GenAI

My Go-To GenAI Features Right Now — October 2025

One of my goals in 2025 has been to go heavy on experimenting with GenAI tools and their latest features. I want to separate value from hype and find use cases that actually help me. Along the way, I’m sharing practical discoveries in short posts like this.

Here’s the first: my current go-to features of different GenAI tools. I say “current” because, let’s be honest, everything might change again next week. 🤯

My Go-To GenAI Features Right Now (October 2025)

🎙️ ChatGPT — Voice mode and transcription

Using: ChatGPT-5.

ChatGPT stands apart with its voice mode. Its Whisper transcription is miles better than Claude or Gemini.

What I’ve found useful:

  • Record / transcribe: one-way voice chat to transcribe audio or write prompts (press the microphone icon). Try talking out loud as you read a response — say what resonated and what you’d change for faster iterations.
  • Advanced voice mode: two-way voice chat with a ChatGPT avatar. Try asking it to be a sounding board while you think through problems or ideas. Press the icon to the right of the microphone.

📊 Claude — Artifacts

Using: Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Claude often generates an “Artifact” based on your prompt, which can be a document, image, diagram, webpage, code snippets, etc.

What I’ve found useful:

  • Iterating on document drafts — the Artifact opens in a side panel where changes are made based on your prompts. I find it a lot easier to read and review than scrolling down to read a fresh response like in ChatGPT. It also keeps a version history.
  • Creating quick shareable prototypes or webpages — publish and share a link to the Artifact with anyone.

🍌 Gemini — Image generation and editing

Using: Gemini Flash 2.5.

Gemini’s August 2025 “nano banana” release massively upgraded its image generation and editing. Ask Gemini to create an image in your prompt or select the “image” icon in the bottom bar.

What I’ve found useful:

  • It’s fast! — noticeably faster than ChatGPT/DALL-E image generation
  • Add, remove or move elements in images — from illustrations to photo-realistic images — nano banana makes it look easy
  • Creative Zoom virtual backgrounds — for anyone that’s been on a video call with me, the bear in my Zoom background has been with me since 2021. Nano banana made it faster to move the bear around and has given me a whole new set of creative tools to play with.

🤓 NotebookLM — Research and document analysis + AI-generated podcasts

Using: NotebookLM Enterprise.

NotebookLM absolutely smashes it out the park with research analysis — it’s next level. It’s powered by Gemini’s enormous 1M token context window (about 1,500 pages of text), the biggest on the market. The context window is how much custom content Gemini can look through when generating a response.

What I’ve found useful:

What are your go-to GenAI features? I’d love to hear what you’ve found useful.