AI Quick Tips 84: 6 Reasons not to use AI chatbots

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and CoPilot seem to be growing in popularity every day.  That doesn’t mean that there is no downside.  There’s always a downside.

There are lots of reasons why you might not want to use AI chatbots.  Here are 6 -

1. They are known to hallucinate (aka make up information)
2. They are not always good at pretending to be human (i.e. writing often lacks feeling)
3. There are potential legal implications of using some output
   1. Companies have policies stating that the user is responsible for any output they choose to use.  This includes legally protected information (i.e. trademarked, patented, etc.)
4. Can be biased towards or against certain groups
5. Has a default bias towards being neutral
6. Using them is a skill and, if you haven’t built up your proficiency, a task can take much longer if you use an AI tool

We use AI tools daily and write a blog about them, so these reasons are not strong enough to keep us away.  We do want to paint an accurate picture, though, and they are not right for everyone or for every situation.