The whole process starts when you give the AI a "prompt," which is just a fan­cy word for the ques­tion or instruc­tion you type in. The AI breaks down your prompt and uses its train­ing to cre­ate a response, word by word. This is dif­fer­ent from old­er chat­bots that could only give pre-pro­­grammed answers. These new­er AI chats can gen­er­ate com­plete­ly orig­i­nal text, mak­ing them use­ful for a wide range of tasks.

So, what can you actually do with it?

Peo­ple are using these tools for a lot more than just ask­ing triv­ia ques­tions. They have prac­ti­cal uses in work and dai­ly life.

For Writ­ing and Edit­ing:
This is one of the most com­mon uses. You can ask an AI chat to draft an email, write a blog post, or cre­ate social media updates. The key is to be spe­cif­ic. Don't just say, "Write an email." Instead, pro­vide con­text.

• Step 1: State the goal and audi­ence. For exam­ple: "Draft a pro­fes­sion­al but friend­ly email to my team."
• Step 2: Pro­vide the key infor­ma­tion. "Announce that the dead­line for the quar­ter­ly report is moved to this Fri­day. Men­tion that I appre­ci­ate their hard work."
• Step 3: Review and edit. The AI will give you a sol­id first draft. Your job is to read it, tweak the tone to make it sound like you, and check that all the details are cor­rect. You can also paste your own writ­ing and ask it to sug­gest improve­ments or check for errors.

For Learn­ing and Under­stand­ing:
AI chat can be a per­son­al tutor that's avail­able any­time. If you're strug­gling with a com­plex top­ic, you can ask it to explain things in sim­ple terms.

• Exam­ple: You could ask, "Explain what a blockchain is, but act as if you're explain­ing it to a 10-year-old." The AI will break down the con­cept with­out the jar­gon.
• Fol­low-up ques­tions: You can then con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion. "Okay, so how does that make it secure?" or "What's an exam­ple of some­thing that uses a blockchain?" This back-and-forth makes learn­ing inter­ac­tive.

For Brain­storm­ing and Plan­ning:
When you're stuck for ideas, an AI chat can be a use­ful part­ner. You can use it to gen­er­ate ideas for any­thing from a busi­ness name to a vaca­tion itin­er­ary.

• How to do it: Just describe what you need. "Give me 10 ideas for a healthy week­night din­ner that takes less than 30 min­utes to cook." Or, "Cre­ate a 4‑day trav­el plan for a trip to Kyoto, focus­ing on tem­ples and food."
• Refin­ing the results: The first list of ideas might be gener­ic. You can make it bet­ter by adding more details. "Okay, for the Kyoto trip, I'm a veg­e­tar­i­an and I'm trav­el­ing on a bud­get. Can you update the plan?"

For Tech­ni­cal Tasks like Cod­ing:
Many pro­gram­mers use AI chat to help them work faster. It can write sim­ple scripts, explain what a piece of code does, or help find bugs.

• Exam­ple: A devel­op­er can paste a func­tion that isn't work­ing and ask, "This Python code is giv­ing me an error. Can you spot the prob­lem?" The AI will often find the mis­take, like a typo or a log­ic error, and sug­gest a fix.

Which AI Chat Should You Use?

There are sev­er­al major play­ers in this space, and each has slight­ly dif­fer­ent strengths.

• Chat­G­PT (from Ope­nAI): This is the one that start­ed the recent boom and is still con­sid­ered a great all-around per­former. It's known for being ver­sa­tile and good at a wide range of tasks from cre­ative writ­ing to answer­ing com­plex ques­tions.
• Gem­i­ni (from Google): Gemini's big advan­tage is its inte­gra­tion with Google's oth­er prod­ucts and its abil­i­ty to pull real-time infor­ma­tion from the inter­net. This can make it more use­ful for ques­tions about cur­rent events.
• Claude (from Anthrop­ic): Claude is often praised for hav­ing a more nat­ur­al, human-like con­ver­sa­tion­al style and is designed with a focus on safe­ty. It's par­tic­u­lar­ly good at sum­ma­riz­ing long doc­u­ments and han­dling tasks that require a nuanced under­stand­ing of text.

There are oth­ers too, like Microsoft's Copi­lot (which uses OpenAI's tech­nol­o­gy) and Per­plex­i­ty, which focus­es on pro­vid­ing answers with direct sources. The best one often depends on what you need it for. Many offer free ver­sions, so you can try them out to see which one you pre­fer.

Be Careful: The Things You Need to Watch Out For

These tools are use­ful, but they are not per­fect. It is very impor­tant to under­stand their lim­i­ta­tions to use them respon­si­bly.

1. They Can Be Con­fi­dent­ly Wrong (Hal­lu­ci­na­tions)
This is the biggest issue. AI mod­els can "hal­lu­ci­nate," which means they make up infor­ma­tion that sounds plau­si­ble but is com­plete­ly false. They might invent facts, cre­ate fake quotes, or even cite court cas­es that don't exist. This hap­pens because the AI is designed to gen­er­ate a response that fits the pat­tern of its train­ing data; it doesn't have a con­cept of truth.

• What to do: Always, always dou­ble-check any impor­tant infor­ma­tion the AI gives you. If it pro­vides a sta­tis­tic, a his­tor­i­cal fact, or a legal prece­dent, find a reli­able source to ver­i­fy it. Do not trust it blind­ly, espe­cial­ly for pro­fes­sion­al or aca­d­e­m­ic work.

2. Bias is a Real Prob­lem
AI mod­els learn from the vast amount of text on the inter­net, which was writ­ten by humans and con­tains human bias­es. As a result, the AI's respons­es can reflect and some­times even ampli­fy these bias­es relat­ed to gen­der, race, and oth­er stereo­types. For exam­ple, a mod­el might asso­ciate cer­tain jobs with spe­cif­ic gen­ders.

• What to do: Be aware of this when you use these tools. Ques­tion the out­put and con­sid­er if it's rein­forc­ing a stereo­type. Devel­op­ers are work­ing to reduce bias, but it's a com­plex prob­lem that hasn't been solved.

3. Pri­va­cy Con­cerns
What you type into a pub­lic AI chat is not always pri­vate. The com­pa­nies that run these ser­vices often use your con­ver­sa­tions to fur­ther train their mod­els. While some ser­vices state they de-iden­ti­­fy data, human review­ers might still see your chats. There have also been bugs and data breach­es that exposed user con­ver­sa­tions.

• What to do: Nev­er put sen­si­tive per­son­al infor­ma­tion into an AI chat. This includes your address, finan­cial infor­ma­tion, con­fi­den­tial work data, or pri­vate details about your life. Many ser­vices now have set­tings where you can opt out of hav­ing your data used for train­ing, and you should use them.

4. Lack of Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence
AI chats can mim­ic con­ver­sa­tion, but they don't have feel­ings, empa­thy, or real under­stand­ing. Their respons­es can some­times be tone-deaf or inap­pro­pri­ate in sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tions. Rely­ing on them for seri­ous per­son­al advice is risky. There's even a phe­nom­e­non being dis­cussed called "chat­bot psy­chosis," where some indi­vid­u­als may devel­op delu­sions from their inter­ac­tions with AI.

• What to do: Use these tools for tasks and infor­ma­tion, not for gen­uine emo­tion­al con­nec­tion or ther­a­py. When a sit­u­a­tion requires empa­thy and under­stand­ing, talk­ing to a real per­son is always bet­ter.