For tasks like brainstorming, changing your writing style, or summarizing information, you can use Claude or the free version of ChatGPT. Neither of these tools can search the web for answers, so they rely only on their training data, which doesn’t include the most current information.
These tools aren’t meant to be used like a search engine because they don’t have knowledge or understanding of facts. They are designed only to reply in a conversational style according to probability statistics based on their training data. This means they sometimes make up plausible sounding text that’s not factual. This is called “hallucination” and it means you’ll need to fact check what it says.
Note: As of May 13, 2024, free accounts on ChatGPT will begin to get access to a more powerful version called GPT-4o. It’s being rolled out gradually over a few weeks to free accounts. It includes web browsing, so it can look up more current information. However, it has a limit to the amount of use in one day, so when you reach your limit, you’ll automatically be rolled back to the earlier version, which doesn’t include web browsing. You’ll have to wait until the next day to use the more powerful model again.