A behavior I’ve been changing is… instead of looking for a SaaS, I go to ChatGPT/Gemini or Colab to do what I need.
My Saturday challenge: generating an image for a WhatsApp sticker. Something unimportant, but a good test.
So I compared the two this Saturday: ChatGPT vs. Google Colab + Gemini. ChatGPT won.
BUUUT I was very impressed with how far I got with Colab — even faster than ChatGPT’s image generation. Google is making it more “AI-first”, which helps non-technical people a lot.
I use Google Colab much like smolagents. Instead of leaving all the subjectivity to the AI, I ask it to generate the code and run the code. I want something deterministic to run.
I think being proficient in Google Colab will help a lot in this agentic world (here’s a tip).
When to use it? When you need more control over how you use AI. Other good tools to master are the OpenAI platform (the graphical interface itself) and Google AI Studio (which already generates the code for Google Colab).
I’ll run other experiments, mainly combining it with Pipefy (where I build my more “don’t make me think” agents).
Excited about the projects that will come out of our AI lab at the university!
The original post includes an image.
Originally written in Portuguese and published on LinkedIn on July 21, 2025. I translated it into English with the help of AI (Claude): it let me bring my LinkedIn posts to people who don’t read Portuguese without rewriting each one from scratch. I reviewed the translation to keep my original meaning and tone.