Which tool to choose
They're not interchangeable. The choice depends on what you need right now.
- Personalized ideas to work through together, in a conversation that adjusts as you go: ChatGPT (with the latest free model available) or Claude. Claude is better at holding the thread of a long exchange and reasons about your tastes without losing context after a few messages.
- Real places near you (a pottery course, a hiking club, a model-making shop): Gemini from your smartphone, with the "Ask Maps" feature connected to Google Maps. It draws from map data instead of making up names. This feature launched first in the United States and India: if it doesn't show up for you in Italy, you'll find the alternative route below.
- Going deeper into the hobby once you've chosen it: ChatGPT's "Study and learn" mode, which instead of spoon-feeding you asks you questions and takes you to the result one step at a time. Available in the free version too.
The interfaces of ChatGPT and Gemini change often: buttons and feature names move around. If you can't find the exact command, don't waste time on it: you get the same thing by writing in the text box. The working syntax:
Act as a tutor who guides me step by step. Don't give me the answer ready-made: ask me one question at a time to understand my level and bring me to the solution together.
How to do it
The point isn't the tool, it's the context you give it. A vague request produces a magazine list; a request full of your constraints produces ideas you can actually follow. From browser or app, the path is the same.
- Open the tool and start from a single dedicated chat.
- Don't write "recommend me a hobby". Put in your boundaries: how much time you have and when, how much you want to spend to start, the space you have, whether you're looking for something manual, physical or creative, and above all what you've already tried and dropped.
- Paste a complete request. The working syntax:
Help me find 3 new hobbies that suit me.
About me: I have about 4 free hours a week, usually in the evening. Maximum starting budget 80 euros. I live in an apartment with no balcony. Manual activities relax me, I get bored sitting still watching a screen. I already tried running but dropped it because I got bored on my own.
For each hobby give me: why it suits me, the realistic cost to start, the very first step to take this week, and a concrete sign to tell after a month whether it's right for me.
Avoid the most obvious and predictable hobbies.
- Read the answers with a critical eye. If they're generic, don't start over: reply in the same chat "too generic, anchor to my case" or add a constraint that narrows things down (for example "nothing to do indoors").
- Once you've chosen, look for where to practice it near home. On Gemini from your smartphone, by voice or written:
Can you find a pottery course or group for beginners near central Bologna? Tell me the name, address and whether they accept people starting from scratch.
A concrete example
Marco, 38, eight hours a day in front of a monitor, wanted something that would pull him away from the screen without becoming a second job. He opened ChatGPT and pasted the request above, swapping the data for his own: two evenings a week, budget 100 euros, small apartment, the urge to use his hands, annoyance at competitive things.
The AI proposed three options: artisanal notebook binding, hand pottery, growing indoor bonsai. For each it gave him the entry cost (under 100 euros in all three cases), the first step of the week and a check-in sign at one month. Marco chose pottery. He opened Gemini on his phone and asked for a workshop nearby: it came up with a space offering evening courses a kilometer and a half from home, with an address verifiable on Maps. He signed up for a trial lesson. From the question to the potter's wheel bench: one evening.
When it does NOT work (and how to fix it)
If the AI always proposes the usual hobbies
Photography, cooking, yoga, gardening: the most obvious suggestions keep coming back because they're the most frequent in the texts the AI was trained on. The fix is to take away room from the banal: add "exclude the ten most common hobbies" to your request, or give an unusual constraint ("something I can do in twenty minutes broken up during the day"). The more you tighten, the more the AI is forced to reach beyond the cliché.
If it invents a course or a club that doesn't exist
When you ask for places from a tool that isn't connected to a map, it can give you back plausible but false names: it's the known flaw called hallucination. The way out is to use the right tool for the right job. For places, rely on Gemini connected to Maps, which draws on real addresses, and before you move, check the name and address directly on Google Maps. If "Ask Maps" isn't active for you yet, ask Gemini for a normal search and then verify each name on the map: the final filter is still you.
If the ideas stay on paper and you never start
A list of perfect hobbies sitting in the chat doesn't change your Saturday afternoon. Ask the AI to reduce everything to a single action to do today, a short one: "give me the first ten-minute step for pottery, something I can do right now without buying anything". The barrier is almost always the start, not the choice.
A tip from someone who really uses it
Tell the AI what bored you or put you off about past hobbies, not just what you like. The "no" guides it more than the "yes": if you tell it you dropped the gym because it was repetitive and running because it was solitary, it understands you want variety and company, and stops suggesting activities to do alone. And instead of asking for "a hobby", ask for "a thirty-day challenge": a time-limited commitment gets started, a passion forever is just scary.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to pay for ChatGPT or Gemini to get a hobby recommendation?
No. The free version of both handles this kind of request without trouble: it converses, searches the web for up-to-date data, and gives you personalized ideas. The paid plan only makes sense if you run out of available messages within a single session or if you want the more powerful models for other uses.
Does the AI understand my tastes if I don't write everything in detail?
It works in proportion to what you give it. With little context it falls back to the generic. If you've turned on memory in the tool, it remembers the things you've told it about yourself from one chat to the next, and the advice improves over time without repeating the same data every time.
Can I use it to pick up a passion I'd abandoned?
Yes, and it often works better than searching from scratch. Tell it what the passion was, why you'd left it and what has changed in your life since: it proposes an updated version, better suited to the time and space you have today, instead of sending you back to where you got stuck.
Will the AI tell me which hobby is right for me?
No, and expecting that only leads to disappointment. The AI doesn't know you and doesn't guess your passion: it recombines what you tell it and gives you back sensible candidates. The verdict comes from the test in the field, that pottery-wheel lesson or that first badly-bound notebook. Use it as a generator of good hypotheses, not as an oracle that knows you better than you know yourself.