Whenever AI comes up in conversation with creatives, eye muscles start to twitch. And that's not surprising. Most of us have lost work to generative AI over the last few years, and without going into details, that's definitely included me.

But that doesn't mean I've discounted AI completely. In fact, quite the reverse. Analytical AI can save you a ton of time and energy, without generating anything at all. Tasks like sorting, scheduling, transcribing, searching; the kind of boring, routine work that you'd happily hand off to an intern, if you had one.

Of course, you have to be mega-careful. Just like most interns, AI isn't 100% accurate or reliable, and possibly never will be. You'll always have to double-check what it does, and often that means it's quicker to just do it all yourself.

However, through trial and error, I've found there are times when it's brilliant, and so I thought it might be helpful to share them in this article. While you might pursue a different creative discipline than me (I'm primarily a writer who takes photographs as part of my work), I hope you'll find some inspiration here for how to sharpen your AI skills.

01. Finding stuff in Google Drive: Ever since I went freelance in 2016, I've used Google's suite of free software, including Gmail, Google Drive and Google Sheets. You'd think, being Google, that it would be easy to search for stuff within these apps. But actually, over the years, I've wasted a lot of time trying – and typically failing – to do so. All that's changed, though, since Google added an AI-powered search facility.