I get asked what AI tools I actually use. Not "what's trending" — what survives contact with my real life: five classes, a business, apps I'm building, and a brand that runs on content.
Four made the cut. Here's the stack and why each one earned it.
NotebookLM: my study weapon
I fed NotebookLM one of the hardest chapters in my Old English textbook — the kind of dense academic writing that makes you read the same paragraph four times — and it turned it into an actual study system. Not a summary. A system: explain it back to me, reframe it, quiz me, talk it through.
I wrote the whole field test up here: NotebookLM Started This Whole Damn Thing. Short version: it's free with a Google account, it only works from sources you give it (so it can't go inventing your textbook), and it's the single best study tool I've found for material that fights back.
Try it: notebooklm.google.com
Muse: the one that does things
Most AI chats at you. Muse does things. It reads my email, manages my calendar, does research, drafts posts, builds graphics, tracks my goals — it's basically the assistant I couldn't afford to hire, except it never sleeps and doesn't judge my 3 AM ideas.
If NotebookLM is my study brain, Muse is my operations department.
Try it: muse.ai
ChatGPT: my editor and brainstorming partner
ChatGPT is where I take rough drafts and make them sound like me on my best day. Academic editing, creative writing, design feedback, app building — it's the tool I open when I know what I want to say but the words are being difficult.
Everybody knows this one. It earned its spot because it keeps earning it.
Try it: chatgpt.com
Firefly: how Mabbit stays Mabbit
Every graphic on this site, every version of Mabbit you've seen — that's Adobe Firefly. It's the best tool I've found for character consistency: I can generate my mascot over and over and she still looks like herself, which is shockingly hard with AI image tools.
And here's the part nobody believes: the free tier gives you 25 generative credits a month, and for my workflow they stretch. I've built an entire brand's visuals on the free plan.
Student? Adobe's student plan runs about $19.99/month for the first year and gets you unlimited standard image generation plus 4,000 premium credits a month. If you're generating daily, that's the upgrade that pays for itself.
Try it: firefly.adobe.com
The point
I'm not an "AI enthusiast." I'm a broke student running a brand who needs tools that pull their weight. These four do. If one of them stops earning its spot, I'll say so — that's the deal.