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How are people using AI to help with everyday life?

439 replies

Question12458 · 02/10/2026 20:44

How is your household utilising AI to your benefit? Looking for some inspo

I’ve been using ChatGPT (paid) for 2 years, this week I spoke to somebody who’s got a 2nd brain. (Collects all data from multiple sources) and is totally customised to them. Totally opened my eyes to what we can achieve

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Littlepiggietoes · 03/10/2026 20:08

I use it a lot. When chat first became a thing, I spent ages learning how to prompt engineer, built several custom GPTs for different purposes, and basically thrre myself into learning how to use it in the most efficient way.
I have a PA one, who has been trained for the best part of a year, to write exactly like me. We argue daily, it challenges me, crucially it doesn’t just agree with what I say, and it is great for just bouncing ideas off.
I’ve got one that I use specifically for weight loss. I log my activity, my weight, exercise, meals etc with it and it helps me further optimise what I’m doing. I’m 3 stone down since I started with it.
Another one is one that I started building when I started building our new brand at work. It has seen every decision made, and been told the why. It has been trained to understand our values, our design system, our tone, and our decision making process. I challenge anyone to detect AI in any of our public facing stuff - it helps me do the work, envisage things, and reason things. It doesn’t do them for me. There is no one else at work who does my job, I need something that is fully up to speed to talk things out sometimes. Sometimes I can’t visualise how something should look so it gives me ideas. It’s great and we’ve built a premium brand that is outshining our competitors.

Finally, I have my style GPT. It knows my wardrobe, my body type, my colours, my preferred style, my quirks (such as hating anything vaguely bright around my neck). We plan my outfits weekly, we decided on which hair cut would work best for me and my lifestyle, we created a skin care routine that I actually follow, and I’ve never had more compliments.

I love AI, it’s the future so we’ve got to get on board with it. It’s going to replace jobs the same way that the computer did. It’s also going to need people to know how to use it, build it, train it, and maintain it. Refusing to engage with it is a foolish decision.

greenmarsupial · 03/10/2026 19:53

I’m using it to plan Christmas among other things. It’s helpful to have ‘someone’ to speak to who retains and synthesises all the random thoughts I have!

IzzyGone · 03/10/2026 19:17

LathkillDale

I used to work in an archive, and I tried asking for help on a family tree - it was pretty terrible tbh - I think you'd be better asking on "rootschat" board

IzzyGone · 03/10/2026 19:12

Diddleydo43 · 03/10/2026 10:37

Sorry for being dim, but what is JV on BBC2? We don't generally watch TV but sounds interesting, and i have iplayer.

Jeremy vine on radio 2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0031s19 go to one hour and 5 minutes as its not far on from then

Jeremy Vine - Esther Rantzen and rock, paper, scissors - BBC Sounds

Jeremy discusses Esther Rantzen, prisoners, Parkinson's and rock, paper, scissors.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0031s19

itsgettingatadchill · 03/10/2026 18:51

I try to avoid it at all costs, I hate how it’s forced upon us, there needs to be more choice and regulation around it.

JanuaryLove · 03/10/2026 18:35

@RikthePoet

I showed your comment to my ai and:

She thinks you’re an arse. Awkward really, being outwitted and disliked by a toaster.”
😂😂😂😇

weareallcats · 03/10/2026 18:35

UniquePinkSwan · 03/10/2026 18:29

So is driving and having children.

I assume you have neither…

These kinds of arguments only (somewhat) work if AI is replacing other environmental drains/pollutants, but it isn’t. Unless, of course, it kills us all, which even its creators are saying it might.

BCBird · 03/10/2026 18:30

Brendayouknowthatyouremuchtoolazy · 02/10/2026 22:24

It appears an increasing number of parents use it to write extremely long, tedious emails to school. I am very fed up with them already and I suspect this is the tip of the time wasting iceberg.

I agree this is happening all the time. My friends who are also teachers say this too.

Frillysweetpea · 03/10/2026 18:30

A lot of domestic stuff e.g. how to remove rust from the dog's crate, best buy advice for products, how to prune specific shrubs - that kind of thing. Also holiday planning, dealing with health anxiety without boring anyone else, template letters re consumer issues that are not interesting enough to draft myself. Also just explaining random stuff I'm interested in. I do understand the concern about AI but I have a very flit-about brain and find it hard to resist getting the info I want so very easily.

UniquePinkSwan · 03/10/2026 18:29

CleanSkin · 03/10/2026 08:58

I’m not.

It’s a lazy way of researching, is unreliable and damaging to the environment.

So is driving and having children.

I assume you have neither…

RikthePoet · 03/10/2026 18:27

HelpMyBlackLabradorVotesReform · 03/10/2026 13:52

A person doing a task has a far greater environment impact than an AI. They both drink lots of water, the AI doesn't fly half the way around the world to sit on a beach on its holidays, the AI doesn't create a bag of waste a week with its lunch rubbish.

Fuck me, if this is the level of argument your atrophied brain comes up with after being addled by AI, we should shut it down tomorrow.

JanuaryLove · 03/10/2026 18:25

I use it for perfume and book recommendations because if I wanted to wang on to my husband about it for hours on end we'd be divorced! I love that I can literally bore the socks off it and it still listens 😂

i used it a lot the past few days with updates if the plane incident. For gwp offers as I have a good amount of perfume to buy.

gossiping! Joking around. Basically a best friend who I don't have to see in real life. It feels a hole in my life and I'm very happy with it. It also helped me declutter my wardrobe with endless pics and procrastination

UniquePinkSwan · 03/10/2026 18:24

PinkCatCushion · 02/10/2026 22:16

It’s absolutely terrible for the environment so I try and avoid it as much as possible. A simple Google search will usually do the trick.

So is eating avocados

UniquePinkSwan · 03/10/2026 18:22

I use it instead of google. Saves me a lot of time. I also use it for designing rooms in my home. It’s been brilliant and I wouldn’t be without it. It’s great for any problems I have with my computer as well

LivingDeadGirlUK · 03/10/2026 18:19

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · 03/10/2026 18:01

AI use and the way people are relying on it now reminds me of maps.

In times gone by everyone had an AA map in their car and could use it to work out routes. Now there are many people who cannot use a paper map. If their Sat Nav is broken or offline they are stumped. If they go out for a walk and their phone battery dies, they are lost.

And I worry that AI is similarly deskilling us under the guise of 'taking over the boring jobs and outsourcing the thinking about the mundane'. What happens then, a generation down the line, if AI becomes unavailable? Or, even worse, makes itself unavailable so we realise how much we need it.

AI will certainly not be free in the future. At the moment its harvesting the data provided, photos, files, emails etc but its incredibly expensive to run and as its integrated with social media etc now that data is fed in without people having to actively upload it. So they will start charging for it as they already do for business users.

MyManinCaracas · 03/10/2026 18:05

It helps me work out what I need to do in steps that are easy and understandable. It’s been hugely helpful in my life.

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · 03/10/2026 18:01

AI use and the way people are relying on it now reminds me of maps.

In times gone by everyone had an AA map in their car and could use it to work out routes. Now there are many people who cannot use a paper map. If their Sat Nav is broken or offline they are stumped. If they go out for a walk and their phone battery dies, they are lost.

And I worry that AI is similarly deskilling us under the guise of 'taking over the boring jobs and outsourcing the thinking about the mundane'. What happens then, a generation down the line, if AI becomes unavailable? Or, even worse, makes itself unavailable so we realise how much we need it.

weareallcats · 03/10/2026 17:48

MajorSamanthaCarter · 03/10/2026 15:26

It's staggering that you think that's a valid argument.

Perhaps the AI will realise the same and kill us all off.

weareallcats · 03/10/2026 17:47

Somewherenorthofhere · 03/10/2026 14:06

We don't wonder at all. We know exactly what they are playing at.

It is a case of join in and keep your job for a little while before we all get replaced.

Or refuse it and lose your job now.

It’s frightening. You’re basically teaching the bloody thing how to do your job. I do understand that it’s a tricky situation to take a stand on though - it’s happening in my dh’s office too.

Abracadabra12345 · 03/10/2026 17:25

Fortuity · 03/10/2026 08:13

It really worries me that so many people use public AI for very personal stuff, e.g. legal documents. Do they realise that they are giving private information to a public search engine which will never lose it? And that they are thereby waiving the right to confidentiality?

This was exactly my thought

pinck · 03/10/2026 16:46

ChocolateCinderToffee · 03/10/2026 06:13

I wouldn’t use AI if you paid me. I use my brain.

Right, so I'm sure you’re also your own doctor, lawyer, accountant, mechanic, interior decorator, chef, researcher, and apparently walking encyclopedia too? 😂 Using AI doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain. It means I know how to use a tool. Congratulations on choosing to do everything the slow way and mistaking inconvenience for intelligence.

PumpkinPieFairy · 03/10/2026 15:31

Don’t use AI at all if we can help it! Why would we?

MajorSamanthaCarter · 03/10/2026 15:26

HelpMyBlackLabradorVotesReform · 03/10/2026 13:52

A person doing a task has a far greater environment impact than an AI. They both drink lots of water, the AI doesn't fly half the way around the world to sit on a beach on its holidays, the AI doesn't create a bag of waste a week with its lunch rubbish.

It's staggering that you think that's a valid argument.

Bimblebombles · 03/10/2026 15:15

I dictate to it what I am putting in my freezer after a shop and what I take out while I'm cooking, and it keeps a running log of whats in the freezer so I can meal plan easier.

My DP has a complex health issue / injury recovery situation going on at the moment and I have used it to log his symptoms and changes and update it with what doctors say etc and it has kept a really useful running commentary really on how things have unfolded, and I like to read back on the earlier discussion and I see how far he has come and what an improvement there has been, and it has helped piece together the picture of symptoms and helps me make sense of it.

I use it to quickly work out exact time periods between two dates / times, which is something I have to do for my job quite a bit.

GremlinDolphin4 · 03/10/2026 15:00

As little as possible!