Which GenAI platform should I be willing to 'go pro' and pay for?

It's one of the first questions I inevitably field when having initial engagements with professionals curious about the Aibly Executive Coaching sessions I launched from earlier this year, following a good two years of immersing myself in a range of Generative AI tools and professional work applications:

"I've been dabbling with a couple of free subscriptions... Is there one I should be willing to pay for and 'go pro' with?"

My response to that is YES, if you are serious about really exploring the capacity of Generative AI to augment and amplify your professional capability, then you should be willing to pay the US$20 a month it costs to access an upgraded (and, very importantly, private) version. A pro subscription routinely unlocks enhanced features like faster processing, access to more advanced models, and greater usage limits, making it significantly more powerful and reliable for professional and high-stakes tasks.

But rather than one to start with, I always recommend going that little bit further and being willing to pay for pro access to two platforms in particular. One is OpenAI 's ChatGPT, and the other is Anthropic 's Claude AI.

Considering that there is a now an increasingly diverse field of Generative AI platforms to choose from (and potentially pay for) - in addition to ChatGPT and Claude we have things like Microsoft Copilot, Google's Gemini (pity they changed that from 'Bard' - I liked that more), Perplexity and Meta AI - here's why I advise starting with these two in particular.

The case for ChatGPT in your starting toolkit

ChatGPT was obviously the breakout star of publicly available Generative AI, and is still the biggest and brightest, with advanced models coming out more quickly and with accompanying serious speed and versatility (and of course some occasionally intriguing imperfections). With image generation from DALL-E now fully integrated into the pro version and things like voice features, 'image reading' and capacity to build out custom GPTs, it's the stand out GenAI suite that is (and is most likely to be for the forseeable future) best in class. For exploratory, creative, multimodal power, ChatGPT edges most others.

Yes, ChatGPT does power the version of Copilot you may be considering - but using an older version that doesn't have all the enhancements and fine-tuned capabilities available in the standalone ChatGPT Pro subscription. Yes, Copilot can be an awesome help with a range of tasks across Microsoft 365 applications (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.), but it's still got a lot of teething problems and you should probably be waiting for your work/enterprise to pay for that premium version. (Google's Gemini offers similar - and from what I hear already better - integration on a pro subscription with other parts of the Google suite, but its GenAI still has a ways to go to catch up to other providers).

The case for going with Claude

Then there's Claude AI, which is powerful, elegant, has an awesome 'context window' (meaning the size of input you can upload into it in the way of text/attachments). It is especially strong in retaining context over longer interactions (the model's ability to remember and utilize information from earlier parts of a conversation, even as new information is added), making it ideal for complex problem-solving sessions or extended projects. This context-holding capability is a standout feature, especially for professionals needing sustained and coherent output across multiple prompts. Compared to most other Generative AI tools, Claude often edges ahead in analytical and reasoning tasks - not least because of that serious grunt it brings with the wide context window and deep context retention capacity.

But, very importantly, Claude comes with advanced ethical guardrails presumed and baked in - that other providers may allude or aspire to but just don't (yet) come close to delivering on with the same reassurance. Anthropic (Claude's developer) prioritizes ethical AI through what it calls its Constitutional AI approach, which embeds ethical principles directly into the training process (rather than relying solely on post-training filters or rules). I've consistently seen how robustly Claude adheres to its professed ethical guidelines, protecting user privacy, avoiding harmful content and maintaining transparency about its capabilities and limitations.

Claude tends to mind its Ps and Qs. While other major AI providers like OpenAI and Google also claim to focus on ethics, Claude's robust framework (to me) offers some additional reassurance to professionals who may be handling sensitive data or navigating complex ethical landscapes.

And the case for subscribing to both

By leveraging both ChatGPT and Claude AI as pro subscriptions, you gain access to a sort of powerhouse duo that can cover a lot of bases.

ChatGPT's creative prowess, multimodal capabilities, and rapid innovation can effectively complement Claude's analytical strength, extensive context retention, and robust ethical framework. In some ways it's like teaming up the innovative and entrepreneurial aspects of your work with the responsible and ethically grounded critical thinking aspects. It's potentially a combination that allows you to tackle a wide spectrum of tasks - from brainstorming and content creation to deep analysis and sensitive data consideration.

Indeed, a huge advantage I've found to having both subscriptions is to effectively bounce them off each other, by giving them the same inputs and tasks to compare and contrast the different outputs and approaches, and/or to have them review the other's output and then iterate new rounds of content.

They're both individually excellent; together they can be brilliant.

And that's not all...

I continue to explore and test a variety of Generative AI platforms to assist and augment my professional capacity, as you should as well. It can be a case of horses for courses (or courses for horses, depending on your perspective) - you might, for example want something more search and research enabling (in which case Perplexity might be a better go to for pro subscription), or with broader suite integration benefits (like Copilot or Gemini).

But when asked, these are the two I routinely recommend for professionals getting ready to invest more actively in their Generative AI-assisted discovery and development.

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Generative AI (ChatGPT and Claude AI) was used to assist with some parts of this article's development, via draft comparions, reviews and recommendations.

The image for this post was generated with ChatGPT, depicting how it sees itself and Claude as "AI interfaces represented by holographic shapes—one vibrant and flowing, the other geometric and precise—surrounded by dynamic streams of data."