Chantelle Hamilton saves five hours and about $150 a week by using ChatGPT, which she describes as an “absolute godsend” to structure meal planning for her family.
The Brisbane woman is one of about 3 million Australians who now use AI-generated content to simplify their lives, according to a survey of 1079 people by comparison website Finder.
Brisbane woman Chantelle Hamilton uses ChatGPT to save time on everyday tasks, freeing up extra time to play at the park with her sons Tyler (left) and Jhye. Sarah Hodge
Chief executives of companies that are leading in artificial intelligence, including Alphabet’s DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, have warned about the existential harms of the fast-developing technology.
But for people such Ms Hamilton, who describes herself as tech-savvy without being desperately up-to-date (she still uses an iPhone from 2020), ChatGPT has unlocked new ways to save time.
The 33-year-old said ChatGPT had enabled her to skip hours poring over recipes to feed her two sons, whom she called “bottomless pits”, and use the time saved to play with them at the park.
She plugs in her weekly budget and adds variables such as dietary restrictions, as well as the number of servings or calories needed, before getting ChatGPT to put all the ingredients from the meal plan into a shopping list.
“This function alone has saved me pulling my hair out trying to come up with new meals and allowed me to spend that extra time doing other things I love,” Ms Hamilton told The Australian Financial Review.
“Weekly meal planning is a dreaded task that can be so time-consuming to the point you just give up and have cereal for dinner. ChatGPT has been an absolute godsend.”
The other big benefit for Ms Hamilton has been avoiding impulse shopping at the supermarket on an empty stomach after work.
She estimates that this, along with more efficient shopping and less wastage, has helped her save $150 a week on groceries.
Ms Hamilton, who also uses ChatGPT to spice up the family trivia night with fresh questions, said the technology had been popular with the whole family. Her two young sons use it for coding, while her 88-year-old grandmother uses it find recipes and plan meals.
More than 30 per cent of Gen Z Australians use ChatGPT in their daily lives, according to Finder, along with 17 per cent of Gen Y, 9 per cent of Gen X and 3 per cent of Baby Boomers.
The research found that 6 per cent of Australians use it for work, while 4 per cent – about 811,000 people – have used it to write resumes and cover letters.
Three per cent (609,000 people) have used the AI service to write notes for a job interview, while 2 per cent have used it to write blogs for a business, write an assignment or generate a text message to their partner.
A range of listed and unlisted companies, including Coles, Wisetech Global and Quad Lock, have previously told the Financial Review they have been experimenting with ChatGPT in their businesses, and designing new products incorporating its technology.
Most were largely impressed with the speed and insights offered by the language model developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, but none believed ChatGPT – a publicly available chatbot trained on all the information on the internet (until September 2021) – is good enough to replace human workers.
Rob Ward, the co-founder of Quad Lock, which generates more than $100 million in annual revenue making smartphone mounts and cases for bikes, cars and boats, said he had been using ChatGPT for marketing tasks.
He said it had been useful in helping derive insights into the company’s online brand positioning, and brainstorming ideas about how to appeal to new audiences.
Do you use ChatGPT or another AI processing tool in an interesting way? If you’re happy to share it with us, email explainers@afr.com
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