The AI Coworker War Just Started (Here's What Founders Need to Know)

Three AI coworkers launched within weeks of each other — Claude Cowork, Microsoft Copilot Cowork, and GPT-5.4. Not chatbots. Not assistants. Digital coworkers that go away, do a task, come back, and show you the work.

In this episode I break down what each one does, who it's for, and which one you actually need as a founder or small business owner. Plus why your SOPs are about to have their cauliflower moment, and why being small is your biggest competitive advantage right now.

✨ Quick decision guide: 

→ Solopreneur or small team? Claude Cowork 

→ Corporate team in Microsoft 365? Copilot Cowork 

→ Happy ChatGPT power user? GPT-5.4

🔥 WORK WITH ME

→ Wright Mode Membership: wrightmode.com/membership 

→ Claude Masterclass: Claude Masterclass

→ 1:1 AI Consulting: wrightmode.com/consulting

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Claude Cowork + Dispatch (Anthropic)
• Microsoft Copilot Cowork (launched March 9 — built on Claude's technology)
• GPT-5.4 (OpenAI)
• Claude double usage promo (until March 27)

CONNECT

Instagram: @wright_mode · Website: wrightmode.com

📌 Treat your AI coworker like a brand new junior staff member — not a senior exec with full access.

• Want to work together? Check out my offerings at Wright Mode
• Connect with me on Instagram → @wright_mode

Transcript

0:23

Alright, I wanna get into something today that is shifting how we are using ai. Because there's been upgrades or updates from some of the major AI players and it's gonna change how you use AI in your business. And at this point, who isn't using AI in their business. So these updates are gonna change how you think about it. So three of the biggest tech companies in the world just launched, well, I'm calling AI coworkers, not just chat bots or assistants. These are actual digital coworkers that can go away, do a task, come back and show you the work. And with Claude's latest update dispatch. You don't even need to be at your computer to get this stuff working. So Anthropic has clawed cowork. Microsoft just launched copilot cowork literally a week ago, and open AI dropped. What is it? Chat, GPT 5.4, which can now autonomously execute multi-step workflows across your entire computer. So the question every founder is asking is, okay, which one do I actually need? Do I need any of them? And so that is what I'm gonna break down for you today. No jargon, no hype, just what's actually happening and what it means for you as a business owner. All right, so let me catch you up real fast. So the AI industry has, like crossed a line Now we've gone from AI that answers, you know, you type in a question or a prompt and you get an answer back to AI that does your tasks. And this is. Fundamentally different because you could do this before, but you had to like build in something like N eight N or make.com and run these on schedules. Whereas now we have these AI coworkers that are able to be activated and build their own workflows with just natural language. And that is fundamentally so different to how we've used AI up until this point. So three products launched within the week of each other. So Claude Cowork by Anthropic that launched in January, 2026. It works on your computer, can read files, control your browser, manipulate apps. Think of it as a really capable assistant sitting at your desk helping you out. Then co-pilot, co-work by Microsoft launched on the 9th of March, I think it was. That's like a week ago, bit over a week ago. And so that's actually built on Anthropics Claw technology. So, it works across Microsoft 3 6 5 and the whole suite Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, et cetera. And I think it's about$30 a month on top of existing subscriptions. Then GPT 5.4 has also been launched and it actually scored higher than human baseline on real desktop productivity tasks. That's pretty crazy. So it also can. Execute multi-step workflows. And so this is chat, GPT going from, here's a draft to, I did the whole thing for you. And for a little bit of context. When Claude Cowork launched in January, it wiped 220 billion. Off Microsoft's market cap in a week. And so that is obviously why now Microsoft have collaborated with Anthropic to create their own version of cowork because that is huge and that is where this technology is going now. So let's get into a little bit about what Eat, which one actually does so that you can kind of. Work out what it is that you need. So Claude Cowork. So this one is for solo business owners, small teams and founders who work from their own computer. And what it does is it works locally on your machine. So you download the desktop app and then you can give it access to read, organize, create files, control your browser. Work across apps on your desktop. So it's like a digital assistant who can actually touch your stuff. And the strengths of this is that it's simple to use, like it's within the Claude interface. So if you're already using Claude, just download the desktop app and you go, there's like chat cowork code, jump into the middle one and start having a play around with it. Limitations with this one. So it doesn't have access to cloud enterprise data. So if you are using, you know, company shared drives, team chats like that it works on your computer and your logins, not your organization's infrastructure. So this is the one that I use. And it's actually the one that I recommend for most of my audience because if you're a small team or founder or service provider, this is an excellent entry point into AI agents. And it has the capabilities of Claude Code, like some of them, and it's super powerful and it's just easy to use. Next we've got Microsoft Co-Pilot Co-work. What a mouthful. So this is more for corporates teams who live in Microsoft 3, 6, 5, it's organizations that need security and compliance who are already in the Microsoft 3, 6, 5. Environment. So what it does is it runs in the cloud across the whole Microsoft ecosystem. So it can prep your meeting by pulling emails, files, teams, chats, building presentations, all of that, which Cowork can do. But it's got that enterprise security baked in, and you also get the choice to toggle between Claude and open AI models. It has that deep integration with every Microsoft app too. So this, if you are a larger organization or enterprise, this is what you would be looking to use. Limitations here are pricing, but if you are familiar with Microsoft Enterprise pricing, this is probably gonna not come as a shock to you. But it's$30 per user on top of your existing subscriptions. So that's enterprise grade pricing for you. So this isn't built for solo founders. Also, it's still in preview, so it's not fully available yet, but I imagine that it'll be rolled out in the next few months. So if you run a team that's already in Microsoft 3 6 5, keep an eye on this. But if you are a founder or small business owner, this is not gonna be a part of your budget. Claude Cowork, I would look at that. Alright, next. GPT 5.4 or chat GPT agents. So this is for existing chat GPT power users who know and love chat, GPT, and you want a tool that you're already using that does, I guess everything. So you can now start autonomous multi-step workflows with this. And as I said before, it's scored above human baseline on real desktop productivity tasks so it can execute across software environment. It has a massive context window of 1 million tokens, which Claude have now just released for Opus 4.6 as well. So if you are already deep in the chat GPT ecosystem you know, this is kind of the logical next step for you. I don't know if this is a limitation, but obviously there is a bit of a max exodus of chat GPT at the moment. A lot of people aren't happy with the outputs of GPT 5.4. It's genuinely capable chat. GPT is still an excellent product. But if you are not happy with the kind of answers you're getting, then I would look at Claude also, Claude has double usage up until 27th of March and for those of us in Australia, so it's for off peak times that actually works out'cause it's like our peak times. So that's a really nice opportunity in the next couple of weeks to just. Play around and see if Claude is the right fit. Just because everyone is, seems like they're leaving Claude, chat. GPT to go to Claude. Doesn't mean you have to. If you are happy with OpenAI and the chat GPT product, stay there. Don't get fomo just because you're seeing everyone else move to Claude. All right, so that's a little bit of a high level overview of the three new kind of coworkers, what does this actually mean for you and your business? So I guess why this matters is this shifts our like AI use from chat to action. And this is probably the biggest mental model change. Because we've spent the last few years learning how to prompt ai, how to chat with it, how to get good outputs. But now AI is moving to the doing of the tasks and not just advising on them. And that's a completely different relationship and way to work with ai. So instead of prompting it and being like, Hey, can you help me with this? We have to get better at thinking about the outcome we want. And delegating that to ai. And so that is a different skill. It's, you know, how do I describe this in a way that this AI agent will be able to understand and execute for me? SOPs, standard operating procedures. If you have those for repeatable tasks, guess what? That makes a perfect prompt to hand off to an AI agent, Now it's cottage cheese. It can be anything. That's your SOPs. If you have solid SOPs, you can hand those off as tasks to AI agents. And if you don't, guess what? Just open chat GPT or Claude Voice, note what you do, and then ask it to create an SOP to hand off to an AI agent for you. Will this be perfect the first time you run it? Probably not, but that is like giving feedback to a staff member, right? It's like, you did this. Well, this needs to change. That is all you have to do. Just iterate, give it feedback, and it'll start to get better. So how are people using these AI agents? So, there's ad agencies who are now using Claude for SEO audits and creative briefs which is literally what I have just recently done with Claude Code. And. There's like so many creative ways to use these agents now. And what is really cool is if you are a solo founder or a small business, you are perfectly positioned to like be on the forefront of this because larger corporations are so much slower to move in this space and your advantage is. You have access to these tools for like$30 a month now. You can try Claude Cowork this week because you made the decision that you're gonna test it. Speed is your advantage. And so that is one of the biggest advantages of being small right now is you can try these products, work out what works for you, and then just accelerate your productivity while enterprises are catching up, rolling out their AI govern governance and policies, and then the tools and systems have changed and they have to redo that whole thing again. All right. So confession booth time. Oh my God. So since I downloaded Claude Cowork literally the day it came out in January, it has cleaned up my downloads folder that many times. And I had my Claude Masterclass yesterday, and I showed that as a demo of it, cleaning up my. Downloads again, and I think it still had to clean up like over a hundred files and I'm pretty sure I got called Cowork to do that last week. That is definitely a toxic trade of mine. My downloads folder is where dreams go to die, but now I have cowork to sort it out for me and make it look like I am organized. As always, if you have something that you wanna drop into the AI confession booth, slide into my dms and I will read yours out on the next episode. Also if you are sitting here being like, okay, this AI coworker thing sounds really cool, but I have no idea where to start then check out my membership, just jump onto right mode.com/membership. And we are like doing stuff. In that community all the time. So that you just get rid of that overwhelm and stop feeling like, you know, you're being left behind. There's templates, video walkthroughs, basically everything that I build in my business, I just give back to that community and be like, here, I made this. Here's how you do it too. I would love to see you in there. There's a community of almost 50 women now. And I am just. Like that is the best AI community for women out there. I truly believe that. And I would love to see you in there. And thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting my work. Huge milestone cross this week too. I have hit over 25,000 followers across my social media channels which is just. Wild. And I feel incredibly grateful. You're listening to this podcast, you're supporting my work by listening to this. So thank you so much. And yeah, so I had a goal of setting. Of teaching 10,000 women how to use AI by 2026. I have surpassed that now. We're gone for a hundred thousand. So let's get this. So every time you share something, you tag me. That helps me get my workout there. So thank you. I'm incredible grateful to you for that. All right, finally, you are not another to-do list for this week. Go try Claude Cowork. Open cloud on your desktop and just ask it to do something for you. Organize a folder, summarize a bunch of documents, clean up your downloads like me. Just try it, try that, like delegating out to ai, see how it feels and yeah, have some fun as a little guardrail. Don't let cowork delete files. Just like you wouldn't ask your brand new junior staff assistant to do that on their first day or first week, probably even first month. So treat it like that. Just keep it on a very tight leash to start with, and then once you get a feel for it, you can give it access to more things. All right. I hope you found this episode helpful. Tag me if you're trying like Claude Code or Claude Cowork this week. Let me know what you're trying first. And if this was useful, share it with someone who you know, is maybe feeling a little bit confused about ai. Things are moving super fast and I am here to kind of take that overwhelm away for people. I will see you on the next episode.