Start here How to start using AI: your first week

Before day one: pick one assistant

You need one tool to start. Pick whichever of these you've heard of, and stop there:

• ChatGPT. Its free plan includes text chats, search and projects.
• Claude. Its free plan includes chat on web, desktop and phone, web search and file creation.
• Gemini. It's Google's assistant, and a natural pick if your email and files are already with Google.

They do the same basic things. If you can't decide, our side by side comparison has the details. Choosing takes two minutes, and you can switch later.

Day 1: ask it to explain something

Pick something you've been meaning to understand. A term from a medical bill, how a mortgage escrow works, what your phone's storage settings mean.

Type it the way you'd ask a friend: "Explain what an escrow account is. I just bought my first house."

Then ask a follow-up. "Give me an example with numbers." The follow-up is where it gets useful.

Day 2: give it something you wrote

Paste in an email or a message you need to send, and ask for one change: shorter, friendlier, or more direct. Read the result. Ask for another change if it's off.

The habit to learn: it rarely nails it on the first try, and it gets close fast when you say what's wrong.

Day 3: hand it something long

Paste in something you don't want to read in full. A long email thread, a policy, the terms of a subscription. Ask: "What are the five things I need to know?" and "Is there anything here that costs me money?"

Then check one of its answers against the original. You'll see how well it reads, and you'll build the habit of checking.

Day 4: plan something

Give it a real plan to make: meals for the week on a budget, a packing list for a trip, the steps to switch phone carriers. Tell it your limits. "Four dinners, two people, no fish, under an hour each."

The more of your own situation you include, the better the plan.

Day 5: look something up, with sources

Ask a question where being right matters, like a product comparison or a rule. Ask it to search the web and show where the answer came from, then open one of the links.

This is also a good day to try Perplexity, a search assistant that links the pages its answers come from. Its free plan covers basic searches and 3 deeper Pro Searches a day.

What you'll know by the weekend

After five days you'll have a sense of three things:

1. What it's good at for you. For most people that's rewriting, summarizing and explaining.
2. Where it gets things wrong. Usually specific facts, numbers and anything recent. That's why you check.
3. Whether you hit a limit. If you never ran out of free usage, you don't need a paid plan yet.

What to add next

Add a second tool only when you have a job the chat assistant doesn't do well:

• Catching mistakes as you type, everywhere you write: a writing checker. See AI tools for writing.
• Recording and summarizing meetings: see meeting notes.
• Building a slide deck: see presentations.
• Editing video or making a voiceover: see video and voice.

Each of those has a free plan to try first. Our guide to what free AI plans really include lists the limits side by side.

Three rules that keep you out of trouble

• Check anything that matters. Names, numbers, dates, medical and legal points. The tool can be confidently wrong.
• Keep private things private. No passwords, account numbers or other people's personal details.
• Don't pay in the first week. Free plans exist so you can find out what you'd use.

Frequently asked questions