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Does it feel to you like there are way too many AI assistants to keep track of? Between ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, DeepSeek, and others, it’s hard to remember what each one excels atif anything. Beyond just the underlying differences in large language models, each AI assistant has its own features, integrations, premium features, and peculiarities. I’m writing this guide both for myself and for anyone who wants to stay informed about generative AI. While I have some reservations, I also think its worth keeping an eye on whats available. Rather than getting into the technical details of how these AI assistants work, Ill focus on what they can actually do. ChatGPT by OpenAI The most recognizable name in generative AI is also the most fleshed out as a standalone consumer tech product, with features like web search, a built-in document editor, and a conversational voice mode. ChatGPT also provides one of the most robust free tiers of any AI assistant, with all but its most bleeding-edge features available in some capacity without a subscription. Notable features: Voice mode for engaging in back-and-forth conversation, including an advanced version with more emotive responses. Traits that define how ChatGPT should converse with you. Temporary chats that don’t appear in your history and don’t train OpenAI’s models. Canvas document editor that uses AI to generate and revise content. Web-search for bringing in real-time information. GPTs that bring in information from third-party apps and services. Reason button that offers more in-depth problem solving and decision making. Price: Free for limited model access, $20 per month for more advanced models and new features, $200 per month for unlimited access to experimental features. Claude by Anthropic As The New York Times has noted, Claude is a favorite among AI insiders for its sense of emotional intelligence, with responses that are “less like the generic prose generated by other chatbots.” While its features are on the bare-bones sideit can’t search the web and lacks a voice conversation mode (for now)it does offer some helpful features for creating and interacting with documents. Notable features: Projects mode, which lets you upload documents and data for context in your chats. Artifacts, which are standalone documents and image files you can download for use in other apps. Styles, which let you refine how Claude writes its responses. You can even upload a document for Claude to try and mimic. Price: Free for limited usage. $20 per month for additional models, reasoning, and the Projects feature. Google Gemini Google’s AI products are more diffuse than some of its startup rivals. While Gemini exists in standalone form on the web and in mobile appsand serves as the default voice assistant on newer Android phonesit also generates summaries in Google Search, and is baked into other Google products such as Gmail, Docs, and Chrome. All this makes Gemini a bit tricky to quantify as a whole, except that it feels unavoidable if you regularly use Google’s products. Notable features: Extensions for interacting with other (mostly Google) services, for instance by summarizing YouTube videos or flagging important message from Gmail. Gemini Live for free-flowing voice conversations. Google Assistant features such as smart home control and reminders. NotebookLM, a separate but popular product that can analyze your documents, create summaries, and even turn them into podcasts. Price: Free, with $20 per month Gemini Advanced subscription for Workspace integration, book-length document analysis, and more advanced models. Microsoft Copilot Just as Gemini is built into Google products, Copilot is weaved into Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Office suite, and Edge browser. Its actual capabilities aren’t much different from other AI assistantsit primarily uses OpenAI’s large language modelsbut it’s easier to access if you’re deep into Microsoft’s ecosystem. (Microsoft’s GitHub also has its own version of Copilot for programmers.) Notable features: Office tie-ins, including writing assistance in Word and spreadsheet analysis in Excel. Think Deeper offers access to OpenAI’s reasoning models. Copilot Voice offers free-flowing voice conversations both on desktop and mobile devices. Edge sidebar lets you summarize and ask about web pages. Pricing: Free for limited usage, requires Microsoft 365 (starting at $10 per month) for full Office integration, $20 per month Copilot Pro for advanced models, early features, and Copilot in Office web apps. DeepSeek DeepSeek, the product of a previously-obscure Chinese company, shook up the AI world earlier this year, offering performance on par with OpenAI’s latest models with training costs that were apparently miniscule (though later disputed). It’s also raised privacy concerns over the data it sends to China, and it won’t talk about topics that are censored in China, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre. Even so, American companies are now looking to use DeepSeek’s open-source code, including Microsoft, which is offering local DeepSeek models on Qualcomm-powered PCs, and Nvidia, which offers its own online version. As for DeepSeek’s own app, it’s a bit on the crude side, but it offers image recognition, document scanning, web search, and a “DeepThink” reasoing model for problem solving and decision making. Notable features: Unlimited access to DeepSeek’s latest models. Pricing: Free. Grok While Elon Musk’s AI assistant looks like a lot of its rivals on the surface, it has a kind of edgelord sensibility lurking underneath. Grok won’t flat-out tell you how to build a pipe bomb, for instance, but it won’t shut the conversation down, either. Instead, it’ll encourage you to ask more about pipe bombs in general and give you details about how they work when prompted. (Meanwhile, researchers have coaxed into providing dangerous weapon-building instructions in detail.) Notable features: Voice modes with distinct personalities, including “unhinged” and “sexy” versions. “Think” and “DeepSearch” modes that reason through answers and pull information from online sources, respectively. Price: Free with limited use of the latest models, $30 per month for increased rate limits and access to Think, DeepSearch, and voice modes. Perplexity This GPT-based AI tool started off as an alternative to traditional web search, but has since evolved into a more all-encompassing personal assistant with tools for managing documents and interacting with apps. It’s also developing its own web browser. (In other words, it’s becoming less reliant on scaping websites against their wishes.) Notable features: Web search results, with summaries and citations. Spaces for summarizing and analyzing documents. Agent features on Android devices, including music playback, reminders, and calendar interactions. Discover section with AI-generated news summaries. Price: Free for basic web search with some usage limits on other features, $20 per month for more deep research usage, unlimited document uploads, and a choice of AI models. Duck.ai With Duck.ai, DuckDuckGo offers a more privacy-focused alternative to the major AI assistants. DuckDuckGo says it’s made agreements with major AI providers so they won’t train their models on your data, and will only store it for 30 days at most. There’s no document interaction or voice chat, but it’s good enough for basic conversations. Private chat history that’s stored on your device, not online. Choice of large language models, including GPT-4o, Llama 3.3, Claude 3, o3-mini, and Mistral. AI answers in search results, with an option to customize how often they appear. Price: Free A few others Siri: While the current version of Siri isn’t based on large language modelsand may not be for yearsit will occasionally ask ChatGPT for answers on devices that support Apple Intelligence. Alexa+: Amazon’s just-announced AI overhaul promises more conversational capabilities than the old Alexa while still offering features like home automation, music playback, and TV suggestions. It’s launching on select Echo Show devices in an “early access period” next month. Meta AI: This one’s powered by Meta’s llama open-source models but is pretty basic as a consumer-facing product. It’s only available on the web or as a feature of the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. Standalone mobile apps are reportedly coming.
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The color of your house matters beyond aesthetics. An extensive body of research shows that painting buildings white (which reflects heat) can make them cooler, and painting them black (which absorbs heat) can make them warmer. This is the reason why most houses in Greece are white, and many houses across Scandinavia are black. But what about the rest of the world, where temperatures often shift with the seasons?Industrial designer Joe Doucet has developed what he calls a climate-adaptive paint that can change colors based on the temperature outside. The patent-pending formula, which is known as thermochromic paint, follows the same principle as 90s mood rings. Except instead of jewelry changing color, its the entire facade of a building. If the temperature outside is below 77F, the building will be black. If its above 77F, it will turn white.The formula can be mixed with other tints, so if you want a blue house, it would simply look light blue in the summer and dark blue in the winter. Its phenomenal to think about the built environment changing with the seasons as nature does, says Doucet, who estimates that painting a building with this climate-adaptive paint could save an average of 20 to 30% on energy costs.The power of paintMany cities have turned to paint to alleviate urban problems like the heat island effect. In 2019, teams across Senegal, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Indonesia painted a total of 250,000 small household rooftops with white reflective pain as part of the Million Cool Roofs Challenge. In 2022, the city of L.A. covered 1 million square feet of streets and sidewalks in Pacoima, a low-income neighborhood, with solar reflective paint. Surfaces cooled instantly by 10 to 12F, and a year in, studies showed that the ambient temperatures throughout the entire neighborhood had dropped by up to 3.5°F.[Image: courtesy Joe Doucet and Partners]A climate-adaptive paint could make a difference for houses and apartment buildings, but also large industrial facilities like climate-controlled farms and warehouses that would otherwise turn to AC or heating to maintain a desired temperature. It costs to heat and cool a large structure so anything you can do mitigate that cost makes sense commercially as well, says Richard Hinzel, partner and managing director at Joe Doucet and Partners.Doucet first had the idea for a climate-adaptive paint while renovating his own home in Chappaqua, New York. I put off what color it should be because I wanted to have an understanding of what color did in terms of energy use, he recalls. The designer, who recently gave wind turbines a much-needed design makeover, built two scale models of his house, with the same kind of insulation material he used in the actual house. He painted the first model in black and the second one in white. For a year, he measured the surface outside and inside both models, and found that, in high seasons like summer and winter, temperatures between the two varied by as much as 13F. More specifically, in the summer, the white house was 12F cooler inside than the black house, while in the winter, the black house was 7F warmer inside. He says the opposite was also true. The black house was 13F warmer inside in the summer, while the white house was 8F colder in the winter. [Image: courtesy Joe Doucet and Partners]Doucet obtained these measurements from a scale model, not a full-sized house, but he notes the only difference between the two would be the time it takes for each space to heat or cool. A smaller pan heats up and cools down faster than a larger one, but it does not get hotter or colder, he says by way of example.At the end of the experiment, it occurred to him that the answer to his original questionwhat color to paint his housewas to paint it black in the winter and white in the summer. But that wasnt a practical solution.The more practical solutiona paint that can be both at oncetook two years to develop and about 100 more models to get the formula right. The team used commercially available latex house paint as a base, then mixed in their own proprietary formula. But crafting a formula that can sustain the transition from light to dark without degradingand therefore ending up greyproved difficult.If youve ever had transition glasses that got stuck on dark and never returned to clear, you understand the problem. If the paint degrades too fast and you have to repaint your house every month, then nobody will buy it.The first few formulas were degrading too fast, but the team eventually concocted a secret sauce that helps the paint last at least one year with zero degradation. This number reflects how long Doucet has been testing the paint in his studio. The final number could be even higheror it could not.The paint is yet to undergo rigorous lab tests, so many unknowns remain. Were not starting a paint company, says Doucet. Instead, his team wants to license the formula to paint manufacturers who would then take the climate-adaptive paint to the finishing line and launch it themselves.If the idea resonates and paint companies jump on the bandwagon, they will have to develop a competitive product that is both durable and priced accordingly. For now, Doucet estimates that theclimate-adaptive paint will cost about 3 to 5 times more than a standard gallon of paintthough he says youd quickly make that back in energy savings. Im confident that if theres a positive response, this could do very well on the market, he says.In the meantime, Doucet finished renovating his house and opted for black. I couldnt wait, he says with a laugh.
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E-Commerce
When plastic entered the design world in the 20th century, it was hailed as a wonder materialsomething strong, durable, lightweight, affordable, and malleable enough to sculpt into expressive, futuristic-looking forms. But the material lost its halo as the environmental consequences became apparent, plastic waste being one of them. The design industry has been figuring out what to do about this for years. Its tried recycling, reducing the amount of material in a product, developing bio-based compostable alternatives, or switching to something else entirely. But not all companies are able to easily switch up their production lines or find alternatives. Now, a growing body of research around plastic-eating microorganisms is reshaping how the industry is thinking about the material and its waste problem. Hellera furniture brand that produces high-end plastic furniture and home goods like Frank Gehry tables, Mario Bellini chairs, and Massimo and Lella Vignelli tablewareis now making all of its furniture with an enzyme that will accelerate the rate of biodegradation. The hope is that if its products wind up in a landfill or at the bottom of the ocean, that they wont be there for long. Ten years ago, we were all drinking out of plastic water bottles and nobody really cared, says John Edelman, the president and CEO of Heller. But we learned that plastics are bad for the world. The company began to make some products from recycled material, but we wanted to get to the next level and become more sustainable, Edelman says. How can we be good for the planet and create incredible design? He adds that the bioplastics and compostable plastics on the market now dont work for Hellers furniture because of performance requirements. Since everything is indoor-outdoor, it needs to withstand rain, snow, and the suns UV rays. [Image: courtesy Heller]Heres how it works: The powder enzyme, developed by a company called Worry Free Plastics, makes plastic more enticing for microorganisms to eat, essentially turbocharging a process that already takes place naturally. When the plastic is in a zero-oxygen environment, like a landfill, the enzyme activates and attracts anaerobic bacteria that break down its polymers. As they eat the material, they generate biogas and soil. If the plastic is exposed to oxygen, as it would be in everyday use, the material remains stable. According to Edelman, it will take approximately five years for a Heller product made with the enzyme to biodegrade.Philip Myers, the cofounder of Worry Free Plastics, says its enzyme works in fresh and salt water, commercial composting facilities, and soil. A third-party testing company using ASTM methods (which involve placing an item in a controlled environment for 45 or 90 days, measuring the material loss rate, then calculating how long it would take for the entire thing to degrade) found that Worry Frees enzyme could help a plastic bottle degrade, on average, in seven-and-a-half years and a plastic bag in five; the total time it takes depends on the density and thickness of the plastic and conditions in a landfill. Real-world environments are not as controlled as a labs and the actual degradation rate could be different. One landfill might be more potent than another one, says Stephen Andero, the vice president of science and innovation at Worry Free Plastics. After doing thousands of tests, no two are the same. That said, the estimated degradation time is significantly less than conventional plastic. A water bottle, for example, takes an estimated 450 years to decompose. The enzyme can also be added to all polymer plastics, including bioplastics like PLA, which arent composting as fast as manufacturers claim. Worry Free isnt the only entity to explore enzymatic technology and the role microorganisms play in accelerating the degradation of plastic. In 2016, a team of Japanese scientists discovered a natural bacteria that eats PET plastic, which changed how the industry thought of managing plastic waste. Some researchers are now trying to engineer extra-hungry, plastic-eating bacteria. A materials science professor at UC Berkeley recently developed an enzyme that can make plastic self-destruct when exposed to heat and water. All of this research is leading to a boom in the bioremediation business.Now, manufacturers are bringing this science into the products we use every day. To date, most of Worry Frees customers have been manufacturers of single-use plasticsitems like coffee cup lids and pallet film. Myers is just as eager to find more applications for his enzyme as Edelman is to address circularity at Heller.Most of Hellers furniture is rotationally molded, a process that involves putting a powder compound into a mold then heating it up. As it heats up, it coats the mold, and when it cools, it solidifies into the shape of the product. In order to make its furniture biodegradable, Heller mixes the enzyme into the power compound. Nothing else about its production line changes.Its a drop in technology, Myers explains. It doesnt require them to change their equipment, their processanything. Its plug and play. Heller began adding the enzyme to its production line in November last year. Its going to be in all of its rotationally molded LDPE products. As old inventory moves off the shelf, the biodegradable items will enter circulation. Theres nothing different aesthetically about the pieces, and the retail price is the same. Everybody talks a big sustainability game, but research shows they wont pay more for it, Edelman says. My goal is to do something that is sustainable and at the same price . . . We actually achieved our goal of not just using recycled products, not just being recyclable, but going back to the earth.While its not likely that people are buying $1,000 dining chair sets with the intent to throw them away, Edelman thinks that Hellers adoption of enzymatic tech can spark more brands to do the same. Sustainability is being applied to every product because the design firms are pushing it, he says. Theyre the catalyst.
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