Psychologists use various terms to describe disorganized speech. “Word salad” – words and concepts so disconnected that there is no logical thread. “Neologisms” – made up words that have no literal meaning. “Loose association” – associations that are irrelevant or out of context.

I’m going to briefly describe some of the AI updates from the last five weeks. Don’t try to understand them! That’s not the point. The point is that consumer-facing AI developments right now are obviously unintelligible. These are the ravings of disordered minds.

But I don’t want you to dismiss AI because it’s difficult to follow its development. I’ll talk about that below.

Browse through summaries of the announcements since the beginning of the year. When you get bored or overwhelmed, skip down to the section headed “WTF?!!??!!!”

A few days ago Google followed the consumer launch of Gemini 2.0 Flash (“including the latest version of Imagen 3!”) with new preview models 2.0 Pro Experimental and 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental.

If you open Gemini, there’s a dropdown list with seven different AI models to choose from. Gemini 2.0 Flash Pro has a two million token context window, which must be good because that’s quite a large number of tokens, right? Or a large number of contexts. One of those.

I pay Google $20/month for Google One AI Premium, “including Gemini Advanced.” Is that different than Google 2.0 Flash? Is this new latest version of Gemini free for everyone? Am I getting anything for that monthly fee? I have no freaking idea.

The image above shows different ways that Microsoft uses the word “Copilot” to refer to AI apps. It appears in an article published in early December 2024, eight long weeks ago, so that image is both incomplete and out of date in early February 2025, but you get the idea.

I’m going to describe the most recent Microsoft AI announcements. The next four paragraphs are completely accurate but also impenetrable, so don’t get bogged down, just skim ahead.

Every Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscription is about to get Copilot AI features, along with a price increase of at least 30%. Microsoft says subscribers can switch to plans without Copilot or AI credits, such as its Basic plan, or for a limited time, change to the new Personal Classic or Family Classic plans.

The company says Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers will receive a monthly allotment of AI credits to use Copilot in Office programs and which can also be used for Designer’s AI image generation and editing.

Microsoft will continue offering Copilot Pro (currently $20/month) for consumers with extensive usage needs, along with Microsoft 365 Copilot (currently $30/month), its commercial offering, for organizations of all sizes.

Microsoft is also bringing OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model to all Copilot users this week. ChatGPT’s o1 deep reasoning model – “Think Deeper” is Microsoft’s brand – was previously $200/month but is now available to all Copilot users, even on the free tier, but there are limits to access.

You didn’t understand a word of that, did you? Of course not. Maybe you spotted that you might be hit with a price hike soon, if you happen to know what kind of license you have for the Office programs, which frankly most of you don’t. “AI credits”? WTF is an “AI credit”?

Oh, and a detail about the price hike. Microsoft is no stranger to dark patterns these days. The Register helpfully points out that the first step to avoid the price hike requires clicking a button labeled “Cancel subscription.” Only then will you see cheaper options.

Oh, Microsoft.

OpenAI is releasing a new artificial intelligence model, o3-mini. OpenAI said the o3-mini model matched its predecessor, o1, in maths, coding, and science but at a significantly lower cost and with faster responses. Users on ChatGPT’s Pro package, which costs $200 a month, will get unlimited access to o3-mini, while users on the cheaper Plus tariff will have higher usage limits than free users.

That’s almost but not quite the same thing as the new model of ChatGPT, GPT-4o, which might or might not be better than GPT-4, I’ve lost track. But it’s probably better than GPT-4o mini because “mini,” right? 

So go ahead and choose wisely among the ChatGPT “Plus”, “Pro”, “Team”, and “Enterprise” subscriptions.

Maybe you have a vague memory that Microsoft was a key partner at OpenAI’s inception. Is Microsoft CoPilot the same thing as ChatGPT? Do these announcements overlap? You have no idea how complicated it is to answer those questions.

Welcome back! Let’s zoom back up to 36,000 feet.

I’m going to give you two pieces of advice. They sound contradictory but they’re not really.

Don’t try to follow the monthly/weekly/daily announcements of AI apps and updates. 

The word salad above is a fair sample. During the next year or two, the big companies will increase the pace and new companies will join the nonstop flood of constantly changing AI apps and services.

Use AI. Look for it. Experiment with it. Revel in it.

You’re already immersed in the AI world. The big tech companies are wedging AI-generated content into things we already use and much of it provides genuine assistance.

Here are a few examples. Keep your eyes open and you’ll find it everywhere.

Amazon’s summary of product reviews is far easier to use than the old system of skimming individual reviews trying to draw conclusions from the vibes.

Google’s AI summary of search results is increasingly accurate and frequently sufficient to answer your questions.

The composing tools built into Word and Gmail are rapidly improving. Don’t expect it to do your work for you but use it to find words and phrases or to create first drafts of messages and documents.

Specialized AI tools for research, engineering, project management are already widespread. In particular, programming is being revolutionized by AI-assisted tools for coding.

And if you haven’t begun to explore Google Gemini or one of the others for day-to-day questions, now is the time to start. My research for a trip to Spain started with the above exchange; Gemini continued with 10 more suggestions from different regions. The internet is such a horrible wasteland of ad-driven sludge that researching travel with a traditional Google search has become hopeless. The quality of the answers from Gemini is startling and wonderful. Gemini handles followup questions and everything can be conversational.

NotebookLM can take PDFs and websites and more and analyze them to answer any kind of question you can imagine.

If you want a conversation for amusement or companionship, AI chatbots are improving every day. Chatbot therapists are becoming skilled enough to be used as part of supervised therapy.

AI tools are being added to most photo editing programs – Google Photos on your phone, the Photos app in Windows 11, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2025, and the rest.

Google is using AI behind the scenes to enhance Google Maps, Google Translate, and more.

These changes are coming to your world whether you approve or disapprove of them. Take my advice: start the conversation. Ask an AI to explain something to you. Bounce ideas off Google Gemini. Give NotebookLM some documents and ask questions about them. Let an AI help you plan a trip. With luck you’ll have an “ah-ha!” moment when you feel the power and start to understand what all the fuss is about.

AI. It’s not just for nerds any more.