Which AI should you use?
There's no single "best" AI — there's the best one for the job in front of you. Here's a plain-English comparison of the major tools, so you can pick with confidence instead of hype.
Reviewed June 2026. AI moves fast — capabilities and prices change often, so treat this as a starting map, not gospel.
Text & reasoning (the chatbots)
| Model | Best for | Strengths | Watch-outs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Anthropic | Writing, reasoning, coding, long documents | Thoughtful, excellent writing and editing, follows instructions closely, handles very long inputs, careful and nuanced. | Can be cautious or over-explain. Will push back if a request seems unsafe. |
| ChatGPT OpenAI | Everyday all-rounder, brainstorming, images in chat | Versatile and fast, huge ecosystem, voice mode, generates images inline, widely supported. | Can be confidently wrong — always verify facts. Quality varies by which model tier you're on. |
| Gemini | Research, Google integration, multimodal tasks | Plugs into Google (Search, Docs, Gmail), strong at understanding images and video, generous context and free tier. | Answer quality can vary. Best when you lean on its Google integrations. |
Image generation
| Model | Best for | Strengths | Watch-outs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano Banana Google (Gemini image) | Photorealistic edits, character consistency | Edit images by just describing the change, keep a character/subject consistent across images, strong realism. | Newer; styles and limits shift quickly. |
| Midjourney Midjourney | Beautiful, artistic, stylized images | Gorgeous, painterly results with little effort; great for concept art and mood. | Less precise control over exact details and text; subscription-based. |
| DALL·E OpenAI (in ChatGPT) | Quick images inside a chat | Convenient — generate and tweak images while you chat; decent at text in images. | Less artistic polish than Midjourney for stylized work. |
Video generation
| Model | Best for | Strengths | Watch-outs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veo | High-quality text-to-video | Strong realism and motion, good prompt understanding. | Access and limits vary; clips are short. |
| Sora OpenAI | Creative text-to-video | Imaginative, cinematic results from a text description. | Physics and consistency can wobble on complex scenes. |
| Runway Runway | Pro video editing + generation | Editing tools for creators (extend, restyle, motion brush), not just generation. | More of a pro tool; learning curve. |
Quick answer: which should I use?
- Writing, editing, or careful reasoning → Claude
- An everyday all-rounder for almost anything → ChatGPT
- Research tied to Google (Docs, Search, email) → Gemini
- Beautiful, artistic images → Midjourney
- Editing real photos / consistent characters → Nano Banana
- Short video from a prompt → Veo or Sora
The honest truth
Most people do great with one strong text model + one image model. Pick based on the work you actually do, learn to prompt it well, and you'll get more from it than someone hopping between five tools they barely understand. (That's our whole philosophy — see Our Stance on AI.)
Get the prompts that make any of them shine
NeLocker is a curated vault of prompts for every model — with guides on how to use each one.
Try free prompts →