My thoughts on the Ai battles and predictions for 2026

#ai

The Ai companies are battling. Every week there’s a new release of a shiny new model. Every week one Ai company tries to outdo the rest. It is a quest supremacy, a battle to see who will come out on top. And everyone has a hot take or prediction for the year to come, like Nilay Patel’s recent spicy 2026 take that OpenAI will fail or Kara Swisher predicting that Google will overtake OpenAI.

(Joanna Stern possibly has the best ever spicy take on Ai: “Updated Siri is amazing and it’s so good people start falling in love with it…People are having sex with Siri.”)

While every YouTuber is pontificating on these Ai tools and doing rapid-fire side-by-side comparisons for coding and image generation, I want to provide a real-world take as someone who has used many of these Ai products in 2025 for probably more mundane, practical, and common tasks.

👩🏽‍💻 my use case(s)

• I work in research, so I spend a lot of time reading and summarizing information; putting together written products of all types; and collecting and analyzing information. I use Ai for all these tasks, to varying degrees.
• I also need to frequently generate images, flow charts, infographics, and other visuals. Usually these are draft products that serve as the foundation for something more formal. Some generated images are for presentations or to guide meetings. Frequently I am generating images using my own information.
• I also use Ai a lot in my personal life, for things like making purchases, doing basic searches, summarizing information, developing a workout schedule, analyzing house-related data….the personal use cases are endless.

✅ what I need in an ai tool

• Timely, current, and accurate information. It has to be able to access real-time information.
• The ability to generate analyses, not just simple takes.
• The ability to analyze specific information that I identify as relevant.
• A large context window so that a chat can analyze information over time.
• Image and infographic generation.
• Parity across devices (mobile and laptop).

🤖 the ai tools I use (currently)

Perplexity.ai. This is my go-to for real-time searching. It is great at finding the most relevant and current sources of information and summarizing them in a way that does not lose detail. Everything Perplexity returns is directly cited, so it is very easy to go back to the original source of information. Good when I want to go right to the source or even identify potential sources for further work.

Gemini by Google. Gemini is my all-around, jack-of-all trades Ai tool. This replaced ChatGPT this year, as it is faster and, in my experience, works better at things like image generation and not hallucinating. Plus I have made a few Gemini Gems that I find really helpful. They are much easier to create and keep updated compared to custom GPTs. I have mixed feelings about committing more deeply to the Google ecosystem, so was definitely a reluctant convert, but I have to acknowledge that Gemini is pretty awesome.

NotebookLM. NotebookLM is my research assistant and it is fantastic. For me it solves a one of the biggest issues in Ai is being able to curate the information analyzed. With NotebookLM I can curate my own sources, including my own notes, and analyze that information. NotebookLM is fantastic at developing infographics based on curated information and it can even turn a batch of information into a podcast.

During the last year I have also used ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek. For me, these tools were direct competitors to Gemini. While ChatGPT and Claude have released solid updated in the last few month, Gemini still wins for me as the most solid and useful all-around Ai tool.

🕸️ ai news from around the web

• OpenAI is under pressure as Google, Anthropic gain ground
• OpenAI fires back at Google with GPT-5.2 after ‘code red’ memo
• OpenAI vs Google vs Anthropic: The Complete 2025 AI War Analysis
• OpenAI's ChatGPT 5.1 versus Google's Gemini 3: Here's how the models stack up in the AI race
• Dec 3, 2025 • AI Race Heats Up as OpenAI, Google, and Tech Giants Drive Innovation and Security
• The AI Revolution in December 2025: Latest Trends Changing the World and Potential Applications in Manufacturing
• Race to AGI Daily Digest - Friday, December 12, 2025
• December 2, 2025, AI-Now - Agents, Models, Hardware Wars - Deep Dive with Alex and Jessica
• The AI Wave: Opportunities, Disruptions, and What Comes Next | Live Panel (December 4, 2025)
• Perplexity vs Google AI Overviews 2025 Which Search Wins
• GPT-5.2 vs. Gemini 3 Pro, Larry Ellison’s Big Bet & Risk, Nebius CBO on AI Cloud War | Dec 12, 2025
• Race to AGI Daily Digest - Saturday, December 13, 2025
• AI Race Heats Up With U.S. Megadeals Vs. China’s Open Source