AI Showdown: Google's Bard vs. OpenAI's ChatGPT

We have all seen the excitement around ChatGPT, an AI chatbot created by OpenAI. It has gained popularity, and there are around 100 million users, including myself. I use this chatbot for various tasks like generating content ideas, writing emails, and solving Google Sheets formulas that I find tricky.

However, ChatGPT has some limitations. For example, if you want more accurate answers from the web, you need to pay for ChatGPT Plus, and even then, the web browser can be slow.

On the other hand, Google has its own AI chatbot called Bard, which offers many similar features to ChatGPT but faster and for free. Since Bard's release, I have been using both tools for different purposes, one as a research tool and the other as a writing assistant. There are various differences between them that will determine how you use each tool. Let's explore these differences further.

ChatGPT vs. Google Bard at a glance

ChatGPT:

• Creators: OpenAI
• Language model: GPT-3 (or GPT-4 for paid subscribers)
• Data sources: Trained on a massive dataset of text from various sources, but limited to information up to 2021. ChatGPT Plus users can search the web using Bing search.
• Pricing: Free for all users; ChatGPT Plus costs $20/month and offers additional benefits.

Google Bard:

• Creators: Google
• Language model: Pathways Language Model (PaLM 2)
• Data sources: Trained on Infiniset, which includes Common Crawl, Wikipedia, documents, and web conversations, allowing real-time searches for the latest information.
• Pricing: Free for users with access.

Both ChatGPT and Bard are capable of doing very similar things, especially when it comes to helping programmers. Here are some of the tasks they can assist with:

1. Suggestions: Both models can suggest the correct syntax and parameters for functions and other code elements.
2. Completion: They can complete the code you are writing, making it easier and faster for you to code.
3. Debugging: They can help you find errors and problems in your code, making it easier to fix them.
4. Explanation: They can also explain the code they generate or the code you provide, helping you understand how it works.
5. Coding: if you ask to write code, ChatGPT will be the winner.

Both models were trained on a massive amount of data, including information from Common Crawl, Wikipedia, books, articles, documents, and internet content. However, Bard is a bit different because it was trained on conversations and dialogues from the web, while ChatGPT mostly used general content scraped from the internet.

Both ChatGPT and Bard are still being developed, but Bard is slightly more in the development phase compared to ChatGPT. To understand how these differences matter practically, we can test both models against each other.

Bard uses Google Search to find information, while ChatGPT's web browser uses Bing.

For Bard to be a useful research tool, it needs to access the internet. Unlike ChatGPT's free version, which has information up to 2021 like a big encyclopedia, Bard can search Google for the most recent answers and details that its training data might not have.

This is especially important when you want to:

1. Research recent events.
2. Summarize important information from web pages.
3. Find images for visual understanding.

Pros and Cons Bard VS Chat GPT

Pros of Bard:

1. User-friendly interface.
2. Better for research.
3. Can find current information, including recent events.
4. Can summarize webpages.

Cons of Bard:

1. Doesn't track previous requests.
2. Can sometimes make up information due to AI hallucinations.
3. Offers fewer plug-ins and integrations compared to ChatGPT.
4. Reliability of sources on the internet may vary.

Pros of ChatGPT:

1. Better at writing tasks.
2. Stores previous conversations for reference.
3. Allows sharing of responses with others.
4. Offers various plug-ins and integrations with popular sites and apps like Expedia, Instacart, and Zapier.

Cons of ChatGPT:

1. Need to manually copy and paste articles for summarization.
2. Responses may be lengthy, making it difficult to quickly scan through.
3. Must be fact-checked to avoid incorrect information or hallucinations.
4. The advanced version is not available for free.

ChatGPT Pricing:

• The basic version of ChatGPT is free, allowing users to ask up to 100 questions per day.
• For $20 per month, users can subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, which offers faster response times, access to new features, and the use of GPT-4 (the free version uses GPT-3.5).
• Organizations that don't have a contract with OpenAI can join a waitlist to access the ChatGPT API.

Google Bard Pricing:

• Google Bard is entirely free, with no limit on the number of questions users can ask.
• Google often offers its products for free, as the company primarily earns revenue from advertising.

Chat GPT and Bard AI have many different uses in different industries.

Here are some common ways they are used:

1. Customer Support: They can help customers with their questions and provide personalized assistance, making customers happier.
2. Virtual Assistants: These models can act like virtual helpers, assisting with tasks like setting reminders, organizing schedules, and finding information.
3. Content Generation: Bard AI is great at creating stories and content, making it useful for writing articles, narratives, and creative works.
4. Educational Tools: The AI models can be interactive tools for learning, explaining things, and answering questions.

However, they also have some challenges and limitations:

1. Bias and Misinformation: Sometimes, the AI can have biases from the data it was trained on, leading to incorrect or misleading information.
2. Contextual Ambiguity: Both models might have trouble with unclear or complex questions, resulting in less accurate or irrelevant answers.
3. Ethical Concerns: Using AI raises ethical issues, like privacy concerns, potential misuse, and the developers' responsibility to be transparent and accountable.