Are you actually using the AI tools you're paying for?

Quiet satisfying week in AI news — nothing new launched, nothing broke, and nothing changed that needs your attention on Monday morning. That makes this the perfect week to get more out of what you've already got.

Are you actually using the AI tools you're paying for?

If you signed up for ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini in the last few months, chances are you're using it for the odd email rewrite and not much else. No judgement — that's where most people start. But you're probably paying between fifteen and thirty pounds a month for something that could be handling a chunk of your weekly admin.

Here's what to do this week: pick one task you repeat every week that bores you. Writing job ads. Summarising meeting notes. Drafting supplier emails. Updating your social media posts. Answering the same customer questions. Sit down for one hour — set a timer — and figure out how to hand that task to whichever AI tool you're already paying for.

The trick is saving your best prompts. Once you've written a good instruction that produces a useful result, save it somewhere you can grab it again. A note on your phone, a pinned message in your team chat, a sticky note on your monitor. The first time takes twenty minutes. Every time after that takes two.

Your next step: Block out one hour this week. Pick your most boring repeating task. Open the AI tool you're already paying for. Get it working. Save the prompt. That's it.

Quick hits

• If you're paying for ChatGPT Pro (the higher-tier plans at around a hundred or two hundred pounds a month), the current double-usage bonus expires May 31, according to OpenAI. After that, your usage allowance drops back to normal. If your team has been leaning on that extra capacity for heavy daily work — drafting proposals, processing long documents — spend ten minutes checking whether you're regularly hitting your limits. If you're nowhere near them, you might save money by dropping to the standard Plus plan when the boost ends.

The bottom line

Nothing new to buy this week — spend an hour getting value from what you've already got.

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