Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has been mainstream as a new paradigm for productivity for just over two years, but it’s now everywhere.
I test AI tools as part of my job. We’ll dig into just about every AI-related technology and see what it can do. Many of you have read my ongoing shootout comparing AI for programming vs. AI content checkers and other types of tools.
Related article: The best AI for coding in 2024 (and which AI you shouldn’t use)
But it’s about using AI in a rigorous lab environment to provide test results to ZDNET readers. Like many of you, I started using AI to enhance my workflow and increase productivity.
I wear a lot of hats. I run a small business with my wife, who also has her own business, where I am a technician and designer. I also work with a number of industry associations. We use a security software product that is fairly popular with WordPress users. And I’m constantly working on different projects, from 3D printing the ultimate charging tower to creating an AI-assisted Etsy store, composing and publishing music, and using AI to help with some of our marketing efforts. I’m here.
Related article: Day 7 of OpenAI makes ChatGPT finally easier to organize
Please note that we have never used AI to create our core content. No article, song, or social media post is written using AI. My work is mine. But I use AI to solve other aspects of my work.
I’m particularly interested in how AI can assist with programming, how AI can support graphics work, and how AI can support video production.
1.ChatGPT Plus – $20/month
When it comes to AI and programming, my programming output has essentially doubled. I use AI to help with general knowledge programming. As I detailed in my 25 Tips article, the main advantage is that ChatGPT allows you to write code for public APIs, so you don’t have to spend time searching for code examples or trying to reverse engineer comments on various programming boards. It’s no longer necessary. .
Yes, we also mentioned ChatGPT. With the exception of Perplexity, which basically uses ChatGPT, none of the other AIs I tested were reliably useful in the actual code I was working on in a real project. ChatGPT did.
Also: Perplexity Pro’s AI passed my coding test perfectly – but there’s a catch
In fact, that’s a big reason why I pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus. Of course, there are some other AIs I’ve signed up and paid to test, but ChatGPT Plus is the only chatbot I’ve found consistently useful and a tool I use regularly. It is maintained as.
I use ChatGPT for a lot of research tasks, sometimes asking math problems and all sorts of other questions and problems that I work with. While I by no means consider its output to be an unimpeachable source of truth, I find ChatGPT to be a much more useful sounding board than a simple Google search.
The reason I’m paying for ChatGPT Plus instead of the pro version of Google Gemini is because of the programming. I know it works much better because I did real tests. I signed up for Gemini Advanced and paid for it for a few months, but I didn’t get the value I got with ChatGPT. I also broke it pretty hard. Oops.
Now, to be fair, I’ve outlined five ways AI can help in Gmail. If Gemini Advanced could reliably do these things, I would sign up in a heartbeat. But I just don’t need to summarize the current email message I’m reading. And you certainly don’t need it to write a friendlier or more professional version of what you’re currently writing.
Also: We tested 9 AI content detectors – and these two correctly identified AI text every time
I also tried Notion AI and found the company’s pricing policies to be effective right away. We have two Notion subscriptions, one for me and one for my wife. So when I decided to sign up for Notion AI, the next thing I knew, I was charged an additional $240. Notion is billed annually and you cannot sign up for AI features with just one account.
I managed to get the company to refund the amount and decided to continue using ChatGPT.
2. Mid-Journey – $10/month
Both the free and Plus versions of ChatGPT include access to DALL-E 3, an integrated text-to-image generation AI tool. The Plus version lets you get more photos in a given period of time, but otherwise there are no real differences between the free and Plus versions.
Related article: Photoshop vs. Midjourney vs. DALL-E 3: Only one AI image generator passed my five tests
I had a lot of fun experimenting with the DALL-E 3, including producing some wonderfully bizarre images of each state in the United States.
We compared DALL-E and Midjourney in two comprehensive tests and the results were very close. Both Midjourney and DALL-E 3 did a great job with most of the images, but failed with a few.
However, even though you can get DALL-E 3 for the $20/month ChatGPT Plus fee, you pay an additional $10/month for Midjourney. why?
Some of the answers are subjective. I like a lot of the images from Midjourney. Midjourney also lets you describe an artist’s style and imitate a huge selection of styles. DALL-E 3 doesn’t have as many options, likely due to the guardrails imposed by OpenAI. That said, those guardrails are a bit porous now that DALL-E has shown how blatantly they swiped images of Snoopy and Jack Skellington.
But I have two concrete, objective answers to why you would pay for Midjourney. First, image generation is highly subjective, so it’s helpful to have a variety of tools if you want to express what’s in your head. Try different or the same prompts in both tools and go with what works best.
Related article: How to selectively modify Midjourney images to create artistic expressions
Then, every month, I create promotional images for my wife’s online business. She runs an e-commerce site that supports her popular hobby. Each month, she offers crafting themes to users in her very active Facebook group. Generate images to match the theme. Over the months, I’ve found that the Midjourney is much better at producing images that incorporate hobbyist elements than the DALL-E 3.
Midjourney cuts the 2-3 hours of pushing pixels in Photoshop to generate these images to about 10 minutes, so it’s worth paying $10 a month just for this project.
Photoshop Generative Fill – Honorable Mention
In the title of this article, I mentioned that I was paying for two AI tools. That’s true in a sense. In addition to ChatGPT Plus and Midjourney, you also pay for Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite. But I’ve been using and paying for Photoshop since Creative Cloud and before that, long before generative fill, so it’s not on my list of AI tools.
If Adobe removed generative fill tomorrow, I’d still pay for Photoshop. To be honest, I don’t like paying money. High cost and limited license limit of two computers. But a few years ago, I switched to Affinity Photo, which was $50 at the time (now $70). This one-time fee was about the same as what I pay monthly for Creative Cloud, so it had a lot of potential.
Let me be clear: Affinity Photo is a great application. But I’ve been using Photoshop since before Bill Clinton became president. It’s safe to say I have Photoshop muscle memory. It’s a product I use almost every day, and I’ve been using it since before the internet existed. Switching to another application slowed down my workflow significantly, although I could do so if I wanted.
Also: I use Photoshop’s AI tools every day – here are 5 top tips for best results
Therefore, I don’t consider my monthly Creative Cloud expenses to be an AI expense. That said, I think generative fill (and various other AI tricks) can be very useful. I often use it in conjunction with Mid Journey and Darui 3.
What do you use?
Would you pay for an AI tool? Which one and why? Are there any AI tools that I didn’t mention that you are highly recommended to use? Feel free to answer these questions. , let us know what you think about AI subscriptions in the comments section below.
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