I was at checkout, $59 spa package, about to pay full price. I tabbed over to Grok and typed "coupon code for [The Spa]." It found one. Thirty seconds. $59 -> to $25 (50% off!!!)

While you can ask any ai to search for coupon codes, I've found that that's a Grok specialty, because Grok lives inside X and X is where people post coupon codes before they hit the newsletters.

These tools aren't necessarily always competing. They don't all do the same jobs well. The question isn't which AI is best. It's which AI for what.

ChatGPT: The Entry Point

OpenAI is Apple. Beautiful product, smooth experience, built to make you feel good about using it. ChatGPT is fast, friendly, and will answer almost anything without making you feel dumb for asking.

It's also the sycophancy capital of the AI world. Ask ChatGPT if your business idea is good. It will find a way to say yes. Ask if your email is well-written. Clear and compelling, it will say. Ask it to critique your business plan. It will spend two paragraphs on what's working before it mentions a single problem. The cost is real, but for most tasks you won't notice it.

Great all-rounder. Great entry point into this space. If you only use one tool, this is a reasonable choice.

How to test it: Show it something you made (email you sent, proposal you wrote) and ask it for its thoughts. If you take out names it will assume YOU received said email/proposal and will take your recipients perspective. It also gives you a sharp idea of what their AI will tell them about you.

Claude: A True Techie

Anthropic is Android. More control, less personality, better at anything with rules.

This is my go-to for anything technical. Coding, contracts, business plans, fixing something that broke. If there are rules governing what you're trying to do, Claude gets you there fast. I've used it to review lease agreements, to build software at Daedalus, to troubleshoot my slow ass computer. My lawyer and my accountant. (Not literally, but kind of literally.)

The difference is that Claude will tell you when something is wrong. Hand it a document with a problem in it and it finds the problem. It won't perform enthusiasm at you. That's the tool.

How to test it: Ask it to by your coach, not to do specific work for you (right away). Ask it to help you make your computer faster or your phone battery last longer.

Grok: Ear to the Street

Every AI can search the web. Only Grok lives inside X (I HATE calling it X).

That matters because Twitter moves faster than any news outlet and says things no journalist will print. When something breaks in crypto, in politics, in tech, the first real takes land on X. Grok gives you those takes, aggregated and analyzed, without the filter that sits between an event and a headline. Unvarnished. Sometimes wrong. Worth knowing about.

The misinformation risk is real. Take everything with salt. But there are insights on X that genuinely don't exist anywhere else.

Also, as stated above, I ask Grok for coupon codes before I check out anywhere. Almost always works.

How to test it: Search something happening right now and compare what you get to a Google/ChatGPT/Perplexity search.

Google AI Studio: The Lab

Best all-around image model available with an honestly hilarious name (nanobanana). I wish there were more quality choices for image generation. There aren't. Unless you're ready to get super technical, Google AI Studio is the place.

It's also a clean environment for experimentation. Pretty interface, forgiving if you're trying something for the first time. If you've been curious about what AI can actually do but don't know where to start without breaking anything, this is that place.

How to test it: Give it an image prompt, I used it for the banner of this article.

NotebookLM: The Knowledge Partner

This one is completely different from everything else on this list. It's not a chatbot.

You bring the content. You upload your documents, your articles, your research, your reports. NotebookLM becomes an expert on exactly that material. Not on the whole internet. On what you gave it.

I've thrown 800 pages of resources into NotebookLM. The flashcards are useful. What I actually use most is the podcast feature. Give it your source material and it generates a podcast, two hosts, real back-and-forth conversation, based entirely on what you uploaded. I've used it to digest research I didn't have time to read. Changed how I prepare for meetings.

Completely different use case than anything else here.

How to test it: Upload something you've been meaning to read. Ask it to make you a five-minute podcast.

Honorable Mention: Cursor

Cursor is technically a coding platform. That's what it says on the box. At Daedalus we use it to write proposals, build our website, and put together slide decks. We run Claude Opus inside it. Started as a coding tool and became part of the infrastructure for how we run the business.

It's a step up in complexity from everything else here. Not a starting point. But if you've gotten comfortable with the tools above and want to go deeper, Cursor is where a lot of professionals end up.

You don't need all five. But you probably need more than one.

Most people picked an AI when they first heard about AI, stuck with it, and assumed that's the category. It isn't. Pick the one that matches the job you've been doing wrong. Try it this week.