I want to start off by saying no generative AI was used in the making of this article, despite its premise. These articles are a form of artistic expression, and I want to create them on my own, not filter them through a machine.
That being said, I like generative AI when it’s a focused tool that helps me accomplish something I otherwise couldn’t, or saves me an incredible amount of time. I am predominantly a writer and developer, so my experience with AI is heavily text-focused. I mostly use ChatGPT 5 on the Plus plan and Gemini 2.5 Pro, which I use for free on a student plan. I used to use Claude, but I found that Sonnet 4 had an intelligence ceiling and stopped being helpful after enough back and forth.
1. Proofreading Text Messages
I am a notoriously incomprehensible texter. I predominately use swipe-to-type on my iPhone and although I try to fix all of my mistakes, many slip through.
Apple Intelligence’s on-device processing lets me quickly fix grammatical mistakes without having to waste time trying to navigate with my fingers. You can quickly navigate and see what changes it made, and what you had written before to double check its work and quickly replace your original message with its output. It’s basically spell check on steroids and makes the annoyance of fixing text on a phone keyboard much less so.
2. Writing Commit Messages
If you’re a developer you’re using Git. You’re also probably making tons of little commits to tweak things in between the big feature pushes. Until recently, if I was making a minor tweak or only pushing a small change, my bad habit was to write “ahhh” as my commit message. I didn’t want to waste time writing out a good message when I could continue to work on the code. Most of my projects are solo endeavors, so I’m only screwing myself in the future. However, included in the most recent update to GitHub desktop (that I’ve seen) you can now use Microsoft Copilot to generate messages based on the changes you’ve made.
99% of the time, they’re a great little overview that I can trust will represent my changes and it provides an excellent backlog for me in the future.
Am I incredibly lazy to avoid writing a paragraph? Sure! But sometimes it’s better to just admit we have a problem and take the solution instead of high-roading ourselves and continuing to suffer.
3. Explaining Math Formulas
This is pretty niche. I like watching education content on YouTube, reading scientific papers, and generally consuming educational content. If I stumble upon a formula I don’t understand, of which there are many, I’ll throw it in ChatGPT and have it explain how to use the formula. I can converse with ChatGPT and throw different variables at it to see how a formula would play out, then replicate it on my own to validate its work. My favorite thing about math is how it is provable. I wouldn’t trust ChatGPT to do important math on its own—even if in my experience it is incredibly good since it started using Python to perform its calculations.
This use case really illuminated AI’s potential in education. I would have killed for a personal tutor in my pocket back when I was taking high-school math.
4. Generating Playlist Cover Art
This is pretty self-explanatory. When I’m creating a playlist, I often want to customize the cover art, but not spend the time in Affinity Photo 2. I can just throw a silly prompt into ChatGPT and have it output something better than the default list of abstract dots and smears Apple Music can generate.
How have you been using Generative AI in your day-to-day life? I think it’s lovely that a tool can enable people to try new things or make it easier to live their lives. If you have any tips or good experiences, feel free to reach out to me via email: “first name”@“last name”.co