Once you know the trick, you can use it without getting burned. Here's the honest split.
Good at
- Drafts and rewrites — emails, posts, explanations, ideas
- Summarising long text you paste in (mind the privacy — Lesson 8 covers that properly)
- Brainstorming — names, angles, lists, "give me five options"
- Explaining something in simpler words, or harder ones
- Formatting — tables, bullet lists, step-by-step instructions
Bad at (or downright risky)
- Guaranteed facts — dates, prices, laws, medical doses. It can sound spot-on and be flat wrong. Tech people call that a hallucination; I call it bluffing with a straight face.
- Your private world — it doesn't know your clients, your books, or your shop unless you tell it.
- Being up to the minute — unless the app is wired to search the web (many now are; still verify).
- Judgement you'd rather not own — it mirrors your prompt. Rubbish in, rubbish out.
The golden rule
If it matters — money, health, law, safety, reputation — you check it. Treat the AI like a very fast intern who writes well and occasionally makes things up to please you.
Real example from my own shop: I once asked one to confirm a tax detail and it invented a deadline that didn't exist — confident, specific, completely made up. It wasn't lying; it was predicting text that looked like the right answer. That's the whole game. And note — paying for the posh version usually buys you more capable, not more truthful. Same intern, sharper suit.
Continue — you've probably already met this tech without naming it.