I like google ai and ChatGPT for research purposes

I mean personally I think the crowd against anything that exists as AI has gotten a bit annoying. But I will defend that I think this is one of the best possible uses for AI and will stay in the future (as long as generative AI doesn't completely eat shit in the next few years)

The reason why I like it is because it's much easier to find the info you need without specific search terms. The AI is designed to make connections easily, so it's able to figure out what you want to know without having the exact search terms. If you're not super tech savvy then classic googling can be a serious headache.

On top of that I love that you can also ask follow up questions, make comparisons, summarize in simpler terms, etc.
Which in my experience has been really useful for actually understanding what I just learned rather than it going in one ear and out the other. This specifically makes it really useful for finding info that's really specific and niche that even googling might not be able to find. For a book I'm writing taking place in 1980's Czechoslovakia, I wanted to figure out how much gas would cost for a scene. And wasn't able to find literally anything by googling but was able to with the help of AI

It definitely has a lot of kinks to work out. My biggest issue is that the AI will confidently make up a fact if it doesn't know. Or it will pull from sketchy or unreliable sources. With the rise of AI content on the web, I'm mildly suspicious these generative AI models will be rapidly destroying themselves over the next few years, so I'm not entirely sure if these will improve much more or be around to stay. Either way, I'm enjoying it at the moment as a naturally curious person who always wants to learn things!