Pollinger’s Productivity : September 2025
| ChatGPT Gets Personal (and Smarter) |
| OpenAI has rolled out GPT-5, its latest and most powerful model, and with it some intriguing new features. One highlight is personality modes. Plus and Pro subscribers can now toggle the chatbot’s style between these options “Cynic,” “Robot,” “Listener,” or “Nerd,” giving conversations a distinct tone. This change came alongside feedback that GPT-5 initially felt a bit cold or too professional. In response, OpenAI tweaked GPT-5’s default “personality” to make it warmer and friendlier. Another upgrade lets users choose how the AI handles tasks with new Auto, Fast, and Thinking modes. Auto mode balances speed and depth, while Fast gives quick answers and Thinking takes extra time for complex problems. OpenAI even brought back the older GPT-4o model for paid users who preferred its style. Overall, ChatGPT is now more customisable than ever; smarter under the hood and more adaptable in how it interacts with us. |
| Insight: Greater personalisation of ChatGPT is a welcome change. Having tried the new personality modes, they genuinely make the AI feel as if it has very different personalities which are suited to different tasks. For example, Listener is great for brainstorming sessions, whereas Robot can be useful for dry facts or technical explanations. The improved GPT-5 performance is impressive too; testing shows it’s faster and more accurate, which helps get things done with fewer back-and-forth prompts. |
| Excel Gets an AI Boost |
| Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot has seen a flurry of updates in August, with Excel receiving some especially noteworthy improvements. Excel now has a new formula function that lets you run AI prompts directly within your spreadsheet. In practical terms, this means you can ask Excel to analyse or generate content based on your data without leaving the sheet. It’s like having an AI data analyst living inside a cell! This function can also summarise long text, brainstorm ideas, or even draft tables and lists. Other handy additions include an “Explain Formula” feature that uses AI to break down what a formula does in plain English (a lifesaver if you’ve ever inherited a scary-looking spreadsheet, and expanded support for using Python within Excel for advanced analysis. |
| Besides the formula feature, Excel and other Microsoft 365 apps benefited from the integration of GPT-5 (see above) into Copilot for better AI responses. |
| Insight: All these enhancements aim to save you time and make advanced analysis accessible, even if you’re not an Excel power-user. The new GPT-5 foundation means Copilot is more context-aware too, which is noticeable when asking it for help in Word or Teams – it produces more relevant suggestions with less prompting. If you have access to Microsoft 365 Copilot, try these new Excel features on a small project (for example, have it draft a summary of your sales data or categorise some customer reviews) and see how it can streamline your workflow. It’s early days, but tools like this hint at a future where even non-technical folks can use AI in day-to-day tasks without breaking a sweat. |
| Samsung Brings Copilot to Smart TVs |
| In a sign that AI assistants are escaping the confines of computers and phones, Samsung announced it’s integrating Microsoft Copilot into its 2025 lineup of smart TVs and monitors. This new integration transforms the TV into a voice-controlled AI companion that you can talk to for help and information. It’s free to use and works via a voice interface with a friendly on-screen character that appears on your TV to assist you. You can ask the TV’s Copilot pretty much anything: find a movie that fits specific criteria, get a quick news update or weather forecast, ask trivia questions during a show, or even get recommendations that please a whole family with different tastes. Samsung and Microsoft have teamed up so that Copilot on TV can provide visual answers – for example, show you cards with movie options, showtimes, or weather details rather than just speaking back, making the most of the big screen. It’s like having a smart assistant and a search engine built into your TV. If you log in with a Microsoft account, the TV Copilot can even personalise answers with memory of your preferences (for example, remembering what series you’ve been watching). |
| Insight: The arrival of Copilot on Samsung TVs is a fascinating development that shows how AI is weaving into everyday consumer tech. For business owners and marketers, it’s worth noting because it signals that people will grow more accustomed to interacting with AI in all aspects of life – even while kicking back on the sofa. There’s a fun and social element to this that’s different from a private phone-based assistant. From a marketing perspective, this trend means content discovery will increasingly be mediated by AI. Having AI move into the living room is another step toward normalisation of the tech – it might not directly change your marketing strategy today, but it’s a trend to watch as consumer behaviour shifts. |
| New ChatGPT Connectors Available in the UK |
| A new feature called ‘Connectors’ has been rolled out for ChatGPT users in the UK, allowing you to connect services like Gmail and Google Calendar directly to your ChatGPT account, giving the AI the ability to perform a variety of helpful tasks. |
| Once connected with Gmail, ChatGPT can assist you with email management. It can list and search through your emails, filter them by date range, summarise specific email topics, and even read out parts of messages. It can also help you quickly list your unread emails and newsletters, saving you valuable time. |
| You can enable these connectors by navigating to your profile picture in ChatGPT, selecting Settings, and then choosing the new Connectors option. From there, you can integrate with your Google services and start using these powerful new features. |
| Insight: This new feature could be a real time-saver for anyone using Google Services. For example, being able to use natural language to quickly find and summarise information from your emails means less time spent manually searching and more time for creative work. In the US, integration comes with more than just Google’s services (eg Dropbox, Microsoft Outlook and Teams) so more services are likely to follow. Note that for now, this update only appears to be available on chatgpt.com and not the Windows or mobile app. |
| Small Businesses Embrace the Future |
| A clear trend from the past month is that AI has gone mainstream in the business world, especially among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). New surveys and studies show record levels of AI adoption by SMBs. According to a Goldman Sachs survey, about 68% of small business owners are already using AI in some form, with another 9% planning to start in the next year. What’s even more encouraging is the impact on jobs and growth: these studies found that most small businesses using AI say it’s augmenting their workforce, not replacing it. Around 80% of AI adopters in the small biz space report that AI has enhanced employee productivity rather than cut headcount and nearly 40% of small businesses using AI anticipate it will enable them to create new jobs in the coming year according to Fox Business. That said, not everything is rosy: some small businesses still feel they lack AI knowledge or resources, and there are ongoing concerns about data privacy and the regulatory environment for AI. Overall though, the trajectory is clear – AI adoption is surging because businesses see real benefits in efficiency, decision-making, and customer engagement. |
| Insights: These trends appear very positive. They validate that investing time in learning about AI and how to use the tools is worth the investment. If you’re part of the majority already exploring AI, you’re in good company and likely already seeing some advantages. Ideally, AI is a support system, not a replacement for human creativity and effort. The fact that so many businesses are using AI to complement their team, and even grow their team, reinforces that. Focus on practical use cases by identifying one or two areas in your business where AI could make an immediate impact (like summarising documents, generating social media posts, or analysing customer feedback) and start there. |
| Practical Pointer – A Quick Way to Refine your ChatGPT Content |
| If you’ve ever found yourself asking ChatGPT for a slightly different version of a response without wanting to retype your prompt, you’re in luck. A simple and effective feature, the ‘Try Again’ button, is a powerful tool for quickly refining your AI-generated content. |
| After ChatGPT provides a response, simply click the ‘Try Again’ button to reveal a new set of choices. To find this button, hover over the response and look for a small button with circular arrows. Select it and you’ll see it offers a menu of options to help you adjust and improve the output. |
| From this menu, you can: |
| Switch the model: Choose a different underlying AI model for a new approach. Use the web: Access more current information to enhance the response. Make it more concise or add extra details: Adjust the length and depth to fit your needs. Try again: This option generates an entirely new version of the response without changing your original prompt, providing a fresh take on the same request. |
| The best part? ChatGPT saves the original response, so you can easily compare the different versions and select the one that works best for you. |
| Insight: For anyone who uses ChatGPT for content creation, this feature is a real productivity booster. It removes the need for manual edits or repetitive prompting, allowing you to quickly iterate on ideas and generate varied content with minimal effort. This ability to get multiple, slightly different versions of the same output is incredibly useful for A/B testing social media posts or simply finding the perfect tone and structure for a newsletter article. It encourages experimentation and can help you create more engaging and effective content in double quick time. |
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