The Rise of AI Chatbots
The past year has seen an explosion in AI chatbots that can hold natural conversations and generate human-like text. The three biggest players in this space are ChatGPT from Anthropic, Google Bard, and Bing from Microsoft. These conversational AI tools promise to revolutionize how we search for information, write content, and interact with technology. But how exactly do ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Bing compare? Let’s take a look at the key differences between these AI chatbots.
ChatGPT
Released in November 2022, ChatGPT from research company Anthropic quickly went viral. ChatGPT is built on a large language model trained on vast amounts of text data using deep learning techniques. It can answer questions, explain concepts, summarize texts, write essays, code, and more. Key features of ChatGPT include:
- Very human-like conversational abilities. You can have an extended back-and-forth with coherent responses.
- Impressive knowledge on a wide range of topics, from history and literature to coding and math. It even cites sources in answers.
- Ability to decline inappropriate requests and admit mistakes. This makes it more trustworthy.
- Excellent written communication skills from drafting emails to writing stories.
However, as an early AI model, ChatGPT does have some limitations:
- Facts and data can be outdated or inaccurate at times.
- It may respond confidently without checking facts.
- Limited knowledge beyond 2021 since it was trained until then.
Google Bard
Not to be outdone, Google unveiled its conversational AI called Bard in February 2023. Bard is powered by Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). Key features of Bard include:
- Integration directly into Google Search to provide conversational answers.
- Vast knowledge of recent events, personalities, and facts accessed from the web.
- Can cite credible online sources and links in its answers.
- Excellent conversation abilities like ChatGPT.
However, Bard remains limited in some ways during this initial test phase:
- Prone to hallucinating facts and giving wrong answers.
- Conversational abilities are not as polished as ChatGPT.
- Access is limited to select users for now.
Microsoft Bing
Searching to keep pace, Microsoft upgraded its Bing search engine with AI capabilities in February 2023. Bing can now:
- Chat in a conversational format to provide search results.
- Generate lengthy texts on complex topics when given a prompt.
- Summarize key information from long articles.
- Answer natural language questions more contextually.
However, there are downsides to the current version of the AI-enhanced Bing:
- Tendency to go off-topic or makeup facts during conversations.
- Writing can be disorganized or nonsensical.
- Limited knowledge beyond web sources.
- Conversational abilities lag behind ChatGPT and Bard.
The Key Differences
While all three utilize large language models to enable conversational search and content creation, important differences remain in capabilities:
- ChatGPT has superior natural conversation skills and a wider general knowledge. But it risks generating misinformation.
- Google Bard provides more reliable, up-to-date information by searching the web. But the technology is less mature.
- Bing has enhanced basic search with some conversational abilities. However, it has the most limitations in knowledge and coherency.
The competition to provide the best AI chatbot is clearly heating up between tech giants like Google, and Microsoft and startups like Anthropic. ChatGPT maintains a lead in human-like interaction but expects rapid improvements across all three platforms in 2023 and beyond. The AI race has only just begun.