On ChatGPT’s plug-ins menu, I selected Tasty Recipes, which pulls data from the Tasty website owned by BuzzFeed, a well-known media site. I then asked the chatbot to come up with a meal plan including seafood dishes, ground pork and vegetable sides using recipes from the site. The bot presented an inspiring meal plan, including lemongrass pork banh mi, grilled tofu tacos and everything-in-the-fridge pasta; each meal suggestion included a link to a recipe on Tasty.

For recipes from other publications, I used Link Reader, a plug-in that let me paste in a web link to generate meal plans using recipes from other credible sites like Serious Eats. The chatbot pulled data from the sites to create meal plans and told me to visit the websites to read the recipes. That took extra work, but it beat an A.I.-concocted meal plan.

Research

When I did research for an article on a popular video game series, I turned to ChatGPT and Bard to refresh my memory on past games by summarizing their plots. They messed up on important details about the games’ stories and characters.

After testing many other A.I. tools, I concluded that for research, it was crucial to fixate on trusted sources and quickly double-check the data for accuracy. I eventually found a tool that delivers that: Humata.AI, a free web app that has become popular among academic researchers and lawyers.

The app lets you upload a document such as a PDF, and from there a chatbot answers your questions about the material alongside a copy of the document, highlighting relevant portions.