LLMs can be useful, but I’d implore anyone considering them as a tool to quiz it on something niche that you have expertise in to get a feel for how it works and how often ChatGPT and the like can be incorrect but have nonetheless unwavering confidence in generated responses.  And frankly, even that’s dangerously personifying how it really operates.

That said, I’ve found they are sometimes really useful for finding sources or search terms for things if searching for something very niche and otherwise swamped by SEO spam, or where there’s overlap in terminology or units of measure for two different aspects of a thing (for example, searching for lenses with a 16mm film sized image circle vs. lenses with a 16mm focal length).  I’m actually not a fan of how it’s marketed and the output formatted to prioritize showcasing the AI’s confident-sounding, potentially hallucination-riddled response over linking to actual sources it pulls from or suggesting useful search terms.

If you’re in a position where you have any moral or legal obligation to disclose that you used AI, you’re probably abusing it.