But if you know how to use AI—and what pitfalls to look out for—it can help you be more efficient at work so you can focus on your most important responsibilities.

Twenty-nine percent of workers 50 and older found AI chatbots very helpful for completing tasks more quickly, according to a 2024 report from the Pew Research Center. Speeding things up with the help of chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot is just one possible use of what’s known as generative AI—software you can ask to create writing, pictures, video and more.

“If you have AI literacy skills, it’s going to put you at a competitive advantage,” says Catherine Fisher, a career specialist at LinkedIn.

Still, relying too heavily on these new tools without understanding their downsides could end up costing you your job, as more than one attorney discovered after submitting legal pleadings that included “cases” invented by a chatbot.

Here is how some older workers use AI to improve their productivity while accommodating the technology’s quirks.

Summarize: Quickly condensing pages and pages of research into a few paragraphs is one of the many ways Michelle Leff Mermelstein, 51, a public relations director at the Global Electronics Association, uses ChatGPT.

Mermelstein, who calls AI her “quiet assistant,” also uses it to capture the gist of other media. When a colleague recently gave an on-camera interview to CNN, Mermelstein uploaded a recording of the video into ChatGPT and asked the AI tool to write an email summarizing the interview, calling attention to the highlights and suggesting follow-up steps for the organization to take. “I still have to clean it up,” she says. “But the amount of time it could save me is immense.”

Edit: Elizabeth Schön Vainer, 65, director of the Journey to Safety program of Jewish Family & Children’s Service in Waltham, Massachusetts, mostly uses Microsoft Copilot as an “editor and validator” for emails, a newsletter and other job-related writing.

Recently, when she uploaded a weekly newsletter into Copilot, the tool confirmed the message was well written, then offered to draft an email subject line and turn the message into a template for future updates.

“I kind of play around with it,” Vainer says. She doesn’t accept all of Copilot’s suggestions, but she appreciates that she can get immediate feedback instead of waiting for a colleague to read and respond to her work.

Brainstorm: AI can help generate ideas or solutions in multiple contexts. As a career development specialist at a community college outside Chicago, Marie O’Hara, 68, often works one-on-one with students to match them with possible majors and job opportunities. To come up with different options, she’ll take results from career assessment tools (such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and plug them into ChatGPT with prompts such as “Based on this profile, what types of career fields might be good for me?” or “What are some examples of entry-level jobs that align with my personality, interest and values?”

“It’ll often come up with careers that [the assessment tools] didn’t come up with,” she says. For example, the AI tool suggested work as a respiratory therapist as a strong fit for a student interested in health care, citing “high patient interaction, uses curiosity and quick learning, clear procedures, strong demand and solid salary.”

Research: For gathering basic information about a subject you might be unfamiliar with, using AI tools is quicker and easier than a series of internet searches, says John Santoleri, 63, chief financial officer at Dimensional Energy, a developer of synthetic hydrocarbon technology. He uses the hypothetical example of a person who wants to get an overview of the ethanol industry. Without AI, that would require visiting numerous sites to piece together bits of information that would eventually help the person get a big-picture view of the industry.

But with AI, that learning process is simpler, he says; you can simply ask a chatbot, “Tell me about ethanol,” then follow up with more specific questions in response to its answers. “It’s like having an expert you can ask basic questions of, and then drill down,” Santoleri says, “rather than having to educate yourself so you know what questions to ask.”

Handle repetitive tasks: Financial therapist and author Rick Kahler, 70, uses AI to respond to the many pick-your-brain and request-for-information emails he receives. For that he uses what are known as GPTs—customizable versions of AI tools available to subscribers of paid tiers of ChatGPT. “Are they wanting a copy of a demo, financial therapy, something I’ve written, reference to a book? Of all my resources, what do I have for this person?” Kahler says. “It can get the links, prepare a response, and then I can go in and customize that.”

Convert files: When Lisa Ezrol Curran, 58, a strategy consultant in Chicago, needed a sortable, searchable congressional directory, she used ChatGPT to create one based on a messy, poorly formatted directory in a PDF file she had on hand.

“There weren’t any magic prompts,” she says. “I started [with] ‘I need to convert this PDF into a searchable spreadsheet, can you do that for me?’ and it would come back and do something that was completely knotted. So I learned to be specific and say ‘Only use the information in this file, and these column headers … and if the email is missing, please put a blank.’ I gave it very detailed instructions.”

Curran thoroughly checked the ChatGPT results but ended up having to make only a few small edits in the resulting 75-page file. “It was very much like working with an intern,” she says.

Dan Ackerman, editor in chief at technology retailer Micro Center, uses AI to build tables related to product review charts. “It used to be an annoying time sink,” he says. Now he takes screenshots of performance benchmark scores he wants to use in those charts, instructs the AI how he wants everything formatted and slots everything in.