What's the best AI?

You'll be surprised at the result. What does it mean for your business?

Choosing the right AI is not a tech hobby. It will directly affect how much time your business saves, what reductions you can achieve in production costs, how quickly decisions get made, and ultimately your profitability.

In this briefing, we put ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and other serious contenders under practical business pressure for weeks: research, writing, analysis, documents, meetings, customer work and everyday decision-making.

A clear strategy emerges. Not just which tool is strongest, but which one you should use for what, where people waste money on overlapping subscriptions, and how to build a setup that genuinely saves time.

There is a best answer for most business owners. It is not the answer most people expect. Over the coming weeks we unwrap strategy, time saving, and profit maximisation. But first - let's answer the toughest question. Who's best?

Answer one: The Humans decide

There is a website called Chatbot Arena that does something genuinely clever. Rather than asking experts to judge AI models, it runs them blind against each other. Real human users ask real questions, two anonymous AIs answer simultaneously, and the user picks the better response, without knowing which model is which. Over six million votes have been cast this way.

AI tools now have something a bit like a chess rating. It is called an Elo rating and impressively, Elo is named after Arpad Elo, the Hungarian-American physicist who created the chess ranking system which basically ranks players on who wins. The same basic idea is used on public AI comparison sites, where models move up or down based on head-to-head contests. People are shown two AI answers and asked which one they prefer, without knowing which model wrote which answer. Over millions of comparisons, a ranking emerges that reflects how real users judge these tools in practical use, not just how impressive they sound in a product launch. It is not perfect, and it should not be treated as gospel, but it is a useful reminder: the best AI is not always the one with the loudest marketing. It is the one people consistently prefer when the answers are placed side by side.

As at June 2026, the top of the table looks like this:

Notice something? The top five are split across three companies - Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (GPT), and Google (Gemini). The gap between first and fifth is just six Elo points. In practical terms, these are statistically tied.

“If AI Brief part 1 has saved me hours, the premium section probably saved me a week.”

Here's the thing nobody tells you: this table changes every few days. Every time one company releases a new model, someone else catches up or pulls ahead. The "best AI" today may be third by next month. There is no permanent winner. The race is genuinely that close, but Claude and ChaptGPT seems to be in a very close race at the front in 2026.

Answer 2: We asked the AIs to judge themselves.

We asked each AI the same question directly. "Which AI is best for business use right now?". Every one of them said ChatGPT. Claude. Gemini. Copilot. Perplexity. Not one picked itself. That's either remarkable intellectual honesty or a very interesting quirk of how these models are trained. Probably both. These systems are built to be accurate rather than promotional, so when asked a straight question, they give the straight answer, even when it flatters a competitor.

It also reflects reality. ChatGPT got there first, stayed there longest, and has become the default verb to "which AI should I use?" in the same way Google became the default answer to "how do I find something online." The others are catching up. Some are ahead on specific tasks. But the consensus answer, including from the AIs themselves is ChatGPT.

Answer three: Which AI should you build your working habits around?

Important: The rest of this article gives you the real working answer: which AI to use, what to use it for, where not to waste money, and how and when to review your setup.

Save hours - we've done all the heavy work so you don't have to.

Have a free week on us and check out the business-end of this article, how we made our decision, the creative, risk-averse and money saving conclusion we came to, the final recommendation and most importantly, the six-month operating plan. In the next weeks ... more critical and impactful information we've worked through so you don't have to.

Coming up: Saving one week a month using AI, how we did it, how we measured it. Protecting your data. Templates and tricks to drive profitability and gain marginal advantage. Agentic, memory, and much more.

In AI Brief next week: The AI stack for a serious small business: what premium models to buy, and how exactly to use them every day to gain an unbeatable edge.

It's all in AI Brief.

Risk free: Select "Monthly" and have a week on us - enjoy this article and many more to come - your dependable independent AI companion.