Ugh, I am right there with you on the reliability front. It is honestly exhausting. I had such a bad experience last week trying to finish my final lit review where the summarizer I was using just completely hallucinated three sources that werent even real. I spent two hours looking for papers that did not exist... talk about a waste of time. These tools are just not as good as expected when you are actually under pressure and it is so frustrating. How I have been dealing with the constant letdowns:

• Run LM Studio Desktop App locally to avoid server outages.
• Stick to Obsidian Note Taking App for notes so you own the data. Honestly, the convenience of these smart apps is starting to feel like a total trap when they fail right before a deadline...

Agree with StealthyPotato, Gemini is decent for the quick stuff, but unfortunately its been acting up for me lately with longer docs. Honestly, its been a bit of a letdown when it just refuses to summarize a PDF right before a seminar. If you actually want to get research done without losing your mind, Perplexity AI Pro is where its at. It actually gives you real citations which is a lifesaver so you dont end up with fake sources. For the writing side of things, Claude 3.5 Sonnet is my go-to now... the flow is just way more natural than Gemini or GPT which can sound super robotic. I tried Notion Plus with AI for my lecture notes but the price is kinda steep for a student budget. Still, its better than trying to organize everything manually. Just sucks that the best features are always hidden behind a subscription these days tho.

Re: "Agree with StealthyPotato, Gemini is decent for the..." - ugh, tell me about it. It is honestly the worst when a tool you rely on just flops right during finals week. I am mostly satisfied with how my setup works well these days, but the constant privacy concerns still drive me crazy. I really think students need to be way more careful. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of using every shiny new thing without looking at the fine print.

• Be wary of tools that dont have a clear privacy policy regarding your data.
• Stop paying for three different monthly subs when one usually covers everything you need.
• Never ever trust a summary or a citation without double-checking the source yourself. Ngl, I get so frustrated seeing people upload their whole thesis into these bots. Once it’s in their database, you basically lose control of your own intellectual property. I am happy with my current routine for now, but man, the lack of transparency in this space is just exhausting sometimes...

Google Gemini is better than ChatGPT.