The most common mistake people make when starting with AI is trying to start with all of it.
Five tools, multiple free trials, a week of comparison — and at the end of it, a vague sense that they’ve done something without actually having learned anything. The tools blur together. The novelty wears off. They move on.
The better approach is simpler and less interesting: pick one, use it for real things, and give it long enough to become useful.
Here’s which one to pick.
If your employer uses Microsoft 365: start with Copilot
Copilot is Microsoft’s AI assistant. It lives inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — the tools you’re probably already using every day.
The reason to start here is purely practical: it’s already there. No new account, no new interface to learn, no separate subscription. You open Outlook, you look for the Copilot icon, and you start.
The most useful things Copilot does: summarises long email threads, generates meeting notes after a Teams call, produces first drafts in Word, and helps make sense of data in Excel. If you spend most of your day in Microsoft tools, Copilot will save you time within the first week.
If you don’t have Copilot: start with ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the tool most people have heard of, and for good reason — it’s genuinely capable, the free version is useful, and the interface is simple.
ChatGPT handles the full range of general professional tasks well: drafting emails, summarising documents, brainstorming, preparing for meetings, thinking through problems, writing first drafts of anything. If you don’t have Copilot and you need to pick one tool to start with, this is it.
The free version uses GPT-4o mini — capable enough for everyday use. You’ll occasionally hit usage limits, but for someone starting out that’s rarely a problem.
Add Perplexity when you need current information
Perplexity is different from ChatGPT and Claude. It searches the web in real time and shows you its sources — which makes it the right tool when what you need is current, accurate information rather than a first draft or a thinking partner.
Use Perplexity for: researching a topic before a meeting, fact-checking something you’ve read, finding recent news or developments, or any question where you’d normally go to Google but want a synthesised answer with sources rather than a list of links.
Affiliate link — if you sign up for Perplexity Pro, ThatClicked earns a small commission at no cost to you. Anna only recommends tools she actually uses.
What about Claude and Gemini?
Claude (made by Anthropic) is worth knowing about, particularly if your work involves long documents or writing that needs a careful, considered tone. The free version is strong. Many people who work primarily with text find they prefer it to ChatGPT for certain tasks once they’ve tried both.
Gemini is Google’s AI assistant — useful if your work is primarily in Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Drive). For most professionals over 50 using Microsoft tools, it’s not the right starting point.
The rule that matters most
One tool, used regularly for real tasks, for at least a month. That’s the whole strategy.
You can try the others later. You probably will. But the people who get genuinely good at using AI are almost always the ones who started with one thing and stuck with it long enough for it to become useful — not the ones who sampled everything and mastered nothing.
Pick the one that fits where you are. Start there. Everything else can wait.
If you’re weighing up whether to pay for one of these tools, Ask Anna: Should I Pay for ChatGPT? covers that question directly. And if any of the terminology feels unfamiliar, the AI glossary is there.