I get asked this a lot, usually by someone who has just spent an evening doing invoicing and has decided something has to change. Should I get a VA? Should I just use ChatGPT? Is one cheaper than the other?
I have a small team of VAs and I run most of my own work through AI, so I am probably the wrong person to give you a tidy answer. But I can give you an honest one, which is that they are not the same tool and the mistake is treating them as if they are.
A VA does the task. You tell them what needs doing, and if they are good, it gets done well and you stop thinking about it. That is genuinely valuable, and for some jobs it is the only answer, because the job needs a person: a phone call that needs a human voice, a supplier who needs chasing with some charm, a client who wants to feel looked after.
AI does not do the task in that sense. What it does is make certain kinds of work almost free. Anything that is mostly reading, sorting, summarising, drafting or checking, it will do the first pass on in seconds. A month of receipts categorised. A first draft of every proposal. The notes from a call turned into a to do list. A hundred prospects researched before you have had breakfast.
So here is the way I actually think about it, and it is the same way I decide for my own clients.
First, write down the jobs that are eating your evenings. Not the vague “admin”. The actual jobs. Quotes. Chasing payments. Posting on LinkedIn. Reconciling the bank. Replying to enquiries.
Then ask, of each one, does this need a person, or does it need doing? Chasing a late payment from a good customer needs a person. Categorising forty receipts does not. Writing a proposal needs your judgement on the price and the scope, but not on the paragraph explaining what your business does, which is the same every time.
The jobs that need a person are VA jobs. The jobs that just need doing are system jobs, and a system built on AI will do them faster, cheaper and more consistently than any human, including you.
What most people find when they do this exercise is that the list is about a third people jobs and two thirds system jobs, and they have been paying for all of it with their own evenings. What I find, when I do it for a client, is that once the system jobs are handled the person jobs shrink too, because a VA with a clean inbox and a current customer list gets through twice as much.
That is why my own answer, most of the time, is both, but in that order. Build the systems first so the mechanical work disappears. Then put a person on what is left, and that person might be a VA, or it might be you with your evenings back.
One warning. Do not buy AI tools by the subscription and hope. I have watched owners sign up to six things, use none of them properly, and conclude that AI does not work. It works when it is built around one specific job you have written down and can point to. That is the whole of it.
If you would like a second pair of eyes on your list, I do this with owners as a matter of course. Bring the list, I will tell you honestly which jobs are which.