You can’t miss the recent rapid rise of generative AI chatbots, with more and more of these applications opening their doors to users – and making their way into the software and hardware we use every day.
Just like you can choose your favorite email provider or music streaming app, you can now choose your favorite AI chatbot. To give you an idea of which is right for you, we tested three of the biggest here.
There are several others to consider, including Perplexity and Claude, but for now we’re focusing on the three best-known names in the space: Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google Gemini.
In addition to providing the basics of each bot, we also run three standard tests for each. Find out how these AI engines perform with “a free and easy game idea for a 5 year old’s birthday party,” “a new smartphone app idea that’s likely to appeal to a lot of people, complete with a name,” and “ tell me how to reset macOS and what I need to keep in mind before doing so.”
For the purposes of this guide, we compared the free AI models in each of these chatbots at the time of writing, rather than the paid versions.
Microsoft Copilot
Available in: Web, Windows, Android, iOS
Price: Free or $20 per month (priority access to newer models)
Characteristics: Text, images, code, documents
You’ll find Copilot in almost everything Microsoft makes now – Bing, Windows, OneDrive – and it’s also available as a web app and mobile app. You don’t even need to register an account to use it, although your usage limit will be limited if you don’t log in with your Microsoft credentials.
Copilot uses Microsoft’s Bing search engine perfectly, and many answers have web links attached as citations – very useful if you want to make sure the AI isn’t hallucinating. It also has a friendly, conversational tone, offering several suggested prompts every time you open it.
The AI engine that underpins Copilot is actually OpenAI’s GPT-4 (at least until Microsoft developed its own), but the tools are different in several ways—including the three chat settings you get for adjust Copilot text output: More creative, More BalancedIt is More accurate.
As for our challenges, the Copilot suggested What time is it, Mr. Wolf? for our 5-year-olds, and a virtual interior design augmented reality app for smartphones – although it didn’t give us a name for it, instead telling us to “get creative” with the name.
When it came to resetting the Mac, the instructions were correct and apparently (according to the quotes) taken directly from Apple’s support site. We were told to back up all our data too, which is the correct approach.
Copilot is the obvious choice if you are already deeply integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem. It works well for referencing relevant information from the web and provides clear, easy-to-follow citation links.
OpenAI ChatGPT
Available in: Web, Android, iOS
Price: Free or $20 per month (newer models, more features)
Characteristics: Text, images, code, documents
It seems like ChatGPT has been setting the pace when it comes to generative AI, but is it really that much better than the competition when you actually start using it? It’s certainly widely available: you can access it on the web on any computer, or in mobile apps for Android and iOS.
There’s a big difference between the free version of ChatGPT and the $20 per month Plus version – you need to be a subscriber to get features like imaging and document scanning, for example. A subscription also lets you create your own GPTs, with custom prompts and your own data (so you can, for example, feed a GPT a stack of research articles and then ask questions about them).
ChatGPT Plus also offers access to the latest GPT-4 templates, but the free GPT-3.5 template is a perfectly suited gateway to AI chatbot conversations. It’s fast and versatile, although it doesn’t provide links to other places on the web like Copilot does, to help you verify the accuracy of what you’re reading.
One of the main reasons to choose ChatGPT as your chatbot of choice is that it is at the forefront of AI development, with new improvements and features released regularly. That said, it’s most impressive when you’re paying for it, so it might not be the ideal bot if you’re on a budget.
The bot did reasonably well in the challenges we gave it: the game’s suggestion was musical statues, but with a thematic touch to the music (like superheroes or animals), which is a good idea. The macOS reset instructions were quite detailed and mentioned backups, but they were a bit out of date – GPT 3.5 was only trained on data until January 2022.
As for the smartphone app suggestion, ChatGPT came up with something called FitTrack, which would aim to track physical and mental metrics for a holistic view of your health and well-being – not the most original idea, but at least it was well thought out ( and ChatGPT included a name).
Google Gemini
Available in: Web, Android, iOS
Price: Free or $20 per month (newer models, better integration with other Google apps)
Characteristics: Text, images, code
Lastly, we have Google Gemini (formerly known as Google Bard), which is available as a web app, a standalone Android app, and the Google app for iOS. Again, there are two plans, free and paid, but this paid plan ($20 per month) is part of Google One – so you also get extras like cloud storage.
When it comes to the actual differences in product usage, paying a monthly fee just gives you access to a newer, smarter model (these models are also called Gemini). In some situations, you might not notice the difference, but in others – like coding or math – you probably will.
Whichever Gemini flavor you choose, the interface is very similar to ChatGPT, with your past conversations in the left corner of the screen. The link to past conversations is simple, and we like the way you can see multiple draft responses to the same prompt (even though the drafts are often very similar).
As with Copilot and Microsoft, Gemini makes a lot of sense if you already use a lot of Google products – in fact, you may have already used it through Google Docs or Gmail. However, in terms of responses and interface, it is more similar to the OpenAI offering, for better or worse: a little more efficient and not as user-friendly as Copilot.
In responding to our macOS reset query, Gemini followed ChatGPT’s lead in producing a response that made sense but was not updated to take into account newer Apple Silicon Macs. However, it provided a source link for verification (the Apple support site), like Copilot but unlike ChatGPT.
The app suggestion was something called Swap & Share Shelf, for lending items to neighbors – actually a pretty decent idea – and the party game suggestion was pin the tail on the donkey, but with a magical creature instead of a donkey. . Just like the ChatGPT idea, it’s an interesting twist on an old classic.
We weren’t particularly looking to find an outright winner through this comparison, and in fact they are all quite similar – as Copilot, ChatGPT and Gemini can all be used for free, you can see for yourself which suits your needs best. . As far as our testing goes, Copilot offers the most AI functionality without paying, ChatGPT is more or less the most competent AI (but only if you pay for it), while Gemini is ideal if you already You’re a fan of everything Google does.
