That’s only been about two years Innovative artificial intelligence (AI) became mainstream as a new paradigm for productivity, but here we are — it’s everywhere.
I test AI tools as part of my job. I’ll dig deeper into any AI-related technology and see what I can do. Many of you have read my ongoing gunfight comparisons AI for programming And AI content checkeramong other types of tools.
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But it’s about using AI in a rigorous lab environment to provide test results to ZDNET readers. Like many of you, I have also started using AI to enhance my workflow and increase my productivity.
I wear many hats; I run a small business with my wife, who also has her own business where I am a tech and designer. I also work with several industry groups. I have a fairly popular security software product for WordPress users. And I’m constantly working on projects, from 3D printing optimal charging towers to trying to create AI-powered Etsy storecompose and publish music and Use AI for help with some marketing activities.
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I should note that I have never used AI to create my core content. No articles, songs or social media posts are written using AI. The product of my work is mine. But I use AI to help me deal with other aspects of my workload.
I’m particularly interested in how AI can support programming, how AI can support graphics operations, and how AI can support video production.
1. ChatGPT Plus – $20/month
Speaking of AI and programming, it has basically doubled my programming output. I use AI to help me program general knowledge. I talked about it in depth in Article 25 tipsbut the core benefit is received ChatGPT to write code for published APIs, so I don’t have to spend time searching for code examples and trying to reverse engineer comments on various programming boards.
And yes, I mentioned ChatGPT. Except confusedbasically using ChatGPT, no other AI I tested could reliably help me with the actual code I was working on for some real world project. ChatGPT did it.
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In fact, that’s a big reason why I pay $20/month for ChatGPT Plus. Sure, I’ve signed up and paid for a few other AIs just to test them out, but ChatGPT Plus is the only chatbot that I’ve found consistently useful enough that I keep it as a frequently used tool.
I use ChatGPT for a variety of research tasks, sometimes throwing math problems into it as well as all sorts of other questions and problems I’m working on. While I would never consider its output an unquestionable source of truth, I found ChatGPT to be a very useful information panel, essentially more than a quick Google search.
As for why I pay for ChatGPT Plus and not Google Geminipro version of: it’s due to programming. I have done tangible tests and know that it works much better. I signed up and paid for Gemini Advanced for several months but it didn’t deliver the value I got with ChatGPT. I also broke it really hard. Ouch.
To be fair, I’ve outlined five ways out of one AI can help me in Gmail. If Gemini Advanced can do these reliably, I’ll sign up again in a heartbeat. But I don’t need a summary of the current email I’m reading, and I certainly don’t need it to write a friendlier or more professional version of whatever I’m writing.
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I also tried Notion AI but found the company’s pricing policy immediately caused a stir. 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 had to pay an additional $240. Notion bills annually and won’t let you subscribe to AI features on just one account.
I tried to ask the company for a refund and decided to continue using ChatGPT.
2. Mid-cruise – $10/month
Both the free and Plus versions of ChatGPT have access to DALL-E 3, the integrated version AI engine generates text into images. You get more images for a certain amount of time with the Plus version, but otherwise there’s no real difference between the free and Plus versions.
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I’ve had a lot of fun experiences with the DALL-E 3, including using it to create Strangely beautiful images of every state in America.
When I compared DALL-E and Midjourney, I did the same in two comprehensive inspectionThe results are quite close. Both Midjourney and DALL-E 3 did very well with most images and failed with some.
But even though I get the DALL-E 3 for ChatGPT Plus for $20/month, I still have to pay an additional $10/month for Midjourney. Why?
Some answers are subjective. I like a lot of the images I got with Midjourney. Midjourney also allows you to describe the artist’s style and allows you to make many stylistic choices. DALL-E 3, perhaps due to the protections imposed by OpenAI, doesn’t have much of a choice. That said, I’ve shown the way DALL-E blatantly deleted images of Snoopy and Jack Skellingtonso those railings are a bit porous.
But I also have two specific and objective answers about why I pay for Midjourney. First, since creating images is so subjective, it’s great to have a variety of tools when looking for a representation of what you have in mind. I will try different reminders and even the same reminders with both tools and choose the ones that work best.
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Second, every month I create a promotional image for my wife’s online business. She has an e-commerce website that supports a popular hobby. Every month, on her very active Facebook group, she offers a craft theme for her users. I create an image for that topic. Over the months, I’ve found that Midjourney does a much better job of creating images that incorporate elements of interest than the DALL-E 3.
Because Midjourney has reduced the two to three hour work time of pushing pixels in Photoshop to create those images down to about 10 minutes, for me, just on that project, it worth $10/month.
Photoshop Generative Fill – Honorable mention
In the title of this article, I said that I pay for two AI tools. That’s right. I pay for Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite in addition to ChatGPT Plus and Midjourney. But since I already use and pay for Creative Cloud and before that Photoshop, since before compositing, I don’t count it in my list of AI tools.
If Adobe removed Generative Fill tomorrow, I would still pay for Photoshop. To be clear, I don’t like paying for it. It’s expensive and the two-computer license limit is restrictive. But a few years ago I tried switching to Affinity Photo, which at the time was $50 (now $70). That one-time fee is roughly what I pay each month for Creative Cloud, so it has a lot of potential.
To be clear, Affinity Photo is a good app. But I’ve been using Photoshop since before Bill Clinton was president. To say I have Photoshop muscle memory is an understatement. It’s a product I use almost every day and has been around since before the Internet. Switching to another app, although I could do it if needed, slowed down my workflow significantly.
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So I don’t consider my monthly costs for Creative Cloud to be AI costs. That said, I found the generalization feature (and its many other AI tricks) very useful. I often use it with Midjourney and DALL-E 3.
What do you use?
Do you pay for any AI tools? Which ones, and why? Are there any AI tools you highly recommend I use that I haven’t mentioned? Please answer these questions and let us know what you think about AI subscriptions in the comments section below.
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