Short, updated guide to which AI tool is best for you

Apple’s big AI announcement this week is cool but currently irrelevant to how you integrate AI with your PR work.

In contrast, other recent market changes in the last three months significantly impact you if you’re trying to decide which AI platform is best for you. Here’s a quick guide:

Premium at no cost to you is always best

Hands down, the best AI tool for you is whichever premium version your company will pay for. Any of the paid versions is way better than any of the free versions. And the differences between the paid versions don’t justify out-of-pocket expenses. (If you’re a PR leader, see my tips on enterprise options below).

Company not paying, but willing to invest in yourself?

If you’re the type who goes with the flow when it comes to tech, stick with the paid version of ChatGPT. FWIW, this is what I use. It has more features than anyone else, and it’s arguably the smartest and best.

Notice I said arguably. If you’re the type who likes to zig when others zag with tech, then try the paid version of Claude (version 3 Opus). This Stanford center rates it slightly ahead of ChatGPT4o, and anecdotally I have heard from several reliable sources that it’s slightly better for the specific use case of business writing. That is, until OpenAI releases ChatGPT5, which is rumored to happen later this year.

Not sold yet, so you insist on a free option?

ChatGPT4o is rolling out FREE for limited use to everyone (caveat – I have free access, but it’s a gradual rollout, so if you can’t get it free yet, it’s a matter of time). You get limited chats per day at the premium level and get bumped off when it’s busy with paid users.

You can get a generous two-month free trial of Google’s latest and greatest AI model, Gemini 1.5 Pro. Just go here and sign in with your personal Gmail. According to that rating I linked to above and my subjective evaluation, this is the least-effective paid model out there, but I can’t argue with getting free unlimited access for two months.

Microsoft’s free Copilot – when you set the conversation style to “creative” – is supposedly the same as ChatGPT4o, but in my experience it’s not as good as the paid version.

What to do with your AI tool?

This week I shared the above tips with my Inner Circle members, then showed them prompts and chats their fellow members have been using to:

• Write data-driven blog posts in 1.5 hours instead of 3
• Cull newsworthy angles from SME interview transcripts in 30 minutes instead of 2 hours
• Write 900-word case studies (from detailed human-created outlines) in seconds that are 80 percent as good as the human final drafts

If you want this kind of AI & PR guidance, you should think about joining the Inner Circle the next time we accept new members. Register for our Wait List so you can be notified when that happens.

P.S. Here are some tips for PR leaders weighing options for your teams.

Best if IT pays for it 🙂

Check with your IT rep. If you’re on Google Workspace, you might be able to get Google to throw in Gemini seats for your team at a discount in return for renewing your overall Workspace commitment. An agency I worked with actually got seats for 75 percent of their team for FREE. Same thing goes if you’re a Microsoft enterprise customer – Copilot ostensibly costs $30/month per user and supposedly requires a minimum of 300 users, but I’ve heard they are discounting and lowering that minimum. ChatGPT Enterprise is an option if your IT folks are considering it company-wide; otherwise, see the lightweight option below.

If you’re paying with your PR budget . . .

I think it’s too soon to make a big financial commitment to one platform (unless you are a unicorn team that is already using AI way more than any team I’ve worked with). OpenAI gives you a nice happy medium – you can sign up for ChatGPT Team. It’s $30 per user per month, and requires only 2 users. This gets you two advantages over the regular $20 account:

• your data is secure and private (not used for training)
• you can share CustomGPTs across your team

It’s flexible, so you can cancel anytime – unless you’re sold on it for at least a year, in which case you can pay only $25 per user per month, billed annually.

Google Workspace gives a similar option to add Gemini for a limited number of users, but it’s slightly more expensive. I bet Microsoft offers the same for Copilot.