Which generative AI tool for your task?
People often ask, which AI tool should I use to do my task? This aims to help.

by Nicole Hennig

Tasks in this document
In this document, I offer suggestions about which generative AI tools to begin with for each task.
I don't aim to be comprehensive (there are far too many tools available), but just to suggest some starting points.
1. Search and summarize web results
Language model + search results = more current information, less hallucination
Start with these:
  • Perplexity
  • Google Gemini
  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
Things to know
Most AI models can search the web and summarize the results.
They link to the sources so you can easily find the most relevant websites for your search.
  • Claude now has web search in both free and paid versions.
2. Summarize & ask questions of large documents
Work with documents you upload.
Start with this:
  • Google Gemini
    1 million tokens.
    (Gemini offers 2 million tokens for developers in the API).
Others:
  • ChatGPT free (limited)
  • ChatGPT Plus
  • Claude (free)- amount varies based on demand
  • Claude (pro)- 5x more than the free version
Context windows compared
Context window = total input and output of a single conversation.
Plus any documents you upload to a conversation.
3. Work with up to 50 of your own documents at once
Create study guides, outlines, summaries, FAQ, timeline, and "Audio Overview" from a set of your own documents.
Use:
  • Google's NotebookLM
  • Perplexity Spaces
Things to know:
  • Steven Johnson explains that "if you have the right to use [the material] under copyright, you can use it inside of Notebook.” (Because you are the only one who can see it).
  • NotebookLM's Audio Overview will generate a "podcast" conversation between two voices, based on your documents.
  • In Perplexity Spaces, you can search across both uploaded files and web content simultaneously. You can give it specific AI instructions and personas. You can opt out of training in your settings. See A Student's Guide to Using Perplexity Spaces.
4. Analyze your data
Upload a .csv file, summarize the contents, ask questions of it, generate tables and graphs, convert it to HTML/CSS & more.
Start with these:
(limited in free accounts, use paid accounts if possible)
  • Google Gemini
  • Claude
Others:
  • ChatGPT
  • Microsoft Copilot (if logged into work or school account)
Things to know
  • Free ChatGPT has very limited access to data analysis. You'll run out quickly and have to come back the next day.
  • Gemini Advanced has the largest context window of models available today. So you can work with a large amount of data at once.
5. Get help with coding
Generate code, test the code, evaluate, change and improve code. Download the result.
Start with these:
  • Gemini 2.5 Pro
  • Claude Sonnet 4 (in free version)
  • Claude Opus 4.1 (in paid versions)
  • GPT 5 in the paid versions of ChatGPT
Things to know:
  • Claude and Google Gemini are both considered to be very capable with coding.
6. Share a link to your conversation
Send a language model's output to others. Handy for demonstrations or showing your work.
These can share a conversation:
(Look for a share button)
  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  • Perplexity
  • Gemini
Limited sharing:
  • Copilot - you can share prompts within your organization in university or corporate accounts
  • Meta - you can share a results as a post within your Meta accounts
Things to know:
  • In ChatGPT you can share anonymously or with your name included, see Shared links FAQ from OpenAI.
7. Create custom chatbots
Create a chatbot that converses in a style of your choosing and uses your own prompt for a particular purpose.
Start with this:
  • ChatGPT Plus ($) "GPTs"
Free chatbot builders
Paid versions
Things to know:
  • Free ChatGPT accounts can use custom GPTs, but not create them. (same with Gemini)
  • GPTs from OpenAI and bots from Poe allow you to upload specific documents for the GPT to use to answer questions.
  • All of these chatbots (or GPTs) require the user to sign in to at least a free account to use them.
  • There are many other tools for creating chatbots based on genAI, and with those you can embed them into your website and not require users to log in to use them.
8. Create public "pages"
A feature of Perplexity that allows you to curate a set of answers with links to sources.
Use:
Things to know:
  • You can turn your research into publicly shareable content, with links to sources.
  • You can control the layout, add sections, add images.
  • You can select your target audience.
9. Describe images with computer vision
Upload an image:
the model can describe it, suggest its context, suggest visual improvements & more.
Start with these:
  • Gemini
  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
Others:
  • Microsoft Copilot
  • Grok
Generating alt text for images
A useful prompt:
Please look up best practices for alt text and offer three alternatives for this image.
Things to know
  • Some models will refuse to identify people in images (well-known people), and others will go ahead and identify them.
10. Talk with a voice assistant in the mobile app
Talk out loud to the model and it talks back to you.
Use:
  • ChatGPT Plus
  • Claude
  • Perplexity
Others:
  • ChatGPT free
  • Copilot (mobile app)
  • Gemini (mobile app)
Things to know about Voice Mode in ChatGPT:
  • Choose from various voices in the settings.
  • You can interrupt it.
11. Generate images
Generate images in different styles based on text that you input, or an image that you upload.
Things to know
  • Free ChatGPT is limited to 3 (slow) image generations per day, but sometimes you can generate more, depending on how busy their servers are.
  • If you have ChatGPT Plus, you can also generate images in sora.com.
  • Midjourney is considered the most capable model, but it's not free. Plans start at $10/month).
  • Claude does not offer image generation.
12. Generate videos
Start with these for text-to-video or image-to-video:
  • unknown link
Others in this category:
Start with these for video avatars:
Things to know
  • Most of these aren't free, but many have free trials.
  • Veo 3 is the first Google model to generate videos with synchronized audio, including realistic dialogue, ambient sounds, and music.
  • Sora 2 is presented as a social sharing app in the style of TikTok. Its' free, but currently you need an invitation code from another user. Mobile app for iPhone or Android, also use on the web. Currently available only in U.S., Canada, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
  • Flow: AI-powered filmmaking with Veo 3 from Google (available in $249/mo plans)
  • Meta has announced MovieGen, but it's not live yet.
  • HeyGen can translate a video of a person talking to another language with lip-syncing to match the new language.
13. Generate voices
Generate spoken audio in different styles based on text that you input.
Start with this:
  • Eleven Labs
    Free version offers about 10 min of audio per month. Paid versions offer more and begin at $5/month.
Others:
Things to know
  • ElevenLabs voice generator can deliver human-like speech in 32 languages.
  • It offers text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, text to sound effects.
14. Generate music
Generate music in different styles based on text that you input.
Start with these:
Others:
Things to know:
  • If you are a paying subscriber to Suno, then you own the songs you generate. If you are using a free version of Suno, they retain ownership of the songs you generate, but you're allowed to use those songs for non-commercial purposes.
15. Understand privacy
These AI systems are made up of two parts:
  • the chat app
  • the model
The chat app can keep a history of your previous chats.
But the model only knows what's in its training, not everything you've asked in the past.
The chat app can optionally remember your previous chats or save certain facts about you (but only in the app, not for training future models).

See Memory FAQ. You can turn this on or off.
There is also an option to reference previous chats (optional).
"These models don't self-learn. The only time they get better is when the team behind them trains and releases a new version.
"Once trained, the model remains static and unchanged—sometimes for months or even years."
16. Privacy settings
These models don't train future models on your input by default:
  • Microsoft Copilot if logged in with your university account
  • NotebookLM from Google
For individual accounts on these models, you can turn off training in your settings:
  • ChatGPT
  • Perplexity
  • Gemini
  • Claude
Other models:
  • Meta AI
    They train on public posts you've made in Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. They don't train on your private posts or conversations. Opt out here and learn more here.
Things to know
Your input isn't used to train future models in these situations:
  • Enterprise, edu, & team versions of ChatGPT
  • Apps built on the API from OpenAI
Temporary chats in ChatGPT
You can start a Temporary Chat by tapping the version of ChatGPT you’re using at the top of the chatgpt.com and selecting Temporary chat.

These won’t be used to improve their models.
Created by Nicole Hennig
  • Date created: October 24, 2024
  • Last updated: November 12, 2025
Feel free to contact me with suggestions or corrections at [email protected].
My website: nicolehennig.com