Week 8: There is an AI for everything –?and I got very much used to them

Welcome back to Week 8 of my journey into a cybernetic life. The year has just begun, and there’s still snow outside, yet I already feel that my life has changed significantly. Have you ever had those moments when a task feels wrong to do manually because you know there's a smarter way? I've noticed that these moments have been happening to me much more frequently lately. My expectations for productivity have increased, which is why I’ve decided to reflect on what has changed and share the AI stack I regularly use.

But first let me bring you all up to date with the AI News of the week:

AI News of the week

• On February 10–11, the AI Action Summit took place in Paris, where global leaders gathered to discuss the future of AI, focusing on safety, sustainability, and governance. Recognizing the need for international collaboration in AI development, the summit led to an agreement advocating for AI that is "open," "ethical," and internationally governed. However, key nations such as the U.S. and the UK did not sign.
• This week, the French startup Mistral AI launched "Le Chat", a European AI challenger to Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and CoPilot. Designed to be a fast and versatile AI assistant, it can handle tasks such as drafting reports, writing code, analyzing documents, generating images, and conducting real-time web searches. Try it out here: Le Chat.
• Additionally, Sam Altman from OpenAI announced that GPT-5 will be available with unlimited access for all users at the standard intelligence level, while Plus and Pro subscribers will gain access to its highest-tier capabilities.

Something changed – manual tasks feel cumbersome! ??

I've realized that my perception has shifted over the past few weeks. Every time I start a task—whether it's reading a long text, writing a report, creating a slide, searching for an image, or coding—it feels cumbersome. I've become so accustomed to simply expressing what I want and letting AI provide a strong first draft that we refine together. Working without AI now feels like being offline or trying to work with just pen and paper. It’s as if I’m losing some of my capabilities!

I never expected this shift to happen so quickly. I still remember my amazement when ChatGPT first learned to understand pictures and discuss them with me. But now, I find myself getting impatient when an image isn’t recognized properly or when Photoshop’s generative expand produces odd results.

Looking at the Kano model, these AI-driven features have rapidly moved from being exciting differentiators to basic expectations—within just months! Any industry-leading product that fails to keep up with AI risks being disrupted by the sheer convenience and productivity that challengers can now offer.

I stopped writing code and got addicted to Chat based Software Development

I have a background in software engineering, that's why I occasionally write software in my free time. I know all the SOLID, DRY and Clean-Code pattern that I learned to write maintainable code as a professional software engineer, but recently I don't really care about them anymore. I discovered chat based development and I very much got addicted to it.

Chat based development means, that you in the role of a product owner or requirements engineer are talking to an AI agent that then writes the code for you. You review the results and refine them with subsequent prompts. It's like having a skilled junior developer next to you that is motivated to execute what you tell them.

After Github Co-Pilot started with smart code completion a while back, this is represents the next level. The IDE (integrated development environment) automatically recognizes the context (which source files) are affected and sends when with your query to an LLM (often Claude AI, which is very good for these type of tasks). The code that the LLM returns is then diff'ed with the original and shown to you –?similar to a pull request that you can accept, partially accept or decline.

It's absolutely impressive to see how fast I can progress in developing an app of any language, without knowing the language and the ecosystem. So I started to develop a mobile app with Flutter - without knowing many concepts of flutter. Even my son (9) was able to add some features to it.

It's impressive, but not yet perfect – but it shows where the journey is going

I experienced that you are incredibly fast in starting a new project and adding the first features. But when it gets more complex and your codebase is growing, the more likely the AI is failing with it's tasks. So you still need human intelligence to tell the AI which context (files, folders) to consider for solving the task. I see this boundary of complexity shifting every week, so that I agree with the words of Mark Zuckerberg that said: "He expects to replace a mid-level developer by an agent by the end of 2025"

A disruption on the IDE market – without agentic AI you are soon out of business

A few years back it was highly complex to develop a development environment with real-time refactoring capabilities. So only a few big players were able to do this (JetBrains, Microsoft, Eclips, Apple, Google). What I discover now, is that there are tons of new IDE's on the market that leverage LLM capabilities for refactoring (often Claude Sonnet). Some of these players are:

• Windsurf AI <-- My Favorite!
• Cursor AI
• Marscode
• Aide.dev

No text without ChatGPT Canvas and my Custom GPTs

It feels almost obvious to talk about the use of ChatGPT in my daily work – it has become so normal. I guess (hope) many of you are doing this too. Let me share more in detail how I use it:

A Custom GPT to match my point of view and tone of voice

In my role as Chief Technologist and thought leader at Zühlke you can imagine that creating decks for keynotes, pitches or other presentations makes up a major part of my work.

To not everytime repeat who I am and what I do, what my point of view and tone of voice is, I created a Custom GPT called "Virtual Christian" that holds all this information. So the results get much better and sound really like me in the first round. ChatGPT introduced some memory functionality recently that somewhat act like a custom GPT but not to that extent.

To fine tune the Custom GPT I uploaded several texts I created (presentations, posts, articles) and let it extract my point of view and tone of voice.

Using Canvas to develop longer texts

When writing longer texts, I always use ChatGPT's Canvas feature. It lets me draft a text and refine it with precision by selecting a phrase or paragraph and providing an edit prompt to rewrite just that section.

For the initial draft, I write down all my thoughts as bullet points – much like briefing an editor. The wording isn’t polished or grammatically correct, but it includes all the key aspects. Then I refine it paragraph by paragraph.

Generating stock photos (+ videos) becomes normal

I'm a big fan of Adobe Firefly –?it's a simple yet powerful tool within the Adobe Creative Suite for generating images. I primarily use it to create visuals for my presentations and pitch decks. It offers text-to-image capabilities and, more recently, text-to-video features (still in beta).

Other great video generators, such as Google's VEO2 and OpenAI's SORA, are also available, but they have yet to be officially released in Europe.

Generating Music with AI

I've discovered AI music generation as a new passion. Under my stage name, Chris Motion, I produce and publish AI-generated music on Spotify.

AI music generation works much like other AI tools—you describe your ideas in a prompt, and the AI creates lyrics and music. From there, you fine-tune or remix it with additional prompts until you're happy with the final result.

?? ?? Listen to my songs on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0YVRQuGqdh5jjiwx0f248I

Conclusion

After just eight weeks on my AI journey, I can confidently say that AI has changed my life. I've grown accustomed to its convenience, flexibility, and productivity. It has empowered me to create music, express my creativity through images and videos, and write texts in much better English. Overall, my ability to express myself has greatly improved. I now feel like a director, leading a virtual team of AI agents that work for me in an iterative process. It’s like running a small agency –?and I can’t imagine ever giving this up. AI has become an essential part of my daily life.

?? How is AI transforming your lifes? What tools do you use?

Share your experiences in the comments!

Christian ??