3 months have passed since I published my original post which compared all the major AI chatbots, and it's time for an update! Since the number of paid options increased significantly, this time I've split the comparison table in two: The first part compares free AI chatbots, and the second compares paid versions.
Free AI Chatbots
For ChatGPT and Claude not much has changed since November. ChatGPT gained voice input & output in the mobile app, and Claude upgraded their LLM from 2.0 to 2.1 (although some benchmarks claim version 2.0 was actually better...).
Bing Chat was renamed to Copilot, added some weird and limited support for a small number of plugins, and partially lost its main advantage: The availability of GPT-4 for free. When Microsoft released Copilot Pro, the paid version of Copilot, they announced that the free version would now support GPT-4 only in "non-peak times"... I haven't experienced any limitations in using GPT-4 with Copilot yet, but that may change at any moment if Microsoft decides to save costs.
Gemini (renamed from Bard) got the most significant update: The underlying LLM was upgraded from PaLM 2 to the more capable Gemini Pro, and it can now generate images using Google's Imagen 2 text-to-image model. The hallucinations which plagued the previous version have been significantly reduced, and in terms of quality it ranks between GPT 3.5 and GPT-4. An added bonus - no message caps!
Bottom line for the the free versions: ChatGPT is based on a 15-month old LLM (GPT 3.5), so in my opinion it's out the race. Claude doesn't have any added features other than text-based chatting, and its only advantage is the huge context window, which enables you to upload very large documents and ask questions about their content. Gemini and Copilot are leading the pack in terms of features and quality, and since we're talking about free services, you don't need to decide - just use both!
Paid AI Chatbots
ChatGPT Plus has a lot of great features - you can check out my blog post about it. Since that post was written, they've added another killer feature: "GPTs", which are custom versions of ChatGPT that include Knowledge (uploaded files) and Custom Instructions (a system prompt), and can be built without writing any code. Microsoft announced that they are gradually rolling out their own version called "Copilot GPTs", but I haven't seen it yet.
One of the most annoying limitations of ChatGPT Plus is the cap of 40 messages every 3 hours - and you're paying $20 a month for this! ChatGPT Team promises "higher message caps" (users report 100 messages every 3 hours) and costs 30$ a month ($25 if you pay annually). It also adds some admin tools, and the ability to share GPTs and ChatGPT sessions with your team members.
Claude Pro has a similar advantage over Claude free - "5x more usage", which according to their updated documentation means 100 "short" messages or 20 "very long" messages every 8 hours. It also promises "early access to new features", or in other words: Pay to be our beta testers...
Microsoft recently released Copilot Pro, their answer to ChatGPT Plus, for $20 a month. The only added feature over the free version for regular users is that you can use GPT 4 even at peak times, but...if you have a license for Microsoft 365 Personal or Family, you're in for a real treat: Copilot is integrated into your Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook apps, letting you generate emails, documents, presentations and formulas using simple prompts. Users of Microsoft 365 Business, Standard and other enterprise versions pay $30 for this integration, which is called Copilot for Microsoft 365. The enterprise version has some other nice features, including Copilot support in Teams, and Microsoft Graph Grounding, which lets Copilot access all your stored documents, emails and chats across all apps.
Gemini Advanced is the only chatbot based on Google's Gemini Ultra LLM, which Google claims to be better than GPT-4. It also integrates with Google Workspace applications: Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets and Meet. The price is $20 a month, and it is bundled with a Google One subscription tier called "AI Premium", which includes 2 TB of cloud storage.
Bottom Line: If you have more than one person in your team, go for ChatGPT Team instead of ChatGPT Plus - you'll enjoy the higher message caps, and the ability to centrally manage your subscriptions and share GPTs and sessions among your team members. As for Google vs. Microsoft - since I don't assume you'll switch business platforms just for the AI features, you'll probably use Copilot if you're a Microsoft 365 user, and Gemini Advanced if you're a Google Workspace user. Just one word of caution: The platform integration features of both chatbots are still under development, and features don't always work as demoed.
Other AI Chatbots
In addition to the major AI chatbots which are targeted at general usage, other chatbots can be relevant for specific use cases. If you're doing web research, I would recommend using perplexity.ai or you.com. Both are AI-enhanced search engines, and you'll get better results when searching for current information than you'll get from the Internet-connected AI chatbots - ChatGPT Plus, Copilot and Gemini. If you're creating marketing content, you might consider Jasper or Writesonic. And if you just want to have fun, take a look at Character.ai which lets you talk to (and create) specific "personas", and Pi.ai which can get quite philosophical at times but is a great conversation partner.
That's it for now - you're welcome to follow me on LinkedIn for the latest updates.
And if you've found this guide helpful, feel free to share it with your network and spread the AI love!
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