Google’s in-house AI chatbot Bard, will reportedly be changing its name to Gemini and launching a premium tier this week, according to a recently leaked document from Google ad developer Dylan Rousell.

In the chatbot’s most major revamp to date, Google Bard will also be launching an Android app and improving its user interface to “reduce visual distractions, improve legibility, and simplify navigation”, the document reads.

If you’re a current Bard user or are considering switching from its chatbot competitor ChatGPT, here’s everything you need to know about Google Bard’s upcoming makeover.

Goodbye Google Bard, Hello Gemini

Google Bard is dropping its name and rebranding to Gemini, coordinating with its multimodal AI model of the same name.

While Google is yet to confirm the change officially, news of its transformation was leaked in a Google changelog under the heading “Bard is now Gemini”. The document, which also lists other important updates about the chatbot, was dated February 7, suggesting that changes will go live this Wednesday.

Google added a new changelog for Bard, and — oh boy — it's a big one!

The availability in Canada is awesome! That said I don't really understand the limitations with the app. That's disappointing as someone who lives in Europe.

Oh by the way... https://t.co/xM2snHVYJ9 is real. pic.twitter.com/QKgKrRjmM4

— Dylan Roussel (@evowizz) February 3, 2024

With the word Bard meaning poet or storyteller – as in William Shakespeare’s epithet the Bard of Avalon’ – the name was originally intended to reflect the chatbot’s linguistic capabilities. It’s also been rumored that the name took inspiration from the fantasy role-play game Dungeons and Dragons, which features playable characters called Bards.

However, popularity among literary and gaming nerds aside, Google Bard’s new name ultimately makes much more sense, as the AI model Gemini was integrated into the chatbot last December.

Google Gemini to Roll Out an Advanced Plan

A name change isn’t the only thing coming to Google Bard. According to Google’s recent changelog leaked on social platform X, the chatbot will also be launching a new “Advanced” tier.

Gemini’s Advanced tier was first announced in December 2023, and was built using Google’s most sophisticated AI model Gemini Ultra. The plan will boast a number of upgrades from the free service, including “expanded multi-modal capabilities,” better coding support, and “the ability to upload and more deeply analyze files, documents, data, and more”, the document reads.

The plan is expected to be rolled out alongside the other changes on February 7. It will be available in over 150 countries but will be optimized for the English language first. It is unclear how much the premium tier will cost, but its launch is expected to increase competition between Google Bard (now Gemini) and ChatGPT, as the advanced plan is expected to close the gap between the chatbot’s coding and reasoning abilities.

What Other Changes Are Coming to Bard?

In a win for Android users, the document also revealed that the chatbot will be launching a new app built specifically for the operating system. Gemini for Android will let users interact via “text, voice or images” and the app will also seamlessly integrate into all G-Suite apps, and platforms like YouTube.

The changelog notes that the new app will only be available on “select devices” at first, which are likely to be Tensor-powered Pixels and the Galaxy S23 according to previous reports from 9to5google.

There are also rumors about a new messaging feature, which would let users add a contact page for the chatbot and conserve with it as they would do with regular contacts in a similar way to Snapchat. If substantiated, these changes will mark the chatbot’s biggest-ever transformation and also send a clear signal to competitors like OpenAI and Apple that Google isn’t shy of investing heavily in its AI future.

While successful trials across the world have already encouraged some companies to offer a 4-day workweek, artificial intelligence might just be the catalyst to making the new-age workplace policy more widespread.

According to a survey of 1000 US-based business leaders we recently conducted, those who said their company had extensive experience using AI were more than twice as likely to be open to a 4-day workweek than those who reported that they’d never have used the technology.

So, if your business is beginning to implement AI tools, apps, and systems with increasing frequently, a 4-day workweek might not be quite as far away as you might think.

Can Artificial Intelligence Make a 4-Day Work Week A Reality?

According to Tech.co’s Impact of Technology on the Workplace report, 93% of senior leaders at organizations where AI is integral to business function are considering or have already implemented a 4-day workweek, with only the remaining 7% unsure if they will.

Remarkably, no senior leaders who had implemented AI “fully” into their business said they wouldn’t consider a 4-day workweek.

By contrast, only 41% of business leaders who said AI wasn’t being used in their workplaces at all said they would consider a 4-day workweek, while a further 21% of this AI-averse cohort said they weren’t sure.

Source: Tech.co

As you can see from the chart above, the extent to which AI is being implemented and used in a business directly correlates to how open they are to implementing a 4-day working week. The more you use AI, the more a 4-day week starts to seem appealing, it seems.

While AI is often portrayed as a major threat to a huge range of job roles spanning numerous sectors, data like this suggests that the exact nature of the disruption it will cause over the next few years is unlikely to be black and white.

Granted, AI will almost certainly eliminate some jobs from the workforce, but it’ll also open up new opportunities and change existing roles too – much like the internet. It could well provide the basis for a shift to better arrangements for workers in the form of a shorter week – which may come sooner rather than later for the staff at companies exploring smarter ways to work.

Which AI tools are Businesses Really Using?

AI tools are being used extensively by a lot of employees at a wide range of businesses, but what tools are employees actually using when they say they’re using “AI”?

Despite lots of competing tools being brought to market since the launch of ChatGPT back in November 2022, OpenAI’s creation is still the most widely-used generative AI tool on the market, with 65% of business leaders reporting that it’s used at their company.

Google’s generative AI platform Bard, which is also one of the best AI chatbots we’ve tested, came in a distant second with 48% of businesses reporting that they used it.

Microsoft’s Bing Chat (now CoPilot) trailed even further. The third-most used generative AI tool was favored by just over a fifth (21%) of businesses, while 10% of businesses reported using Claude, a ChatGPT alternative launched by AI startup Anthropic.

Source: Tech.co

The AI Revolution Rolls On

It’s clear that both the availability and usage of tools like ChatGPT and Bard have fundamentally changed the way that many of us view work.

It makes sense that companies that are willing to take the plunge and actually attempt to implement it fully into their workplace infrastructure tend to be more open to trying out other, equally novel ways to make their workforce more productive, such as shortening their working week.

Indeed, a 4-day work week looks like it could be on the horizon in several industries, especially considering the retention of the policy in landmark trials – and AI has the potential to make this transition easier by supporting, assisting, and augmenting the working capabilities of employees.

Header image generated by Adobe Firefly

With the January blues now in the rearview mirror, many folks will be looking to kickstart their 2024 this February. This might include finding a better work/life balance, which is something a fully remote job lends itself naturally to.

Some of the benefits of fully remote work including taking back your time, as without the dreaded commute you’ll be able to devote more to your friends, family and hobbies. It can also be an effective way to cut down on spending – Dunkin’ wasn’t getting any cheaper the last time we got our morning fix.

While a certain type of CEO wants you to think that the cubicle is back in fashion, we’re here to show you that you still have a choice over how you work. Not only that, but with many fully remote job roles still hiring, you don’t have to sacrifice your career ambitions or financial prospects, either.

Without further ado, here are the best fully remote jobs you can apply for in February 2024.

Google

Google hardly has a blanket remote working policy, but it does make the perk available for a number of roles and right now there are nearly 60 vacancies listed as remote eligible at the internet giant.

These include positions for sales reps, engineers, consultants, project managers, and much more. While there are some remote jobs you can apply for with no experience, these aren’t among them and you’ll need to be properly qualified, given the company’s standing and expectations of its employees.

Typically, this might look like a few years of previous work experience in your field, along with a Bachelor’s or even Masters degree in a relevant subject. Assuming you meet the requirements, compensation at Google tends to be handsome, with salaries of $100k or more not uncommon.

Google’s Cloud division seems to be on a particular hiring spree at the minute, so here are some of the fully remote jobs you can apply for right now:

• Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google Cloud Generative AI
• Data Analytics Sales Specialist
• Technical Editor, Google Cloud
• Cyber Defense Analyst, Mandiant
• Field Sales Representative, Mid-Market Enterprise (Google Cloud)
• Program Manager, Data Center Construction
• Senior Network Operations Engineer
• Security Sales Specialist, Google Cloud

You can learn more about these vacancies, apply, and find more jobs at Google’s careers site.

Microsoft

Microsoft has long been an advocate of remote-friendly policies and currently has over 1,000 global vacancies listed for jobs open to 100% working from home.

This might seem strange, given the company has just axed nearly 2,000 jobs, but it seems likely the Redmond-based tech titan is looking to strategically redeploy resource towards future growth areas, specifically AI given how closely aligned it now is with ChatGPT owner OpenAI.

If you’re happy to consider hybrid working, the number of potential jobs you can apply for at Microsoft skyrockets even further, but in terms of fully remote ones you’re still pretty spoilt for choice.

Here are some of our favorite jobs going at Microsoft this February:

• Security Operations Center Technical Specialist
• Principal Design Manager
• Business Analytics Lead
• Senior Product Manager
• Global AI Go-To-Market Strategy Lead
• Software Engineer (multiple levels and vacancies)
• Healthcare Sales Operations Manager

You can learn more about these and many more job vacancies over at the Microsoft job search site.

Intuit

It’s no secret that software developers typically enjoy more flexibility to work fully from home than some of their peers in the tech industry. So it’s even less of a surprise that a company that Intuit, who makes big name software products like QuickBooks and MailChimp, is one of the most remote-friendly employer’s around.

In fact, Indeed’s new 2024 list of the best remote working companies ranked it below only Microsoft when it comes to flexibility. Among other things, it even offers fully virtual internships, which isn’t something you come across every day, even in the post COVID world.

As well as being big on hiring devs at the moment, you’ll find vacancies for UX specialists, designers, sales rep, and accountants. Because even in the world of payroll platforms, there needs to be someone to watch the watchers, so to speak.

Check out these fully remote jobs at Intuit:

• Marketing Manager
• Senior Manager of Strategic Success, Mailchimp
• Partner Development Manager
• Service and Support Representative
• Senior Sales Engineer
• Director Business Development
• Senior Corporate Account Exec

To apply and learn more about working at Intuit, check out the company’s job website.

Salesforce

Salesforce is almost as well known for its remote-friendly working as it for putting on one of the world’s biggest tech conferences, aka Dreamforce.

The B2B giant’s outspoken head honcho, Marc Benioff, famous proclaimed that he’s “always been a remote worker” and while the policy doesn’t apply to every position at the company, it has more than its fair share of remote positions.

At the time of writing in February 2024, there are 133 Salesforce jobs listed as open to remote working (over 100 of which are “based” in the US), which is down from the over 150 vacancies we highlighted in our December ’23 roundup but still a healthy amount.

You’ll be particularly well served if you’re a developer or engineer, but also if you’re an account exec as Salesforce is looking for a number of new folks to represent it and handle client relations right now. You might even find yourself working on projects supporting US National Security!

Here are all of our top picks for fully remote jobs at Salesforce this month.

• Senior Technical Consultant
• Project Integrator, GovCloud
• Systems Engineering Associate
• Partner Sales Manager, Digital
• Marketing Cloud Developer
• Data Scientist
• Account Executive (multiple levels and vacancies)

Check out the Salesforce careers website to learn more and to apply.

CVS Health

CVS, yes that CVS, emerged as a surprise entrant in our guide to the best fully remote jobs last month and the pharmaceutical retail giant is still punching well above its weight this February.

There are currently no less than 689 jobs at CVS listed as open to remote working, which is down from the nearly 790 vacancies we spotlighted at the start of the year. However, this is actually good news, as it means CVS has hired around 100 new remote workers in that time!

Want that to be you? Here are some of the top remote CVS jobs right now. They include a number of openings for those with less experience in the company’s admin and custom support departments, alongside directorships and senior engineering positions.

• Customer Support Associate
• Lead Director, Specialty Innovation
• Administrative Assistant
• Provider Data Services Specialist
• Engineer Project Management, Sr. Manager
• Training Delivery
• Distinguished Engineer, Public Cloud

For more on these and other remote jobs at CVS, check out the chain’s careers website.

Amazon

Amazon doesn’t have a perfect track record when it comes to its remote working policies. However, despite controversially appearing to be blocking employee promotions for those who didn’t return to the office, it does still allow home working for a number of roles.

The online mega mart is currently listing over 60 full-time remote jobs for US-eligible workers alongside a handful of global vacancies. These are mainly focused on technical areas like software development and engineering, though marketing and HR managers are also apparently able to do their jobs outside of the confines of a cubicle.

There are select opportunities for recent graduates, too, as well as the chance to join the tech giant’s Ring arm working on smart home security products.

Here are our favorite Amazon remote jobs listings for February 2024:

• Director Product, Ring Apps
• Graduate Area/Shift Manager (June 2024 Start)
• Audience and Media Strategy, Marketing Manager
• Project Engineer
• Operations Engineer
• DLS Case Manager (Seasonal, Disability and Leave Services)
• Construction Manager

Check out all of Amazon’s remote-friendly job vacancies on its career search site.

UnitedHealth Group

A final dark horse when it comes to fully remote tech jobs is UnitedHealth Group. One of the biggest names in health insurance, it boasted back in 2020 of having “over 25% of [its] employees” as telecommuters and it still actively encourages flexibility for many of its roles.

Right now, we’re talking about over 400 remote jobs at UnitedHealth, and while some are more specific to the healthcare industry, there’s plenty for tech-minded folks to consider, as well as more general vacancies for account managers in its sales team and customer service reps.

Here are some of the most interesting ones we’ve spied:

• Sales Account Manager (multiple vacancies)
• Coding Supervisor
• Healthcare IT Project Consultant
• Senior Internal Audit Analyst
• Lead Software Engineer

Head over to the UnitedHealth website to apply and browse all of its latest vacancies.

Google Bard, one of the best AI chatbots, has been updated with new image generating abilities. Best of all, it’s free to use and you can get started today.

Bard’s AI image generator is powered by a model called Imagen 2, which is the imaging equivalent of the Gemini AI large language model (LLM) that powers the generative platform’s linguistic output.

Unlike a number of similar tools, it’s not only free but also easy to use Bard’s AI image generator, provided you’re in the US at least. Even if you’re not, there might be a way. Let’s take a closer look.

How to Use Google Bard’s New AI Image Generator

Bard’s integration of an AI image generator was announced via the official Bard updates page, where the internet giant says all you need to do to start using the new tool is, “simply enter a few words to bring your imagination to life, starting with English prompts.”

There’s a little bit (but not much) more to it than that. Other than internet access to open the Bard chatbot, the main thing you need is a Google account and to be located in the US.

More on that later, including the solution we’ve found to get around the problem. For now, here’s a quick step-by-step breakdown of how to use the Bard AI generator.

1. Open Google Bard
2. Sign in to or create a Google Account
3. Enter an image generation prompt 

As ever with creating great prompts for AI, our top tip is to be as specific as possible. We’d also suggest starting your prompt by specifying you want Bard to create an image.

Your mileage with Bard’s image generator will vary depending on what you’re expecting from it. As you can see from my testing of the new Bard feature, there’s plenty of fun to be had experimenting with it, but (at least at the free tier I tested) graphic designers probably aren’t losing any sleep.

How to Use the Google Bard AI Image Generator From Anywhere

Of course, there’s a major caveat of Google Bard adding AI image generator functionality: it’s only available in select countries, like the US. Other major markets, like the UK and most of Europe, aren’t getting the feature just yet.

Fortunately, there’s an easy workaround in the form of using a VPN. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network in full, is a clever piece of software that lets you reroute your IP address via a server in another country, essentially giving your computer the illusion of being somewhere it’s not.

This means you can use software features that may only be available in certain places, such as the new Google Bard image generator. If this sounds dubious, don’t worry: in many if not most countries, VPNs are legal.

Moreover, I’ve tested this method of accessing Bard’s AI image generator from outside the US and can confirm it works. Just grab one of the best cheap VPNs, install it, and then point yourself to a US location. Reopen Bard (using an Incognito window if in doubt) and that’s all there is to it.

Google Bard’s AI Image Generator Tested

To really get to grips with Bard’s image generator, I asked it a number of more generic prompts. This allowed me to see how it fared in general terms, as most people are likely to want to use it.

For starters, I wondered what Bard would make of next weekend’s Super Bowl showdown between the Chiefs and 49ers. I know there’s copyright considerations with these kinds of images, but I didn’t know the answer was to relocate Mahomes and co to Green Bay…

The Bard image generator fared a lot better when asked to make an image of a millennial man working remotely. As with most of the Bard AI images I created, there’s a real graphic novel quality here, but I can’t say it’s entirely bad.

Lastly, I wondered what Bard’s new image generator would make of reimagining the Tech.co logo. Here’s what it came up with. It’s hardly inspired, but I’ve seen worse and this would have been legitimately usable as part of website branding 10-15 years ago.

In some cases, Bard’s guardrails were impressively robust: it declined my request to make a poster promoting season 3 of hit TV show The Bear, for instance. Google would appear to be taking its responsibilities to copyright holders seriously, or at least paying lip service to them.

Another day, another AI service being added to a business software, with ClickUp announcing a new product to make your workday a bit easier.

AI is all the rage in the business world, with companies across the industry rolling out new services to streamline operations. From ChatGPT and Google Bard to Microsoft Copilot and Grok, there’s an influx of AI-powered tools aimed at improving productivity.

ClickUp has now thrown its hat in the ring, and its new service can actually perform a few tasks unseen so far in the fight for AI supremacy.

What Is ClickUp Brain?

The new product from ClickUp is called ClickUp Brain. As the brand describes it, ClickUp Brain is a neural network powered by AI that can provide insight and assistance on projects, docs, people, and your company’s knowledge in real time.

More specifically, ClickUp Brain is an AI chatbot that is integrated with your project management system, so you can ask it questions related to business operations, like who is working on a certain project or what kind of policy is in place for a certain situation.

“AI tools are everywhere, but none are saving you time through every step of your workday. ClickUp Brain is deeply embedded in the place you do work, meaning it bridges the gaps and connects the dots across your work, your communication, and your knowledge.” – Zeb Evans, founder and CEO of ClickUp

What Can ClickUp Brain Do?

ClickUp Brain is designed to help you save time and stay better connected to projects, documents, people, and company knowledge throughout your day. That functionality is broken up into three different tools:

• AI Knowledge Manager – An AI chatbot that can help you understand contextual information about docs, tasks, and projects within the ClickUp platform.
• AI Project Manager – A virtual assistant that can manage and even automate your work, including progress reports, standups, and team updates.
• Al Writer for Work – A content generator that can create, edit, and summarize content for marketing, design, and other departments at your business.

There’s no need to wait, either. ClickUp Brain is available right now for ClickUp users, but as you can imagine, this kind of service isn’t free, even if you already pay for ClickUp. You’ll have to pay an additional $5 per month if you want access to the ClickUp Brain functionality across your system. You can try it for free, though, with a free trial.

How Does ClickUp Brain Compare to Other AI Services?

As you likely know by now, the AI market is quite crowded, with dozens of companies pushing numerous AI iterations that can perform a wide range of tasks across even more industries. Subsequently, it’s safe to ask how ClickUp Brain fits in among the others.

For starters, ClickUp Brain only works with ClickUp, a project management software that houses information on team members, projects, tasks, assignments, and other valuable business information. It’s not a general AI chatbot, like ChatGPT, that can simply answer any question you can think of.

Compared to other project management AI services like Asana and monday.com, though, ClickUp Brain is quite impressive, offering a wide range of features that aren’t available with others, like automatic team updates, video and voice transcription, and pre-built prompts.

Suffice to say, ClickUp Brain gives what is already one of the best project management platforms an addition edge over its competitors, but with AI technology always evolving, it’s anyone’s guess to who offers the best AI tool for getting business done right.

Shortly after it announced that it would be introducing a password sharing ban at some point this year, popular streaming service Disney+ has sent out emails to subscribers saying the new policy will come into effect from March 14, 2024. 

The tide has been turning in the world of streaming services recently. Netflix banned password sharing with great success last year, which has now opened the door for the practice to spread across the industry.

Disney+ and stablemate Hulu are now confirmed to be embracing a similar change in policy, with Disney now pinning a firm date on its new restrictions, though less is known about how it plans to measure compliance.

Disney+ Password Sharing Ban Date: When Do the Rules Change?

Disney+ announced in September that the streaming service would ban password sharing in the near future, but never set an official date for the change.

However, as per a new report in The Verge, the streaming giant has apparently confirmed in emails to subscribers that they have until March 14 to keep sharing their passwords. After that, new policy wording banning password sharing comes into effect, with Disney simply saying it will “analyze the use of your account to determine compliance.”

That could mean headaches for frequent travelers or people with multiple residences (poor you…), though we’ll wait until we see the new rules in action before passing judgement.

Hulu is also making similar changing, sending an email to users that the change was coming to their accounts. The following phrasing was found in those emails, acquired by The Hollywood Reporter:

“Unless otherwise permitted by your Service Tier, you may not share your subscription outside of your household. ‘Household’ means the collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein.”

This change from Hulu was expected, given that the streaming service is owned by Disney, much like Disney+. It also means ESPN+ is likely to enact a similar password sharing crackdown, as it’s also part of the same family.

How Will the Ban Be Implemented?

The biggest question when Netflix started banning password sharing was how exactly the streaming service was going to enforce this new rule. Netflix implemented a home Wi-Fi based solution that prevented devices that haven’t signed into that Wi-Fi in the last month from accessing the service.

However, despite all the new information from Disney in regard to the password sharing ban for Hulu and Disney+, an actual method has not been concretely explained.

Given the fact that Disney owns Hulu and Disney+, it’s safe to assume that the method of banning password sharing will be similar between the two platforms, but we’ll have to wait until March 14th to find out how the mouse plans to enforce this new rule.

The Success of the Netflix Password Sharing Ban

As frustrating as a password sharing ban may be to users trying to keep costs down, the reality is that the train has left the station and there’s no stopping it at this point.

This is largely due to the success of the password sharing ban from Netflix, which saw users prevented from sharing passwords unless a device had been signed into the main home’s Wi-Fi connection.

After the password sharing ban was put in place, Netflix saw an impressive rise in users and revenue. In fact, Netflix users rose by 8%, adding 5.9 million customers to its streaming service in just a single quarter.

All that to say, the days of sharing passwords on streaming services are numbered, so it might be time to pick your favorites before your bill gets too high.

The bad news just keeps coming for Elon Musk, with the controversial head of Twitter and Tesla being voted the most overrated CEO in the US.

There’s no denying that Musk is a divisive executive at this point in history. His acquisition of Twitter alone has made him a notable public figure, soliciting ire and praise alike from its millions of users.

But how do his peers feel? A new survey found that Musk is not exactly revered when it comes to other CEOs.

Survey: Musk Most Overrated CEO

According to a new survey from Fortune, Elon Musk is the most overrated CEO in the US. The survey asked hundreds of CEOs across the country which of their fellow decision makers were underappreciated and, of course, which ones were unnecessarily popular.

As for why Musk was voted most overrated by other CEOs, there are plenty of instances to choose from, but Fortune was happy to speculate on the reason the head of Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX bore the brunt of this voting.

“Musk’s aggressive goals, like his otherworldly ambitions for a Mars civilization and self-driving cars within the decade, combined with his dislike for public transit could explain why.” – Sunny Nagpaul, editorial fellow at Fortune

This isn’t Musk’s first time at the top of the “most overrated CEO” list either. In fact, Musk was voted the most overrated CEO in the US last year as well, setting up a potential dynasty for Musk over the next few years.

Elon Musk’s Award-Winning Year

Overrated might seem like a harsh word to describe Elon Musk in 2023, but the reality is that the CEO definitely earned his title last year. Here are some of the less-than-ideal news stories about Musk over the last year that may have netted him the title:

• He sued the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for criticizing Twitter.
• He put a big X on the top of Twitter headquarters and got charged for it.
• He gutted parental leave at Twitter for its employees.
• He refused to pay rent at Twitter headquarters.

All that to say, Elon Musk is definitely worthy of the overrated title when it comes to his role as CEO, and the new year likely won’t see much of a change in his antics.

Other CEOs on the List

While he may be the most notable business owners on the list, Elon Musk is not alone in being considered overrated by his fellow CEOs.

While Musk did receive an impressive 399 votes for being the most overrated CEO in the US, Bog Iger, the CEO of Disney, received a respectable 302 votes, likely due to the madness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the last few years.

The survey didn’t just gauge which CEOs are overrated either. Business owners were asked to also vote on the most underrated CEOs in the US, an honor which fell to Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, who has helped catapult the Seattle-based tech giant into the most valuable company in the world.

Stay-at-home positions are becoming a little more scarce in the US than they were a few years earlier, both due to CEO-led return-to-office crackdowns and to industry-wide tech layoffs that are still ongoing.

But who says you need to stay in the US? Digital nomads have branched out to operate in countries around the globe, from South American locales to Eastern European countries. Anywhere with a Wi-Fi hotspot and reasonable work visa regulations could serve as a great way to experience international culture while working at your own pace.

However, you’ll need to figure out a sustainable way to earn that living: Your job must be a position that can be completed entirely online and doesn’t come with timezone requirements. Thankfully, with the internet-powered global economy we have today, that’s not impossible.

The Best Digital Nomad Roles in 2024

1. Digital Marketer
2. Social Media or Community Management
3. Software Engineer
4. Web Designer
5. Virtual Assistant
6. Data Analyst

1. Digital Marketer

Digital marketers or strategists might be SEO experts, content marketers, social media managers, or a combination of the above. The core defining trait is that you help businesses connect with their audiences where they’re at (which is to say: online somewhere). You’ll likely be buying plenty of Facebook ads.

You may want to find an online store or other business that needs you to establish a full-time online presence, or you could opt to work for a larger SEO-focused organization. For one example of the latter, the large SEO company Coalition Technologies has a fully remote Digital Strategist position open currently.

You can also pick a field that you have experience in, which can help you stand out from other applicants by giving you a niche. If you have experience in hospitality, for example, you might want to apply for the Digital Marketing position open at the hospitality platform Selina right now.

Required skills: Google Analytics, SEO, SEM, email marketing, copywriting, basic graphic design and video editing ability.

Avg. Annual Salary (~): $77,381 (ZipRecruiter)

2. Social Media or Community Management

The soft skills needed to keep an entire online community on track — whether it’s the Facebook page for Pepto-Bismol or a Discord dedicated to product managers — are both important and rare. Provided the business you’re applying to is aware of this, you’ll be able to command a good salary when working as a community and/or social media manager.

It’s a good position for digital nomads, too. Even if you’re across the world in Georgia (the country, not the state!) or Portugal, you’ll be able to create a full social media schedule that continues autoposting around the clock. Alternatively, you can handle immediate online responses that might have required a night shift in the US.

Required skills: Social platform knowledge, moderation skills, community metrics, and cross-functional collaboration with marketing and customer support teams.

Avg. Annual Salary (~): $81,385 (BuiltIn)

Check out our guide to the best countries for remote workers in 2024

3. Software Engineer

There’s no denying that software engineering roles have huge potential for digital nomads: They’re frequently paid well, they’re key positions at many businesses, and many engineers can do their job fully online.

That said, it’s a skilled position that might call for knowledge across dozens of areas of expertise, making it difficult to get started with. Many of the best remote positions require at least five years of previous experience as an engineer. It’s a good remote role to have, but you may need to put in your time with an in-office position first.

To be honest, this isn’t just one role, it’s a myriad of them. You may find yourself working as a Senior BlockOps Engineer for Sygma, working in system administration, or you could be in development as a Senior Full Stack Engineer at Kalepa, just to name a few open roles available now on the Working Nomads job board.

Required skills: Java, Python, SQL… and much more.

Avg. Annual Salary (~): $147,524 (ZipRecruiter)

4. Web Designer

Web designers are always in demand online. Creating a user-friendly website is just the first step, since those websites will need regular maintenance to continue operating as intended. Eventually, they’ll need a full rehaul, and the process begins again.

Artists might find that many of their skills translate well to the higher-paying career of web design: Adobe Creative Suite can be used to craft visually appealing layouts, while knowledge of UX/UI design, design principles, color theory, and typography skills will be used frequently. Technical skills include coding for front-end development, however.

You won’t need to have a full-time position, either. Digital nomads often work freelance, finding a single gig that mean a limited amount of work but a payday that will buy several months’ worth of simple living in another country. And there’s always a chance that a freelance gig can turn into a full-time role down the road.

Required skills: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; design principles; problem-solving skills.

Avg. Annual Salary (~): $48,000-$75,000 (Coursera)

5. Virtual Assistant

It’s impossible to pin down all the tasks that a virtual assistant might handle in one day, although answering email and fielding customer service requests are two of the most common.

A typical client who’s on the hunt for a virtual assistant is someone who’s running their own relatively small ecommerce businesses: As they scale up, certain easy administrative tasks will start adding up, taking over an entrepreneur’s time. The smart move is to pay someone else to do it, and since many of these entrepreneurs are digital nomads themselves, they’ll very likely be happy to hire a fellow nomad.

The upside to being a virtual assistant is that it’s an entry-level position, making it among the easiest ways to transition to the nomadic lifestyle you’re after. The downside is that it’s also often among the lowest paying options, as well. One word of advice: Stick with the clients who are willing to pay you the most, since they’re likely the most empathetic to your needs and (counterintuitively) will be easier to work with than the business owners who pay peanuts.

Required skills: Stellar communication, fast typing speeds, spreadsheet skills, and the willingness to learn.

Avg. Annual Salary (~): Anywhere from $25,000 to $55,000

6. Data Analyst

Alongside software developers and web designers, data analysts are one of the best digital nomad tech careers. Any business will need its data collected and processed in order to make better decisions, but few people are built for the skillset that’s needed. You’ll have to learn statistics, coding, and a range of data visualization tools, in addition to having a talent for spotting patterns in the datasets themselves.

It’s another role that doesn’t require synchronous communication, giving a digital nomad time to work in solitude from whatever time zone they’re in at the time. Provided you can deliver your reports or presentations on time and with the right attention to detail, you should be given the autonomy you need.

Better yet, the need for data analysis is ubiquitous across nearly every industry, including governments, so you’re unlikely to be in need of work — even if the amount of layoffs in the tech industry these days would give anyone pause.

Required skills: Analytical skills, good attention to detail, and skills with data analysis tools.

Avg. Annual Salary (~): $82,640 (ZipRecruiter)

How to Apply for Digital Nomad Positions: Best Practices

Actually landing a job that you can do from anywhere is easier said than done. Unless you already have a connection, you’ll need to get very familiar with all the job board filters that can weed out any positions that require you to be based out of a certain city or even country. For Google, that’s the “work from home” button, but it might look different for any job board.

You can also try a job board dedicated to digital nomads, with options ranging from Remotive or We Work Remotely to more specialized boards such as the startup-friendly Wellfound or the women-only Power to Fly. As always, you should lean into your previous experience whenever possible when applying.

Finally, don’t forget to gain a little experience in tech tools that will help you stay safe while working entirely over the internet, either. You’ll definitely want a good business VPN for starters.

New research has found that return-to-office (RTO) mandates don’t increase value or productivity for companies.

The study aimed to measure the impact between productivity and performance with RTO mandates and concluded that they bore little weight on the company’s stock returns or profitability.

The news comes just a day after IBM issued an ultimatum to US managers, insisting they return to the office at least three days a week or leave the company.

“No Significant Impact”

Researchers from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh have shared a revised paper this week that looks into whether forcing employees to return to the office has a positive effect on productivity and performance.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

Following analysis of public RTO data from 137 S&P 500 firms, the researchers concluded that RTO mandates had two similar traits:

• They were more common for firms with poor prior stock market performance.
• They were more common for firms with “male and powerful CEOs.”

They similarly found that RTO mandates had no significant impact on stock returns or profitability. 

Interestingly, however, researchers did pose a theory that RTO mandates act as a means of control for managers, who can also use the mandate (and those who don’t follow it) as justification for the company’s poor performance. According to the authors:

“Results of our determinant analyses are consistent with managers using RTO mandates to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance. Also, our findings do not support the argument that managers impose mandates because they believe RTO increases firm values.”

Using employee job satisfaction data from Glassdoor, researchers also found that RTO mandates reduced workers’ scores for job-life balance and job satisfaction.

However, what the data didn’t specify is how much the companies researched required employees to be in the office, meaning the frequency of RTO days could potentially play a part in productivity too.

A Contentious Issue

RTO mandates, hybrid working, and work-from-home policies have divided business owners since remote working was no longer considered a necessity, as it was in the pandemic. This is particularly true for the tech industry. 

Last summer, nearly 2,000 Amazon employees staged a walkout in protest to the company’s return-to-office policy. Then, only a few months later, Amazon began blocking promotions for those who didn’t comply with its RTO mandate.

Safe to say, it’s a contentious issue and productivity seems to be a key argument for those in favor of having employees back at office desks.

The research did find, however, that some employees saw RTO mandates as a way to increase collaboration and better separate their work and home life.

Direction Is Essential

These findings seem to align with recent surveys that show only 4% of US CEOs are prioritizing bringing their employees back into the office full time this year. This was alongside 27% who said that maintaining hybrid working was a top priority. 

After all, without tangible data to prove that RTO mandates are beneficial for the bottom line, what’s the point of spending time and money enforcing them?

“If [RTO mandates] are hard to enforce then they likely do not make sense. A well-executed RTO will have employees back in the office for maybe 2 or 3 days a week when all employees are back on the same days, they are working together, connecting, with energy in the office.” – Nick Bloom, Stanford economist and work-from-home researcher

For managers insistent on RTO mandates, it seems that direction on days and deliverables is the key to ensuring they’re productive. Bloom continued:

“Badly run RTO will be requiring minimum days per week but with no guidance on days, and no guidance on activities in the office. Then folks come in just to continue on Zoom calls all day, or badge swipe to get coffee and leave.”

If you’re keen to ditch the RTO mandates for good, keep an eye on our ever-growing list of remote working-friendly companies.

A Delaware judge has this week voided Elon Musk’s $55 billion pay package from Tesla, a year after a trial began in which a shareholder argued that the CEO’s pay plan was extravagant. 

The recording-setting executive compensation plan is one of Musk’s highest value assets, and without it could cause his net worth – estimated to be around $205 billion – to take a considerable hit.

We’re only just at the end of January but it’s already been a year of highs and lows for the CEO. On one hand his biotech startup Neuralink has just launched its first-ever human trial, but on the other he’s had to deal with Tesla being overtaken by China-based BYD for electric car sales.

What’s The Deal With Musk’s Pay Package?

Musk doesn’t receive a salary from Tesla. Instead, his pay package revolves around 304 million stock options all tied to a series of goals and markers based on financial growth. A controversial sky-high compensation plan was also put into place back in 2018, which was argued to allow him to focus on Tesla.

This $51.1 billion compensation plan is one of the largest contributors to his net worth, and is why he spent the majority of 2023 as the richest person in the world. Without it however, his net worth could drop to $154 billion meaning he’ll fall down the rich-list ranks behind the likes of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who’s net worth sits at $186 billion, and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault who’s estimated to be worth $183 billion.

As of Wednesday, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index still included the stock options within Musk’s estimated net worth.

Pay Was “Beyond Reasonable Judgement”

Soon after the pay plan was put into place, Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta sued Tesla and Musk stating the figure was “beyond the bounds of reasonable judgement”. He also accused Musk of having undue influence over the decision. 

Following a year-long trial, a Delaware judge has this week voided the shares although it remains unclear how exactly the ruling will be implemented. 

Tesla and Musk can appeal the ruling but no word on his next step has been confirmed just yet. He has referenced the decision in a post on X/Twitter with his typical acerbic style however, stating “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.”

Where Can Musk Go From Here?

There are a couple of options on where Musk can go from here. One is to negotiate a new payment plan with the board that satisfies everyone. 

Former financial economist for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Joshua Tyler White suggested that a new pay package was perhaps the most straightforward route to take, particularly because Musk could soon lose interest in the company:

“They need to come up with a new package soon… They’ve already seen his interest turn to other ventures, and they can’t risk losing any more of his focus, especially when Tesla is at a crossroads in terms of competition with China.”

A second option is to appeal the decision, but dragging this out in court again could be bad for Tesla’s stock price.

Employment attorney and mediator Angela Reddock-Wright agrees that the former would be most preferable:

“If they’re [Musk and his legal team] thinking about the greater good of the company, they’ll want to resolve this outside of court action and further litigation. He, out of principle, may pursue this just to try to establish, perhaps from his perspective, that the compensation proposal was fair. He’s someone who likes to prove a point.”

Whether you consider Elon Musk a visionary, a comic book villain, or something between the two, it’s hard to deny he knows how to build a successful business.

Dumpster fire acquisition of Twitter aside, Musk has co-founded six companies, including household names Space X, Tesla, and OpenAI, and lesser-known startups like Neuralink.

While Neuralink has largely existed in the shadows since its launch in 2016, the neurotechnology company has recently hit headlines for implanting its first brain chip into a human.

The technology may seem straight out of a Black Mirror episode, but its implications are very real. So, if you’re curious about Neuralink, read on to learn more about the company, its questionable history, and its first-ever human trial.

What is Neuralink, and Its Latest Device ‘Telepathy’?

Neuralink is a biotech startup founded by Elon Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers. While the neural-interface company was created in 2016, it remained under the radar until its trademark was purchased from previous owners in 2017. Neuralink has developed an implantable brain chip that aims to let humans control external devices like laptops and smartphones with their minds.

The coin-sized device, called ‘Telepathy’, enters the brain through a hole in the skull, and connects to gray matter through over a thousand electrode threads.

Telepathy is supposedly able to monitor the activity of the brain, and then decode these mental functions using artificial intelligence.

According to Musk, by letting people control technological devices with their thoughts, the device will hopefully be able to allow users with disabilities to  ‘communicate faster than an auctioneer’. But this isn’t its only purpose.

Neuralink also believes its chip device will be able to restore neural activity within the body, allowing people with spinal cord injuries to regain movement, provide positive applications to those with neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s and dementia, and even restore sight to the blind.

Significantly, Musk revealed the ultimate aim of the technology is to create a “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”, raising alarm bells for those mindful of the existential threat posed by AI.

What Do We Know About Neuralink’s First Procedure?

After years of development, Neuralink has finally implanted a brain chip into its first human patient.

According to co-founder Musk, the patient is recovering well, and the Telepathy chip is appearing to work as intended, with initial results “showing promising neuron spike detection”.

The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well.

Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2024

If the company’s first human trial goes well, this could be a major breakthrough for Neuralink, and  represent a leap forward in the company’s brain-computer interface technology. However, despite Neuralink’s recent success, major question marks hang over the company’s ethics, and overarching mission.

Neuralink’s Bloody History

In its short history, the brain interface company has already been the subject of multiple federal investigations for packing and transporting contaminated hardware in an unsafe manner.

Specifically, records were found that suggest Neuralink mishandled devices carrying infectious pathogens that posed a risk to human health in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The devices were extracted from the brains of primates and may have been contaminated with viruses like Herpes and Klebsiella.

Neuralink also came under fire over its unethical animal testing practices, which resulted in the deaths of multiple primates in the company’s research facilities. These accusations have been substantiated by documents released by a researcher from the University of California.

Shockingly, the veterinary documents reveal that as many as a dozen primates were treated inhumanly before being euthanized. But primates weren’t the company’s only victims, with sources from Reuters estimating that a total of 1,500 animals were experimented on and killed by Neuralink between 2018 and 2022.

After receiving FDA clearance for human clinical trials in May last year, the biotechnology company has since ended animal testing. But with so much controversy still surrounding its research practices and implications, Neuralink has a long way to go before its implantable technology is accepted into the mainstream.

Work meetings could be getting a whole lot more immersive in 2024, thanks to a new Zoom app designed specifically for Apple’s Vision Pro VR/AR headset.

Zoom will land on visionOS, Apple’s Vision Pro operating system, on February 2 – the same day the hardware itself is released. It boasts a number of unique features including “personas”, which are AI-powered avatars that mirror your facial and hand movements, as well as customizable backdrops and 3D virtual object sharing.

The upcoming launch represents an exciting leap forward in augmented workplace technology. Before you start rejecting meeting requests that don’t take place in the virtual realm, here’s everything you need to know about Zoom’s imminent launch for the Apple Vision Pro headset.

Zoom Launches New App for visionOS

Zoom is no stranger to a good product update. But as hybrid work becomes the benchmark for most businesses, the maker of one of the best video conferencing apps has decided to up the ante by launching a native app for the Apple Vision Pro.

Announcing the news on its product blog, Zoom said that the new app would “seamlessly blend video conferencing with users’ physical space” and coincide with the long awaited release of Apple’s Vision Pro hardware.

The pending app bears a lot of similarities to Apple Vision Pro’s FaceTime app, by replacing the faces of users with hyper-realistic avatars. However, despite the mixed bag of features that Zoom’s app offers, it’s being marketed as a workplace solution first, more akin to Meta’s Horizon Workrooms and Spatial.

New Zoom Features on Vision Pro and visionOS

One feature garnering a lot of attention online is an avatar function called Personas. Personas use facial scanning technology to create an AI-powered ‘spatial representation’ of users. This avatar mimics the facial and hand movements of users and is displayed to other Apple Vision Pros participants.

Aside from like-like avatars, the app will also transform the meeting environment with its Spatial Zoom experience feature. The capability lets users customize the backdrop of their meetings, and scale the experience to the perfect size.

Other note-worthy features include 3D object-sharing tool, which lets users share and view 3D files, and real-world pinning, which lets users pin up to five Zoom Meeting participants in their physical space. Aside from the app’s immersive functions, it’s also compatible with Team chat, making it easy for users to share information with colleagues at the drop of a hat.

For white-collar workers who have been dreaming of virtual meetings since the days of Oculus Quest, Zoom’s new app will seem like an exciting step forward in augmented workplace technology. However, doubts around the app’s format are raising concerns about potential before it’s even gone live, as we explore next.

Apple’s visionOS is Still Lacking Major Native Apps

While Zoom’s new VR app will be native to Apple’s visionOS platform, it’s still something of anomaly ahead of the Vision Pro’s launch this year.

The iconic Californian tech giant recently announced that while Zoom, Disney Plus, Peacock, Temu and many more will debut native Vision Pro apps at its launch, other household names like YouTube and Netflix are yet to commit to develop new apps for visionOS.

Since these apps haven’t been redesigned with Apple’s VR operating system in mind, visionOS users may be forced to instead rely on ports of existing iPadOS/iOS apps. These will be made automatically available on the visionOS App Store where a native app hasn’t been developer, unless the developer remove them.

The issue with this is that these ported apps won’t make use of visionOS’s immersive technology, and will likely suffer when it comes to design, ease of use, and quality. It’s thought that streaming providers like Netflix and YouTube will continue to hold out, given they complete with Apple’s own services on a number of fronts.

A new AR-ready Zoom app is great news for the handful of people whose work calls are about to get more interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t speak to Apple’s biggest problem with the Vision Pro, which is its current lack of widespread appeal.

When it comes to this, even the likes of YouTube and Netflix don’t come close to justifying the extortionate price tag of Apple’s new $3,500 headset. Quite possibly, nothing ever will.

After demanding rank-and-file workers back into the office last September, IBM has issued a similar ultimatum to US managers still working remotely: return to the office, or get dropped from the company.

Impacted employees will be required to make it into an IBM office or client location at least three days a week, and will also need to relocate if they live over 80 kilometers away, according to a recent report by Bloomberg.

As companies try and bolster collaboration and productivity, return-to-office mandates are becoming standard practice in 2024. However, with IBM announcing that cuts will be expected later this year, could its ‘relocate or quit’ ultimatum be a motive for staff to leave voluntarily?

IBM Managers Are Being Summoned Back into the Office

As companies forge their own paths out of the great Covid-19 WFH experiment, IBM has just expanded its return to office mandate to managers.

According to a memo sent out by Senior VP John Granger on January 16, remote managers will have to have to return to the office in person for at least three days a week come August, “regardless of current work location status”.

For many managers who have been enjoying remote privileges since 2020, this policy change will also require them to relocate closer to office or client locations. Typically, this will involve moving within an 80-kilometer radius from a hub, according to someone close to the company.

“IBM is focused on providing a work environment that balances flexibility with the face-to-face interactions that make us more productive, innovative and better able to serve our clients,” – IBM spokesperson

While employees with medical issues or on military service are exempt from the policy, the company will be using badge-in data to evaluate the attendance of remaining managers. And if impacted staffers don’t comply, and are able to find a remote position, they must “separate from IBM”, reads the memo.

IBM’s Announcement Shouldn’t Shock Managers

While Granger’s memo may have surprised IBM managers who have been able to circumvent physical offices for some time, the announcement is fairly consistent with the companies overarching stance on remote work.

When IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told workers they wouldn’t be forced to return to the office last May, he also warned in the same breath that failing to do so would harm careers in the long run by making it harder to land promotions.

IBM also cracked down on remote working for regular employees last September, telling them they “must be better stewards of getting into the office” if they want to preserve flexible hybrid working as a whole. While this directive was only applicable to employees living 50 miles from an IBM office, the memo explained other workers were only “exempt at this time”, hinting that future measures were likely.

But whether or not managers should have seen the policy coming, is demanding workers to relocate at the risk of losing their job a reasonable request to make in 2024?

Are Relocate or Quit Ultimatums Ethical?

IBM’s recent memo enters them into a long line of companies that have recently made similar relocate or quit ultimatums, with AT&T, Grindr, and Amazon forcing their employees to make similar decisions in 2023.

Similarly to IBM, AT&T’s directive was just focused on managers. Yet, just with only nine office locations open across the US, 9,000 workers were forced to choose between moving homes or finding work elsewhere. With so many workers feeling pushed into a corner, one AT&T manager described this as a layoff disguised as an RTO policy – and employment experts agree.

According to Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, many companies are using RTO mandates as a layoff strategy. “This can be seen in patterns where companies first implement layoffs and then follow with an RTO mandate, or vice versa,” she tells WorkLife.

Some companies are blatantly using the strategy to avoid paid severance packages, Tsipursky explains, with one employee from a major retail company telling her she was explicitly told the RTO policy was being deployed as a cover for layoffs.

Despite delivering a positive outlook for revenue in 2024, IBM recently announced it would be cutting a percentage of positions in the “low single digits” this year. This gives credence to Tsipursky’s theory that IBM could be trying to get staff to up-sticks voluntarily.

But no matter IBM’s intention, one thing is for certain: forcing workers to move home amid a cost of living crisis or risk losing their job, is unlikely to play out well in the long run.

ChatGPT creators OpenAI launched GPTs back in November of 2023. GPTs are custom versions of ChatGPT that users can create to fulfill a specific purpose or task, such as pulling out action points from a document or providing tech support.

Since then, a huge range of GPTs have been built by ChatGPT Plus subscribers and made available for other users to access, and have been used hundreds of thousands of times by people eager to find new ways to save themselves time with AI.

While there are several weird and wacky GPTs available through the ChatGPT store, there are a few that a lot of workers will find useful. In this guide, we’ll show you the powers and capabilities of 11 of the best GPTs currently available via the store.

• What Is a GPT, and How Do They Work?
• The Best GPTs to Save You Time at Work
• GPTs and Your Data: What to Know
• How to Make Your Own GPT

What is a GPT, and How Do They Work?

A “GPT” is the name that OpenAI has given to the range of custom chatbots that ChatGPT Plus subscribers have been building since OpenAI made the feature available on DevDay, November 2023.

GPTs are user-designed chatbots that serve specific purposes – and skills not bestowed onto the standard version of ChatGPT – such as creating videos.

GPT stands for “generative pre-trained transformer” and was originally the name given to the class of AI models produced by OpenAI to power products like ChatGPT. The most advanced model currently available is GPT-4, but the free version of ChatGPT is powered by GPT 3.5.

ChatGPT Plus customers prepared to pay the $20 per month subscription fee can access each other’s GPTs on the “Explore GPTs” section of the ChatGPT UI, also known as the GPT Store. Very soon, creators will actually be able to earn money directly from their GPTs, OpenAI has said.

The Best GPTs to Save You Time at Work

Here are the 11 best GPTs we’ve found on the OpenAI store that will help you save time at work, from troubleshooting technical issues to sifting through academic papers at lightning speed.

1. Canva – Best Low-Effort Graphic Design Tool
2. Image Generator – Best for Generating Images
3. Merlin – Best Job Application Automator
4. Veed.io – Best for Generating Video Content
5. Diagrams: Show Me – Best GPT for Generating Diagrams
6. Consensus – Best for Searching Academic Papers
7. Tech Support Advisor – Best GPT for Troubleshooting Tech Issues
8. Briefly – Best Text-Shortening GPT
9. Prompt Perfect – Best for AI Prompt Optimization
10. Logo Generator – the Best GPT for Generating Unique Logos
11. Scheduling Wizard – Manage Appointments and Meetings

To create this list, we’ve sifted through hundreds of GPTs. We’ve included standout chatbots that can complete tasks that would take humans hours in minutes, and have clear business applications. We also considered how many times they’d been used by other users, as well as the quality of the chatbot’s responses and outputs.

1. Canva – Best Low-Effort Graphic Design Tool

Name: Canva
Creator: Canva.com
Conversations: 600K+

If you’re working in any role that requires you to produce any kind of media – from posters and charts to logos and branded content – then this Canva integration is a must-have.

Now, the Canva integration has created a lot of buzz since it was made available; it was one of the first GPTs to be built after OpenAI launched the GPTs feature back in November 2023. We wanted to see what it would generate when given a non-tailored, very basic prompt about a poster for a seasonal sale:

Designing a seasonal sales poster with Canva. Image: Tech.co

As you can see from the image, while it might need a little editing, it’s almost there. It was able to take into account several different – and arguably competing – themes (“subtle” and “macho”), gave us two very serviceable poster designs, and intelligently filled in the gaps left by our relatively vague, unrefined request. 

Canva takes the top spot on this list because of the quality of output combined with the complexity of the tasks. We’ve used it quite a lot at Tech.co, providing it with more complex prompts, and it always delivers impressive designs. 

2. Image Generator – Best Image-Generating GPT

Name: Image Generator
Creator: Naif J Alotaibi
Conversations: 500K+

If you’ve been following the AI revolution taking place over the past year, the chances are you’ve heard of DALL-E. The AI image-generating tool was initially created by OpenAI as a standalone product, but now, it’s integrated into ChatGPT.

However, you can still use DALL-E’s image-generating capabilities as a GPT. On the DALL-E section of the store, there’s a bot aptly named “Image Generator” that has been used over 500,000 times by ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

If you’re looking for an image generator for work, this is the best one for it – the bot specializes in “generating and refining images with a mix of professional and friendly tone”, so is a great option for producing images for articles, content, and other types of media.

An image we generated using Image Generator. Image: Tech.co

The images created are (most of the time) extremely high quality and align closely to the prompts inputted into the chatbot, such as the image we created above during testing.

If you’re using AI tools to generate images, ensure you’re doing this in a transparent fashion and with buy-in from your manager or supervisor.

3. Merlin – Best Job Application Automator

Name: Merlin
Creator: Feridoon Malekzadeh
Conversations: 5K+

Merlin is a job application “wizard” that will take you through the entire job application process, from resume building to the submission stage, ensuring you’ve not missed anything out along the way.

When you open the GPT, Merlin will ask you if you want to follow the “10 steps” to get a job, which appears near the text input box as a prompt suggestion. Step 1 is simply researching the company – a must-do task for all applicants.

All you need to do is provide the name of the job you’d like and the company that is advertising it, and then Merlin will scour the internet for information on the company, the role itself, and the requirements:

Researching a job with Merlin. Image: Tech.co

If you don’t want to follow the whole 10-step process, you can just get the bot to help you with tasks such as creating a tagline for the top of your CV, or big tasks like generating a personalized cover letter based on a small prompt, like this:

Generating a cover letter from scratch with Merlin. Image: Tech.co

Compared to the cover letters we’ve produced by the standard version of ChatGPT, Merlin’s efforts are generally more personalized and better written on the whole. When reading through the extended version of the cover letter pictured above, there were very few points that needed editing, despite the basic nature of the prompt provided. Without the GPT, creating a cover letter of this length and quality would take several hours to write and refine.

As you’re probably already aware, searching for jobs is a long, arduous process at the best of times. Merlin, however, is a helpful, time-saving option to have at every step of the process – except the face-to-face interview, of course.

4. Video GPT by Veed – Best for Generating Video Content

Name: Video GPT (By Veed)
Creator: Veed.io
Conversations: 200K+

Veed GPT is a video-generating GPT that has had more than 200,000 conversations to date with ChatGPT customers.

After a short prompt and a few clarificatory questions (we asked it to create an advertisement for a coding course) Veed generated a promotional TikTok for us within seconds for us, with a voiceover and subtitles.

After the video was completed, it took us through to the Veed studio and allowed us to make small tweaks to the video. However, you can also ask the Veed GPT to make changes yourself. The finished product was pretty impressive considering it took 3 minutes to generate.

Asking Veed for a promotional video for a mock website. Image: Tech.co

For companies and individuals who want to get off the ground and promote themselves across multiple social media channels, Veed’s ability to generate videos quickly based on basic prompts will be a godsend.

Granted, it’s not movie quality – and the voiceover sounds a little robotic – but what Veed created in just a few minutes would take someone unfamiliar with video editing hours or even days to create.

5. Diagrams: Show Me – Best GPT for Generating Diagrams

Name: Diagrams: Show Me
Creator: helpful.dev
Conversations: 200K+

A lot of employees create diagrams and charts every week to display important data to their teams during presentations. But sometimes, this can become a frustratingly time-consuming task, especially if you don’t want your diagrams to look like they were thrown together at the last minute.

Diagrams: Show Me, however, provides a speedy solution to this with its GPT. All you need to do is describe the type of diagram you’d like, and it’ll generate a comprehensive diagram at a moment’s notice. It’s really that simple.

Two diagrams we generated with Diagrams: Show Me. Image: Tech.co

There’s a huge range of charts and graph types you can ask it to create, and it’s able to pull through the latest data and figures from the internet too – although we’d always recommend double-checking the figures before you present it to any of your colleagues.

6. Consensus – Best for Searching for Academic Papers

Name: Consensus
Creator: consensus.app
Conversations: 1M+

Consensus is an academic research GPT that will trawl through a variety of peer-reviewed papers and point you to anything you need, on any subject – in total, that’s over 200m academic studies, surveys, and reports.

While this will be particularly useful for high school and university students – and perhaps faculty staff at educational institutions – it’ll save anyone who often references scientific papers or studies in their job heaps of time, including third-sector workers and researchers.

Finding sources with Consensus. Image: Tech.co

Not only does Consensus source papers rapidly, it also lays them out in a way that ensures you don’t have to read the entire paper – or even click on it – to know what it’s about, and what conclusions were drawn. It can also provide studies that contain counter-points and differing viewpoints if you ask for them as well.

7. Tech Support Advisor – Best GPT for Troubleshooting Tech Issues

Name: Tech Support Advisor
Creator: ChatGPT
Conversations: N/A

The Tech Support Advisor bot created by ChatGPT will help you troubleshoot computer issues all on your own, thanks to a vast functional knowledge base of information relating to a wide range of common technical hitches.

When we asked it a question about a problem with our network connection and included information about the VPN we use, it gave us an exhaustive list of potential issues and how the software may be impacting internet connectivity, as well as accompanying solutions.

Asking ChatGPT’s Tech Support Advisor for help. Image: Tech.co

All of these solutions are valid things you should be checking if you experience this kind of technical issue. Importantly, however, they’re displayed in plain English and you don’t need to be a tech whizz to understand them – the same cannot be said for Google Search results.

This GPT is a great example of the kind of custom chatbot that solves a problem that you may have experienced when searching for answers to something technical on Google.

Sometimes, tech issues are quite specific, and sifting through the answers written four years ago on a tech forum to find some advice that’s vaguely related to the problem you’re having doesn’t help, nor do tech blogs too complex for the average person to understand.

These tailored solutions and responses are a lot more actionable, a lot quicker to find, and set out more clearly.

8. Briefly – Best Text-Shortening GPT

Name: Briefly
Creator: S Kulesh
Conversations: 1K+

Briefly is a text-shortener that does exactly as its name suggests. Below, we pasted in a news article about a British man who’s currently attempting to run the length of Africa. In just a few seconds, Briefly pulled out all the key information and repackaged it into a bullet-pointed list.

Shortening text with Briefly. Image: Tech.co

We tested this with several articles, and Briefly returned correct information every time. Although we used an article as a test, you can see how useful this might be if you want to draw the key points out of a work document without reading the whole thing.

Now I know what you’re thinking… can’t I just use ChatGPT to do this, rather than a GPT created by a user? Yes, but you’ll have to be a lot more specific with your prompt, or you won’t get anything useful.

What’s more, when you try and shorten things with ChatGPT, it often doesn’t pull out all the key points or condense the text by any significant length. With Briefly, on the other hand, all you have to do is input the text, and you don’t have to worry about instructing the GPT regarding what it needs to do at all.

9. Prompt Perfect – Best for AI Prompt Optimization

Name: Prompt Perfect
Creator: promptperfect.xyz
Conversations: 25K+

While chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard have proved themselves to be endlessly useful over the past twelve months, if you want to really use them efficiently for complex, multi-stage tasks, a prompt-refining chatbot will come in handy,.

In 2024, there’s a whole ecosystem of chatbots you can use to help you get the most out of other chatbots – and they do that by refining and optimizing your prompts. But the Prompt Perfect GPT on the GPT store is one of the best.

Prompt Perfect creating a prompt. Image: Tech.co

The best thing about Prompt Perfect is its widespread application. It doesn’t really matter what you’re using AI for – Prompt Perfect will improve and enrich your experience with very little effort. It’s like having a more experienced chatbot user alongside you and will save you from going back and forth with the GPTs you’re using to get what you want.

10. Logo Generator – the Best GPT for Generating Unique Logos

Name: Logo Generator
Creator: Chase Lean
Conversations: 500K+

This Logo generator is powered by DALL-E and can be found in the “DALL-E ” section of the GPT store, like the Image Generator featured earlier on in this article. By providing a prompt and answering a few questions, you’ll be able to generate up to nine unique, original logos at once.

Creating a logo for a bakery with Logo Generator. Image: Tech.co

While the images generated during our test weren’t perfect – as many AI image generators do, it struggles a little with words and spelling – it has provided 9 genuinely feasible design options that would have otherwise taken hours to design.

It’s easy to see how designs like this could be used as a jumping-off point for a final design that actually goes into production. For small online businesses or solo entrepreneurs without access to graphic design programs, this bridges a significant skills gap.

11. Schedule Assistant – Manage Appointments and Meetings

Name: Schedule Assistant
Creator: Michael Ryan
Conversations: 1K+

Setting up a meeting with your colleagues is often a quick process – but when their schedules just don’t align, or you can’t find a free meeting room at your preferred time, you can end up staring hopelessly at the screen for minutes on end.

The Schedule Assistant by Michael Ryan syncs with your Google Calendar and turns the process of finding a meeting time that suits everyone, inviting participants, and setting the meeting details into a single plain-text prompt.

Booking in a meeting with Shedule Assistant. Image: Tech.co

As you can see from the image above, the Schedule Assistant creates code that is then automatically injected into the Google Calendar API – although you’ll need to contact your system administrator to allow this access if you’d like to use it.

GPTs and Your Data: What to Know

While the best AI chatbots – and the GPTs listed above – can help with a huge range of tasks, if you’re using them for work-related tasks, you’ll need to brush up on how the chatbots are using your data.

Your company’s policies and guidelines around using AI tools, for instance, may govern the type of data or information you’re allowed to use in queries you make.

Developers of GPTs, of course, cannot see the chats you have with them. However, since ChatGPT’s launch back in November 2022, OpenAI has been reviewing and using thousands – if not millions – of conversations with its chatbots to further train its models.

So, questions about what ChatGPT does with user data will continue to abound. You can ensure that ChatGPT isn’t saving your chat data – and therefore not using it to train its models – by toggling off the setting below:

Importantly, no AI platform is the same. Google’s Bard AI – which looks likely to have a paid-for version launching soon – has different rules on how it leverages insights from user data, as does Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot.

How to Make Your Own GPT

If you haven’t found exactly what you’re looking for on our list, have no fear – there are plenty more GPTs in the sea. What’s more, if you download ChatGPT Plus and pay the monthly subscription fee, you can also make your own pretty easily.

Although GPTs may seem complicated, building one doesn’t require any coding experience. Even if you want to create something quite powerful, it remains quite simple, and there are plenty of instructions provided.

It’s good to get some practice in now, too – soon, building and selling a GPT on the GPT store will be one of the more straightforward ways to make money with ChatGPT.

With the help of GPT whizz Caitlin Hathaway, whose SEO-focused GPT has thousands of uses, we produced a step-by-step guide on how to build a GPT. So, if you’re interested in creating one for a very specific use case, now’s your chance!

While workers across the Western world have been taking to ChatGPT and Bard in their millions since the former chatbot’s launch back in November 2022, developers in China have been hard at work playing catch up.

This week, it was revealed that China has given the green light to over 40 AI models to be used for public use over the last six months. The news followed an announcement that Baidu’s Ernie Bot would be incorporated into the latest Samsung Galaxy S24 model.

While a Chinese chatbot is yet to surface internationally in quite the same way as ChatGPT, these developments suggest that a capable rival might not be too far away.

China’s Chatbot Approval Spree

Chinese State-backed media organization The Securities Times has revealed that Beijing has granted approval for 14 large language models (LLMs) to be made available to the public during the past week.

This is the fourth time China has permitted companies to make their large language models available to the general population, with the first firms given the green light to do so back in August 2023.

Among the initial batch of Chinese businesses to be awarded the seal of approval were search engine Baidu, ecommerce platform Alibaba, and ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin. 

The AI Arms Race Goes Global

Yahoo News reports that China had 130 LLMs in development when ChatGPT was launched, “accounting for 40% of the global total and just behind the United States’ 50% share,” referencing data compiled by CLSA.

Ernie – an LLM recently incorporated into the Samsung Galaxy S24 – has over 100 million users, according to its creator Baidu, which is the dominant search engine used in China.

However, China has enforced stringent regulations on how AI chatbots can be used and developed within the country. Companies developing LLMs have to gain licenses from the central government to release their technology to the public.

AI in China: An Authoritarian Balancing Act

The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT presents a collection of difficult conundrums for governments that want to enforce tight restrictions over the content and information their citizens can see – such as China’s CCP.

China can’t afford to be left behind by the rest of the world when it comes to modern technologies it wants to lead it – but balancing this with a desire to control information in the way it historically has done is going to be tough.

Controlling the outputs generated by a large language model as powerful as Ernie or ChatGPT is a completely different ball game to implementing “The Great Firewall of China”, the country’s current web of internet censorship mechanisms that lets the government bans channels like HBO whenever it wants.

AI chatbots can “hallucinate” and produce downright bizarre responses drawn from information in their training data. Just like with ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude, there’s always the risk that they’ll say something you weren’t expecting.

They can be as unpredictable as human beings – and this is a big issue for China. Of course, LLMs can be constrained by altering the mechanics of their algorithms and knowledge bases – and, in China’s case, tight regulation and high levels of government oversight.

China is charting a fundamentally different course when it comes to AI development to many Western nations, and what is allowed to be produced – and used – under the close supervision of the ruling regime is likely to have significant political ramifications inside and outside of the country’s borders.

There are just five days left to enter the digital detox competition set up by Icelandic Yogurt company Siggi’s Dairy, which has pledged to give selected contestants $10,000 to spend an entire month “detoxing” without a smartphone or social media.

To be considered for the contest, you will have to write a 100-500 word essay to enter on why you’d like to digitally detox and the positive impact it’ll have on your life – but that’s all that’s needed to apply.

If you can throw together a convincing collection of sentences – and you’re truly committed to the detox – it might just be one of the easiest ways to make money right now. So, if you think you can last for the whole month without your phone if $10,000 is put on the line, here’s an outline of the competition and how to enter.

Siggi’s Dairy Sets Digital Detox Challenge

“We’re introducing a new kind of “Dry January” this year,” Siggi’s explains in a recent blog post. “Instead of abstaining from alcohol for a month, we challenge you to ditch your smartphone.”

“That’s why we’re challenging YOU to give up your smartphone for a month as part of the siggi’s digital detox program,” the post continues.

Siggi’s says that they will hand-select contestants $10,000.00, a lockbox for their phone, a basic flip phone, a one-month pre-paid sim card, and three months’ worth of Siggi’s yogurt.

The company – which manufactures “skyr” based on an old Icelandic recipe – opened the contest on January 17.

The application period extends to January 31, after which 10 lucky contestants will be selected to participate before February 15.

How to Enter Contest and Win $10,0000

To enter the contest, simply head over to Siggi’s site, read the contest information, and then click on the “Enter the contest” button located at the bottom of the contest page.

You’ll then be taken through to an online form. Along with your details, you’ll need to write a “compelling essay” between 100-500 words in length explaining why you want to participate in their contest and what you think you’ll get from digitally detoxing for a month.

Siggi’s specifies that contestants must explain how the digital detox period will impact them “in a positive way that aligns with the siggi’s brand philosophy.”

Points will be awarded for originality, creativity, and how clearly their commitment to spending a month without a smartphone is stated.

Should I Digitally Detox Anyway?

Having a digital detox – elongated time away from social media sites and other applications, as well as internet-connected devices in general – once in a while is highly recommended, whether you’re going to be paid $10,000 for it or not.

While modern, internet-connected technology impacts our lives in a variety of positive ways, as you’re probably already aware, it’s not all plain sailing.

The connection between excessive social media usage and a catalog of different mental health issues has been highlighted by numerous studies, and many people exhibit behaviors that suggest they’re addicted to their mobile devices.

As they say, everything is good in moderation – and that principle should definitely be applied to smartphones, as well as all the apps on them.

Your mobile phone has probably received a pre-recorded voice message that’s intended for someone else at least a few times in the past.

What you probably don’t know: Those calls might be illegal, and you could receive between $500 and $1,500 for each violation.

Thanks to a December 2023 update to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), new regulation will likely take affect later this year. It opens the door to new types of class action lawsuits, and lawyers are already exploring how to connect with potential plaintiffs.

How Wrong-Number Robocalls Work

Many companies operate with large volumes of robocalls: Telemarketers are famous for it, but banks and insurance companies also use robocalls to inexpensively handle common processes. Debt collectors are another big industry to rely on robotcalls.

In all cases, these may get a wrong number — often repeatedly calling that wrong number over and over without fixing the issue, even if the person being called tries to set the record straight.

These calls can often be unsettling to receive more than once: I recall one time, back when I was in college, when a debt collector seemed convinced that I was someone named Robert who was dodging his debts.

Sometimes these wrong numbers are the result of a misprint on the robocall list of phone numbers. But if you’ve gotten these calls right after getting a new number, you can probably guess another reason you might be receiving them: The phone company failed to provide the company with the updated phone number. Either way, you never had the chance to express consent prior to the call, as the TCPA calls for.

Companies including Wells Fargo, Navient Solutions, JPMorgan Chase Bank, Adobe, and many others have all resolved robocall class actions to the tune of millions of dollars within the past decade.

Could You Become a Class Action Plaintiff?

You could be eligible to join a potential class action lawsuit centered on wrong-number robocalls, assuming you meet a few qualifications:

• Have you received a voice call or message on your cell phone that was:
  • artificial or prerecorded?
  • intended for someone else?
• Do you recall the name of the company that left the message?
• Do you have an account or connection with that company?

Voicemails or screenshots of the call are also a big help, although they’re not a must.

If all of the above applies — and you don’t mind talking to an attorney — you can reach out through this website in order to be looped into the conversation, and potentially receive $500 to $1,500 for every wrong call that you’ve received.

You might not have a clear remember of past calls, but if you receive any wrong calls from prerecorded messages in the future, you can easily start tracking them.

How Can Companies Stay Safe?

The new TCPA rules are bad news for companies that issue robocalls: While everyone on the receiving end will soon benefit from the regulation, companies who sent those calls will now face more strict guidelines to navigate.

Scott J. Helfand, partner at the Husch Blackwell law firm, breaks this down in a recent blogpost in which he calls the TCPA an “incredibly dangerous statute.”

According to him, past solutions to the issue involved moves like getting prior express written consents that cleared both the company and “its affiliates” or “its marketing partners” — ways to open up some wiggle room for who was actually calling.

“Often, these consents may contain a hyperlink where the consumer could view a list of the affiliates or partners covered by the consent. Alternatively, a company might obtain consent that referred to the company and several other specific affiliates or partners. […] That is no longer sufficient.” – Helfand

With the new 2023 rules, consent can only be a one-to-one acknowledgment between a specific caller and a specific recipient.

Businesses aren’t immediately in trouble, since this regulation only “becomes effective six months after publication to the Federal Register,” and it might be challenged in court, which further increases the time before it goes into effect. Still, businesses who deal with robocalls will need to review their paperwork with a fine toothed comb sooner, rather than later.

After months of speculation about the feature being released, Meta-owned social media platform Instagram will now officially let its users turn off read receipts.

Unlike WhatsApp, Instagram hasn’t historically allowed its users to do this – but now, they’ll be able to turn them off for individual chats, or all of their messages en masse.

In this short guide, we’ll explain the two different ways you can turn off your read receipts on your Instagram direct messages in detail.

How to Turn Off Instagram Read Receipts (Individual Chats)

You can now turn off read receipts on individual Instagram direct message threads you have with other users, which will mean you can read their messages whenever you like and they won’t be notified that you’ve seen them.

Simply tap on the name of the user you’re messaging, then tap “privacy and safety” and then toggle off the read receipts option.

How to Turn off Instagram Read Receipts (All Chats)

Don’t worry – it’s possible to avoid the arduous process of turning off read receipts on every direct message you have opened by changing and turning your read receipts off in the settings.

All you have to do is head over to your settings and navigate to the “Messages and Story Replies” area. After that, you should see a “show read receipts” option. Click on that and then toggle off your read receipt.

You can also either choose to show or hide your activity status in this same area of the settings, which will ensure none of your followers or people you messaging will be able to see whether you’re online or not.

Should I Turn Off My Read Receipts?

It’s entirely up to you. While it’s technically a privacy setting, and we advise all social media users to take advantage of privacy settings provided by social media apps, this one largely depends on the relationship you have with your friends and family.

Some people turn off read receipts because they’re worried it will seem rude if they “see” a message but don’t have time to reply to it, and don’t want to “leave their friends on read”. However, not all friendship groups or social circles function like this.

All in all, it’s good that platforms like Instagram provide this feature, as it gives users a bit more freedom to read messages at their leisure and reveals a little less information about their activity. Of course, it works best if used in combination with a hidden activity status.

Artificial intelligence startup OpenAI has made significant changes to its GPT pricing, slashing GPT-3.5 input tokens by 50% among a raft of other changes. 

The company has also gone to great efforts to address technical issues that led some users to claim that GPT-4 had started to become lazy in its response to some coding questions, effectively not answering them. 

While ChatGPT continues to reign supreme as the business world’s chatbot of choice, there are more options out there, and they’re starting to provide more business-focused options too.

OpenAI Slashes GPT Prices

OpenAI published a blog post this week announcing that the company is “releasing new models, reducing prices for GPT-3.5 Turbo, and introducing new ways for developers to manage API keys and understand API usage.”

The most exciting update is the reduced model pricing for GPT-3.5, which is the language model that currently powers the free version of ChatGPT, but is available for businesses to use at a generally cheaper rate than GPT-4.

In the next week or so, OpenAI is introducing a new GPT-3.5 Turbo model, gpt-3.5-turbo-0125. “For the third time in the past year, we will be decreasing prices on GPT-3.5 Turbo to help our customers scale” the company explains.

“Input prices for the new model are reduced by 50% to $0.0005 /1K tokens and output prices are reduced by 25% to $0.0015 /1K token.”

Tokens are words/bits of words that AI models can process and generate. Input tokens refer to the text and information users put into the models, and output tokens refer to model responses.

A Wake-Up Call: GPT-4 Isn’t Being Lazy Anymore

OpenAI has also announced an open preview of a new version of GPT-4, called GPT-4-0125. Like the new GPT-3.5 Turbo model, the name presumably refers to the announcement date (January 25th).

“This model completes tasks like code generation more thoroughly than the previous preview model and is intended to reduce cases of “laziness” where the model doesn’t complete a task” OpenAI explains.

The idea that ChatGPT had started to become strangely lazy was widely reported on during the build-up to the holiday season, with some publications even speculating that the chatbot was “winding down” for the Christmas period, as humans tend to do.

The “Winter Hypothesis” was an intriguing one – feeding the chatbot a may date before asking coding questions, one person found, seemed to improve its answers. However, another researcher was unable to reproduce the results with a statistically significant difference. Either way, according to OpenAI, GPT-4 will be providing more “thorough” answers to questions.

Other Chatbot Options

ChatGPT is still the most-used chatbot in the world. More than double the number of businesses we surveyed for our recent Impact of Tech on the Workplace report said they used ChatGPT rather than Bard, the second most popular AI tool being used by businesses.

OpenAI’s creation has a huge range of options for developers and large businesses who want to incorporate it into their software infrastructure. Right now, if you want to build a custom ChatGPT that your business can use internally to help with everyday work tasks, it’s the best AI chatbot for it.

But it’s not the only option out there. For instance, Claude – a chatbot created by Anthropic – is a highly capable chatbot with a free plan as well as Pro version that costs the same as ChatGPT Plus ($20 per month).

What’s more, the huge number of users trying to access ChatGPT means it often goes down, so being aware of what the different ChatGPT alternatives out there can do and how much it’ll cost you to use them is always useful. And, who knows – you might just find you prefer one of them.

In another sign of the corporate world’s distaste for remote work, Bank of America is sending out warning to any employees who haven’t been making enough regular appearances at their physical offices.

The warnings, called “letters of education,” threaten the employees with “further disciplinary action” if they don’t comply within the next two weeks.

Banks were among the first industries to begin pressuring employees to return to the office since the Covid pandemic allowed non-essential workers to operate from their homes. Now, CEOs in general hope to walk back that extra flexibility, and Bank of America is just the latest to make its opinion on the matter clear.

Falling Afoul of BofA’s “Workplace Excellence Guidelines”

One letter of education says that not making enough appearances in the workplace will make an employee fail to meet the work location section of the company’s “Workplace Excellence Guidelines,” “despite requests and reminders to do so.”

With higher interest rates making layoffs appear to be better business decisions, it seems companies are less interested in the workplace flexibility that would retain workers.

One employee’s letter, which they posted online, reads: “Failure to follow the workplace excellence expectations applicable to your role within two weeks of the date of this notification may result in further disciplinary action.”

Banks May Be Keeping Up With the Joneses

The Financial Times, which covered the news, cites the recruiting firm DHR Global’s head of global finance practice, Jeanne Branthover, for an explanation of this new round of return-to-office intimidation.

According to Branthover, the first month of 2024 has kicked off a follow-the-leader trend within the banking industry:

“Sending out these letters, that wasn’t happening before. Once one firm says it is going to do X, then everyone is going to follow.” – Jeanne Branthover

Additional context from the FT includes the fact that 82% of “large financial companies” still offered hybrid work flexibility for “most” of their employees at the end of last year.

Getting Remote Work in 2024

Bank of America isn’t the only option for finding work, and if you’re exclusively looking to work from home, you still have a wealth of options. Just this month, we’ve covered the top remote jobs now available from big tech names including Google, Amazon, and that pinacle of remote-work freedom, Microsoft.

Freelance work might also be an option, and can power a digital nomad lifestyle in a range of different countries around the world.

If remote work is for you, there are plenty of benefits: Studies indicate better health and happiness, while many organizations report no drops in productivity and some even see higher revenues with the right work-from-home policies in place.

Sources told various news outlets today that Microsoft will cut 1,900 positions from its video game workforce, as the tech sector layoffs pile up mere weeks into 2024.

Three months after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and King, Microsoft Gaming is facing its first major post-merger hurdle: a workforce reduction of 1,900 employees, roughly 10% of its combined 22,000-strong team.

According to reports from The Verge, Microsoft will primarily be laying off Activision Blizzard employees, but some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will be affected too.

A “Painful” Decision for Gaming CEO

Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world, recently surpassing Apple with a valuation over $3 trillion – the only two companies to have currently ever surpassed that figure. In spite of this positive economic outlook for the Redmond-based company, it hasn’t managed to avoid the tech sector job cuts which have affected so many companies over the last 12 months. In fact, its last major round of layoffs was almost exactly a year ago when it let go of 10,000 employees.

In the internal memo viewed by IGN and the Verge, Microsoft Gaming CEO, Phil Spencer cited the recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard (owner of Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Starcraft) not to mention King, who operates Candy Crush, as what spurred the restructuring of staff.

Spencer said there will be “full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws.”

Blizzard’s President Steps Down

In a separate internal memo, in addition to the layoffs, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has decided to leave his post. He was a long time Microsoft employee himself, before moving to Activision Blizzard where he guided the company through the long acquisition.

Ybarra took to X to thank everyone in a heartfelt post, “to the Blizzard community: I also want to let you all know today is my last day at Blizzard. Leading Blizzard through an incredible time and being part of the team, shaping it for the future ahead, was an absolute honor. Having already spent 20+ years at Microsoft and with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard behind us, it’s time for me to (once again) become Blizzard’s biggest fan from the outside.”

Investing in the Future

Despite the layoffs, Microsoft remains focused on the future of its gaming division. Spencer reiterated the company’s plans to expand access to games for players worldwide, stating, “looking ahead, we’ll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I’m as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together.”

This statement suggests that the cost-cutting measures are intended to fuel investments in key areas. The layoffs at Microsoft Gaming follow a year of upheaval for the gaming industry marred by layoffs, consolidations and unionisation.

The successful acquisition of Activision Blizzard made Microsoft Gaming the world’s third-largest video game studio by revenue, and marked a significant moment in the ongoing consolidation within the video game industry.

With much work ahead of the Microsoft Gaming division to restructure and streamline the newly merged teams, and old colleagues departing, it’s unclear yet whether the pain will be worth it. As the dust begins to settle, we may get some preliminary answers with Microsoft’s Q2 2024 earnings reports due next week, which will include information on the impact of the merger.