Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google Gemini are among the most popular AI chatbots out there.
These generative AI tools offer the simplicity of conversations and combine it with the power of the internet. AI chatbots are increasingly becoming more powerful, from helping you research topics to summarizing documents with hundreds of thousands of words to generating art and more.
Google upended the internet with its improved search algorithms, beating rivals AltaVista, Yahoo, Bing, and others. It currently has over 81% market share, which shows just how much it dominates the world of internet search across the world.
However, Google Search might just be facing its biggest threat in nearly three decades of its existence. Surprisingly, the threat comes from two startups, not established players.
Perplexity AI adopts a slightly different approach to the chatbot experience, especially when compared to Microsoft Corp.-backed MSFT OpenAI's ChatGPT and Gemini. It is useful if you prefer deep research into any topic. In fact, Nvidia Corp. NVDA CEO Jensen Huang uses it for computer-aided drug discovery.
On the other hand, ChatGPT and Gemini offer a relatively more conventional chatbot experience, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Perplexity AI Versus ChatGPT Versus Gemini
We pit the three AI chatbots against each other to see which is best for you.
To begin with, I asked all three chatbots a simple question: The sum of three adults’ ages is 60. The oldest of them is 6 years older than the youngest. What is the age of each one of them? Assume that an adult is at least 18 years old.
The answer is: 18, 18 and 24.
However, in a somewhat surprising twist, both Perplexity and ChatGPT got this simple question wrong, while Gemini could understand and process it accurately.
Perplexity and ChatGPT ignored the minimum 18 years of age limit, resulting in wrong and different answers.
Another popular question, about chocolates and oranges, stumbled Perplexity and ChatGPT.
Here's the question: I have 7 chocolates today. I ate 1 orange last week. How many chocolates do I have left?
The answer is rather simple: I still have 7 chocolates left.
Perplexity and ChatGPT not only got it wrong by wrongfully doing the 7-1=6 calculation, but they even ignored the fact that I mentioned two completely different items.
ChatGPT was slightly worse – it framed the wrong answer in a rather confident manner, which could potentially lead to users ignoring the mistake at times.
While this is a simple test, the results show Gemini is better at answering them than Perplexity and ChatGPT.
Note that we used the free versions of all the three chatbots for this story, to give a clear picture about what users should expect out of the box.
Interestingly, Perplexity with Copilot is a hit and a miss. It got the age question absurdly wrong, while the chocolate question was an easy win for it.
Beyond this, however, here's a brief explainer on what each chatbot offers and their limitations.
Perplexity AI
Perplexity AI is primarily a search-and-answer style chatbot. It focuses on understanding the intent of your question, combining it with the library of your previous queries.
Perplexity tries to make conversations as human-like as possible, unlike a few other chatbots. Instead of just coming back with results, it gives explanations like a teacher would.
Perplexity comes in both free and paid avatars. Free users are limited to a very generous 100 Copilot-aided searches per day, while it is 600 for Pro users. It is worth noting that the free version uses a customized version of GPT, while the paid version lets you choose between different AI models like GPT 4, Claude 2, and Mistral Large.
Perplexity-free also limits file uploads to three per day, while the paid version allows unlimited uploads.
Pros:
- Detailed, easy-to-understand answers.
- Clear citations.
- Useful for deep research topics.
Cons:
- Not always the most accurate.
- Copilot-powered answers are a hit and a miss.
- Less creative.
Price: Freemium. Pro version costs $20 per month or $200 per year.
OpenAI ChatGPT
OpenAI kickstarted the AI chatbot frenzy, so it's not a surprise that ChatGPT is one of the most used AI chatbots out there. Many startups and chatbot providers also use OpenAI's large language models so that you will find quite a lot of similarities between them and ChatGPT itself.
One of the best aspects of ChatGPT is its good understanding of context and open-ended questions. It is also more creative and very good at text generation.
OpenAI has also added several features over time, ranging from image generation thanks to Dall-E 3 to Sora-powered video generation. However, video generation is still in the early stages of testing, so not everyone can access it just yet.
Plugins are another great way to expand the capabilities of ChatGPT, although you will need to pay for the premium version to access them.
With that said, ChatGPT 3.5, the free version, has a data cutoff up to January 2022. It cannot access the internet, so you can't ask it about current happenings.
Pros:
- Relatively more creative.
- Better at understanding context and open-ended questions.
- Premium version with plugins extends its functionality rather well.
Cons:
- Free version's information cutoff is a major limitation.
- Free version cannot access the internet.
- Can sometimes mislead users into believing factual inaccuracies.
Price: Freemium. Pro version costs $20 per month.
Google Gemini
Google Gemini has had its fair share of issues recently, but it promises to be a good competitor to Perplexity and ChatGPT. Google has decades of experience in indexing the world's information and making sense of it. Gemini has a clear advantage here, allowing it to be trained on a treasure trove of information.
So how does it perform? In our experience, Gemini has been quite good at logic and reasoning, answering questions by carefully considering every factor listed.
What also helps Gemini is the fact that it offers some crucial extensions like Gmail, Drive, Docs, YouTube, Google Maps, and more to get the most out of your Google account, as well as summarize videos when you don't have the time to watch them yourself.
Pros:
- Provides an extensive set of features for free.
- Extensions expand its capabilities very well.
- Reasoning capabilities are relatively good.
Cons:
- Still in its early stages of development.
- Can be handicapped by its biases, as its recent controversies have shown.
Price: Freemium. Gemini Advanced costs $20 per month.
Conclusion
All three AI chatbots have their relative strengths and weaknesses. While Perplexity is a great tool for deep research, ChatGPT works great for creative work, and Gemini excels in reasoning.
Talking about the free versions, ChatGPT's information cutoff can be a handicap if you want to deal with new information. But if you want to take the plunge and pay for the premium version, all three chatbots cost $20 per month.
This is where Perplexity has an edge over ChatGPT – the premium version lets you choose from multiple models, so you can get a more diverse experience at the same price.
If you haven't yet, give the free versions a shot and see which works best for you.
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Photo courtesy: Perplexity, OpenAI And Google
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