I used chatgpt from time to time when coding or finding right words to figure out what exactly to search for. I knew people used it for so many things, but it never fit my needs. But things have changed.
I am unabashed fan of European tech. Patriot, you could say, believing in Europe first (as in, try European service first before settling on something from google). And I tried Mistral, a parisian LLM from ex-google employees. Some say it works better than GPT-4o, some dispute it, but the point is it is a cutting edge LLM, it is from EU and I really like it.
It can help you restructure text and correct mistakes. It can help you search the web (that is incredible, I get why so many people use perplexity). It generates pictures for you (I am aware of the issues surrounding it, but I still am a fan), which is fun but not useful for me at the moment.
My usual use cases are twofold: when writing and researching, I try to figure out a structure and tangential themes to follow. Mistral (and other generative AIs) will give you outline and if you probe them enough, they will offer some ideas that are not so general. I than write my text and let the AI criticise it.
The other use I have is help with coding and Linux administration. I selfhost this site on VPS, I have a homeserver for some other stuff (I am planning on using grocy) and let's face it, sometimes things crash. And although I was given Linux for Administrators when I was about 14, I am not an admin. So I type my questions and error messages into the Le Chat, wait for the reply (it's slow, but still faster than me going through wikis, docs and quora or askubuntu)
My point? Europe might look bleak now, but there is hope.