this, the conversation actually becomes part of the creative process, and the final result is usually much stronger than trying to predict every requirement upfront.

2. Stop treating ChatGPT like a search engine

If you're only asking ChatGPT for quick facts with Google-style searches, you're barely scratching the surface.

Search engines are great for finding information and considering how much energy AI uses, it's good to keep using Google or favorite search engine for that. But ChatGPT shines when you need help thinking through information.

That means, instead of asking, "What's the best laptop under $1,000?"

Try asking: "Compare these three laptops under $1,000 for a journalism student who travels frequently. Explain the tradeoffs, recommend one and tell me what I'd be giving up by choosing it."

Or instead of requesting a definition, ask ChatGPT to compare ideas, explain why experts disagree or summarize multiple viewpoints before making a recommendation. The more you ask it to analyze and synthesize, the more valuable it becomes.

3. Don't ignore Memory if it fits your workflow

One feature I think many people overlook is Memory. When enabled, ChatGPT can remember details like your writing style, recurring projects or personal preferences, so you don't have to repeat the same instructions every time you start a conversation.

For example, if you regularly ask ChatGPT to write in a conversational style or help with the same ongoing project, Memory can save a surprising amount of time.

Of course, it's not for everyone. If you'd rather every conversation start fresh, you can turn Memory off or manage exactly what ChatGPT remembers. The important thing is knowing the feature exists and deciding whether it makes sense for how you use ChatGPT.

4. Don't settle for the first answer

One of the best prompts I use comes after ChatGPT has already answered. Instead of copying the first response, I'll ask things like: "Critique your own answer." Or, "What's missing?"

In most cases, the first response is often just a starting point. Some of my favorite ChatGPT conversations have gone through five or six rounds of refinement before I was happy with the result.

5. Stop using the same ChatGPT tool for every task

Many people still think of ChatGPT as one AI assistant. In reality, it's become a collection of specialized tools.

If I'm researching a complicated topic, I'll use Deep Research. If I'm solving a difficult reasoning problem, I'll choose a reasoning-focused model. If I need an illustration or concept image, I'll switch to image generation. For long-term projects, I'll organize everything inside Projects instead of starting over from scratch every time.

Choosing the right capability for the job often makes a bigger difference than rewriting your prompt another dozen times.

ChatGPT has changed, so should your approach

The biggest change is that ChatGPT has become much more of a collaborator. But for that reason, the habits that worked during ChatGPT's first year aren't necessarily the ones that produce the best results today. Instead of chasing the perfect prompt, think of ChatGPT as a partner you can brainstorm with, challenge, refine and revisit over time.

Once you make that shift, you'll probably find yourself spending less time fighting the AI and more time getting exactly what you need.

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Most of today's AI assistants can use at least some customer conversations to improve future models, although the rules vary dramatically depending on which service you're using, whether you have a personal or business account, and which privacy settings you've enabled.

After reading about Google's latest changes around Search and AI training, I decided to spend some time checking the privacy controls for every major AI chatbot I use regularly.

I wanted to know exactly which companies actually make it easy to control how your data is used. I did the work so you don't have to — here's how they actually compare.

Not every AI company plays by the same rules

It's tempting to believe that all chatbots have similar privacy rules considering how similar they all seem. But behind the scenes, they're collecting and handling your data in very different ways.

Some make it easy to opt out of having conversations used to improve AI models. Others bury the controls several menus deep. And in some cases, there isn't a meaningful opt-out at all.

After comparing ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI and Grok, one thing became obvious: there is no industry standard for AI privacy.

ChatGPT: The most straightforward

The biggest surprise for me was ChatGPT. I was not expecting the settings to be as easy to understand. Quite the contrary, I expected the settings to be buried somewhere inside a privacy dashboard. Instead, they're right where most people would think to look.

Open Settings > Data Controls and you'll see a switch labeled "Improve the model for everyone."

Turn it off, and OpenAI says your future conversations won't be used to improve its models.

You can also use Temporary Chat, which doesn't save conversations to your history or use them for model training.

It took less than a minute to change. Whether you're comfortable sharing conversations or not, I appreciated how straightforward the process was.

Google Gemini: Transparent, but with a tradeoff

Google's controls weren't especially difficult to find either. Gemini Apps Activity lets you decide whether your conversations are stored and used according to Google's policies.

The catch is that disabling activity also changes how Gemini works. You'll lose saved chat history, and some personalized experiences disappear along with it. That's not necessarily a bad tradeoff, just something you'll have to weigh before making the switch.

As mentioned, Google recently confirmed that some Search interactions — including uploads used with AI-powered Search features, may contribute to improving its AI systems unless you disable the relevant activity settings.

Claude: Clear controls, with some fine print worth reading

Anthropic introduced a training opt-in for its consumer Claude products (Free, Pro and Max) in August 2025. Users were asked to decide whether their conversations could be used to improve future models, with a deadline to make their choice.

The setting lives under Settings > Privacy, where you'll find a toggle labeled "Improve Claude for everyone." Turn it off and Anthropic says your future conversations won't be used for model training.

Like ChatGPT, the change is forward-looking — it doesn't pull your data out of models that have already been trained. And if you leave the toggle on, Anthropic's retention period for that data extends from 30 days to up to five years.

There's also an Incognito mode, accessible via a ghost icon in the interface. Incognito conversations aren't used for training regardless of your main toggle setting, which is a useful option for one-off sensitive queries.

One thing worth noting: Anthropic's privacy policy includes a carve-out for conversations flagged by its safety classifiers. Even if you've opted out, flagged content may still be used to improve Anthropic's internal trust and safety systems. The policy doesn't define exactly what triggers a flag or commit to notifying users when one occurs.

Business and API users operate under separate commercial terms, and their data isn't used for model training by default.

Microsoft Copilot: It depends on which product you're using

Microsoft was the hardest to summarize because the answer changes depending on where you're using AI.

For the consumer Copilot experience (used with a personal Microsoft account), Microsoft does use conversation data — including voice interactions and uploaded files' context — to train its AI models by default.

However, an opt-out exists. On copilot.com or the desktop app, go to your profile icon > your profile name > Privacy >Training on conversation activity.

On mobile, the path is Menu > profile icon > Account > Privacy > Training on conversation activity. Opting out excludes your future conversations from model training.

One detail that separates Microsoft from the pack is that even if you don't opt out, Microsoft says personal identifiers are anonymized before data is used for training. Uploaded files themselves are never used for training and are deleted after 30 days.

For Microsoft 365 Copilot used through a work or school account, the picture is much cleaner. Microsoft explicitly states that enterprise data is not used to train its foundation AI models. Your organization's IT administrator controls the relevant settings, and users in those environments won't even see a training toggle.

The gap between these two experiences is significant because a personal user who doesn't dig into settings is opted in by default. An enterprise user is protected by contract. If you're using Copilot casually with a personal account, it's worth the two minutes to check.

Meta AI: No simple opt-out for most users

Meta AI is where the comparison gets uncomfortable. Unlike every other service on this list, Meta doesn't offer U.S. users a simple toggle to opt out of AI training. Your public posts, comments, captions and interactions with Meta AI across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp can all be used to train Meta's generative AI models.

EU and UK users have stronger protections, they can submit a formal objection through Meta's Privacy Center under GDPR rights, and Meta is required to review it.

But for users in the United States, the only available option is a third-party information form designed for cases where your personal data appeared in an AI-generated response. Meta doesn't guarantee it will honor these requests.

There's also no way to submit an opt-out request specifically for Meta AI interactions on WhatsApp. Meta says private messages aren't used for training, but any conversation you have directly with Meta AI can be.

Making your accounts private reduces your exposure, since Meta says it doesn't scrape private posts. But that's a blunt instrument, it changes your entire social media experience to address an AI training concern.

To make matters more complex, as of late 2025 Meta began using AI chat interactions for ad targeting across its platforms, with no opt-out available for that specific use.

Grok: An opt-out exists, but the scope is wider than you'd expect

Grok, built by xAI and integrated into X (formerly Twitter), does offer a training opt-out, but the situation is more complicated than it first appears because there are actually two separate data flows to manage.

First, there's your Grok conversation data. You can disable training use by going to Settings > Data Controls within Grok and turning off the relevant toggle. xAI has confirmed that once disabled, your future chats won't be used for model training.

Second, there's your X platform data. By default, your public posts, likes and interactions on X are also used to train Grok, regardless if you've ever opened the chatbot. To disable this, go to Settings and Privacy > Privacy and Safety on X and find the Grok data-sharing section.

Both settings need to be turned off separately. Disabling one doesn't affect the other.

That dual structure is the key difference between Grok and standalone chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude. Those services only train on what you tell them directly. Grok can train on everything you've ever posted publicly on X, and opting out doesn't retroactively remove data that's already been collected.

Grok also offers a Private Chat mode, where conversations aren't saved and are deleted within about 30 days, similar to incognito features on other platforms. But the broader X data pipeline makes the overall privacy picture murkier than the conversation-level toggle alone would suggest.

What I learned

At one end, ChatGPT and Claude offer clear, easy-to-find toggles that take under a minute to change. Google is similarly accessible but comes with a functional tradeoff. Microsoft splits the difference depending on whether you're a personal or enterprise user.

At the other end, Meta offers U.S. users no meaningful conversation-level opt-out, and Grok requires managing two separate settings across two different interfaces to fully limit your exposure.

As AI becomes part of everyday life, it's important to really understand the privacy settings. Choosing a chatbot may involve more than deciding which one writes the best email or creates the best image and come down to a much simpler question: Which company do you trust with your conversations and how hard do they make you work to answer that for yourself?

Let me know in the comments which chatbot you prefer and why.

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Being a gamer right now feels like living in a constant loop of “We’re so back” and “It’s so over.”

One minute, I’m hyped over a massive game announcement or incredible review scores. The next, my timeline is flooded with studio closures, mass layoffs, and hardware price hikes that instantly kill the mood.

The latest gut punch is Sony’s declaration that PlayStation will officially abandon physical game discs starting in January 2028. As a fan who still vividly remembers booting up my original PS1 back in ‘97, this one is a heartbreaker.

I’m not giving up my favorite hobby, but I needed to figure out how to actually prepare for an all-digital console space. I asked ChatGPT to help me strategize my next moves, and its advice ended up being surprisingly practical.

Figuring out the best ways to prepare for a disc-less gaming future

With the survivability of my gaming hobby in mind, I inquired about how to maintain it while prepping myself for PlayStation’s non-physical future with this prompt: “Now that PlayStation has announced its plans to stop selling physical discs for its games starting in January 2028, what options should I consider now if I want to continue my video gaming hobby?”

Right off the bat, ChatGPT advised me to stick with the PlayStation gaming brand and embrace its digital future. The pros it mentioned included still getting access to every Sony exclusive (which will include the PS5’s 1st-party single-player games) and staying in the ecosystem that houses my friends list, trophies & saves.

The cons it mentioned were sticking with the next PlayStation whilst not being able to borrow other people’s games or resell my games since they’ll all be digital, being dependent on PlayStation’s digital storefront * licensing for my purchases and dealing with game pricing that will largely be controlled by Sony (who’s sales don’t measure up as much in comparison to all those amazing Steam sales periods).

I already know I’m going to keep a PlayStation console in my gaming rotation, but I also know that I’ll have other means of hardware to negate the gut punch of PlayStation’s all-digital gaming initiative. Here are the three best options ChatGPT told me to consider to combat that disheartening announcement:

• Build a gaming PC (the option I'd look at hardest): This is probably the strongest long-term investment. Benefits include multiple storefronts instead of one, such as Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, Humble Bundle and the Microsoft Store. There are huge discounts throughout the year, better game preservation, backward compatibility that often spans decades, mods, emulation for older systems (where legally appropriate) and access to Xbox games and many PlayStation games that eventually arrive on PC. Instead of depending on a single company's ecosystem, you'd have far more flexibility.
• Become a collector before 2028: If physical ownership matters to you, buy the PS5 games you truly love before discs disappear and focus on timeless games rather than everything. Imagine owning your favorite complete JRPG collections, retro game compilations and essential PlayStation exclusives. Those libraries aren't suddenly invalidated in 2028. Sony specifically said existing physical releases are unaffected.
• Put more emphasis on Nintendo: Nintendo still strongly supports physical media today. If that continues with future hardware, it could become the last major console ecosystem where collecting physical games remains a core part of the experience. Of course, no company has promised that it will last forever.

Getting into the PC market is an especially expensive endeavor right now, but the many benefits that come with adopting that gaming platform outweigh the high asking price. I’ve been collecting my favorite physical games over the years and am planning to keep my PS5 Pro with the disc drive to continue playing them.

And I’m definitely going to add a Switch 2 to my gaming hardware lineup, so I’ll be able to bask in its strong first-party lineup full of physical cartridges. My Xbox Series X also has a bunch of physical discs attached to it, so I’m covered when it comes to enjoying the big three’s gaming libraries.

Final thoughts

Keeping my PS5 Pro with its disc drive through the end of this current gaming generation, continuing to purchase physical copies of my favorite games on that console, gradually investing in a capable gaming PC and picking up a Switch 2 to enjoy its lineup of exclusives are the best ways to go.

ChatGPT pushed me toward those methods to make sure I maximize my game preservation, lower my software costs over time, get access to a wider range of games and be less dependent on a single company’s policies.

The chatbot’s final statement on the matter summed up my exact sentiments about the situation: Ironically, Sony's announcement may end up pushing many dedicated PlayStation fans toward PC—not because they dislike PlayStation games, but because they want more control over how they buy, keep, and play the games they love.

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I've tested hundreds of AI prompts over the past couple of years, and one pattern keeps coming up: when ChatGPT gives me a disappointing answer, it's usually because it guessed what I meant instead of asking what I actually wanted. This is true for every ChatGPT model I've ever used. Funny, how with every new, smarter, faster upgrade, this issue remains.

Although I realize part of the issue could be on me leaving context out, sometimes it just feels obvious. If the AI could just "get it" and fill in the gaps, than the problem would be solved. I don't mean assume, I mean, truly understand.

Due to this issue, I recently started adding one simple sentence to nearly every prompt I write. It doesn't make ChatGPT smarter, but it does make it far less likely to head off in the wrong direction. Better yet, it works just as well in Claude, Gemini and most other AI chatbots I've tried.

The one sentence I keep using

Here's the line I now add whenever I'm working on something important:

Before answering, ask me any clarifying questions you need. If you already have enough information, answer immediately and explain any assumptions you're making.

That's it. Instead of trying to read my mind, the AI pauses to figure out what I'm actually trying to accomplish. Sometimes it asks one question, but I actually prefer it when it asks more. Claude often does this naturally, which makes me hit my token limit faster. With this prompt, I'm in control.

The result is that I spend far less time correcting responses after the fact. It's kind of like helping a friend narrow down where to go out for dinner. If you say "I'm hungry, let's go eat," your friend may choose the closest pizza place. Chatbots are similar. They may pick up what you've shared in conversations based on Memory or Personal Intelligence, but the point is, AI needs context.

Just as you might say, "I'm craving Chinese food," so your friend then rattles off a few nearby restaurants.

Why it works

Chatbots or large language models (LLMS) are designed to predict the most likely next words based on the information you provide. They assume patterns. When key details are missing, they don't know they're missing, they simply make their best guess.

That means, if you ask: "Help me write an email."

The AI has to invent things like: Who you're emailing, why you're writing, how formal it should sound or how long the email should be.

Sometimes it guesses correctly and as you know, sometimes it doesn't. But giving the chatbot permission to ask questions first changes the conversation from "guess what I mean" to "help me figure out the best answer."

I tried it on everyday prompts

To see whether this really made a difference, I started adding the sentence to prompts I use regularly.

For example, normally I'd write something like: "Help me plan a vacation."

Without any context, the AI has to guess almost everything. Is she taking her kids? Does she want to go overseas or is this a weekend trip?

But that extra sentence makes all the difference, it immediately asked: Where are you traveling from? What's your budget? Are you traveling with children? Do you prefer beaches, cities or national parks?

Those questions led to a much more useful itinerary than a generic list of popular destinations.

The same thing goes for rewriting an email. I often use ChatGPT to polish emails before sending them, particularly for tone. Instead of immediately rewriting my draft, it asked whether I wanted the tone to be more professional, friendlier or more persuasive.

That one question completely changed the final result, and probably saved me from asking for another rewrite afterward.

Just think how useful it could be to add this sentence when asking AI for things like a workout plan, deciding what to make for dinner or even help with a major project.

The trick is knowing when not to use it

There is one downside. If you add this sentence to every single prompt, even simple ones, the chatbot can slow things down by asking unnecessary questions.

For example, if you're asking: "What's the capital of Portugal?"

You don't need a follow-up interview. That's why I slightly tweaked my version after a few days.

Now I use this instead: Before answering, ask up to three clarifying questions only if they're necessary to avoid making incorrect assumptions. Otherwise, answer immediately and mention any assumptions you made.

That small adjustment keeps conversations moving while still preventing the AI from filling in important blanks.

A prompt worth saving

I've written many useful prompts, but what I like about this one is that it's simple enough to remember that you can make it a habit.

I've found that it works best for anything with multiple possible answers such as writing, travel planning, career advice, meal plans, coding projects or creative brainstorming. Instead of forcing the AI to guess, you're inviting it to have a conversation first.

After using it for the past week, I've noticed that I'm spending less time rewriting prompts and more time using the answers. The AI didn't suddenly become more intelligent, it just stopped assuming it knew what I wanted.

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