AI Chatbots are all the rage these days, making text boxes interesting again. ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing AI, and Google’s Bard are getting more attention from both the media and users. AI chatbots perform different duties from helping you to research a topic to solving your coding errors. But which of these AI services is the best? In this article, we compare ChatGPT from OpenAI, Google Bard, and Bing AI, so you can understand the strengths and weaknesses of each chatbot and choose one that suits you.
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ChatGPT vs Google Bard vs Microsoft Bing AI
We have tested all three chatbots in different scenarios from researching and generating content to their reasoning skills and being personal assistants. To understand the context, we have included screenshots that include both our prompts and answers from these chatbots. Let’s start with the category that most people use these chatbots for.
1. Researching
AI chatbots are excellent tools for research as the experience is even better compared to traditional search engines. Instead of opening a list of links and reading articles to get the answer, chatbots provide the exact answer you are looking for directly. As the technology is new, these chatbots can produce false information sometimes.
Upon using these chatbots for researching various topics, Bing Chat stands out as a better research tool comparatively. It is directly integrated into the Bing search engine, makes fewer factual errors comparatively, cities sources for all the info and stats provided, and also provide suggestions for your later questions.
While ChatGPT is just as good, as of now, the data it is trained on is limited to the year 2021 making the info outdated sometimes. Also, ChatGPT doesn’t cite any sources for the info it provides. ChatGPT does produce a longer and detailed answer compared to both Bing and Bard when it has to explain something.
Whereas Bard produces a good formatted answer comparatively. It includes tables where required, bolds important words and headings, etc. But it gets the facts wrong more often comparatively. As it is a new service at the time of writing this article, we hope it gets better as people use the service more and more.
When it comes to research, all three AI services can’t be fully relied upon. While Bing Chat provides more factual answers compared to Bard, it also gets the answer wrong many times and we have to manually verify the information.
2. Getting Info in Style
While all three services can answer your questions, ChatGPT can better tune its answer according to your needs. For example, you can ask it to explain something like you are a 10-year-old. All three services will decrease the complexity of the topic to make it easier to understand. But we found that ChatGPT does a better job by even making the language and formatting simpler.
Here’s the reply from Bing to the same question.
While Bard does a much better job than Bing, it is not consistent and not as robust in changing its tune accordingly.
You can go all in and even ask ChatGPT to answer in a particular style or ask it to explain in a movie character’s style. ChatGPT can imitate their style while answering. Taking all this into consideration, we found ChatGPT doing a better overall job in researching and delivering answers to specific needs. But again, the AI model is trained on data until 2021.
3. Generating Content
Many people use AI chatbots to generate various types of content like articles, movie scripts, YouTube scripts, blog posts, tweets, etc. ChatGPT does a better job at creating content.
Bard, on another hand, produces well-formatted content and also can include tables, links, etc. Also, it has access to the internet and produces up-to-date content. But it is not verbally dextrous like ChatGPT.
When it comes to Bing, more often than not it will give suggestions to write the content instead of creating actual content. Even when it does generate content, it falls flat compared to ChatGPT
4. Writing Code
Another area where ChatGPT shines massively is in the code area. With a simple question, ChatGPT can produce code in the programming language you asked for and also explains the code it has written. ChatGPT-generated code follows the standard formatting rules of that specific programming language. Other than generating the code directly, you can also provide the code and ask it to find errors or make it more efficient.
Just like ChatGPT, Bing can generate code and also solve errors most of the time. While both ChatGPT and Bing make many errors in their code, ChatGPT coding errors are easier to correct, but that’s not the case with Bing.
On the flip side, Bard cannot write code most of the time. Upon multiple tries with different questions, it may but it is completely unreliable. Bard is not meant for coding or solving any coding issues, at least as of now.
5. Creative Content
Apart from generating regular content, these chatbots can also write creative content such as jokes, poems, songs, stories, etc. Both ChatGPT and Bard are head-to-head in creating such content. But when it comes to generating jokes, Bard takes the cake.
To keep it straight, the jokes generated by ChatGPT and Bing are not that funny. With enough luck, you may land up on a good joke that makes you laugh. Whereas jokes generated by Bard are funny. Google’s experience in generating jokes with Google Assistant can be the reason.
When you are not asking for a joke, all three services explain things straight forward as if they are maintaining an even tone and straight face.
6. Being an Assistant
Want to plan a vacation? Create concepts for your next YouTube video? Need ideas to decorate your home? Plan your daily routine? All three chatbots can assist you. They don’t just fetch data from the internet and give you a generic answer, but tune the answer to your specific need.
For example, I added a couple of tasks I do every day as a prompt and asked these chatbots to create a daily routine plan for me. Here are the replies from all three chatbots which are equally good.
ChatGPT missed out on some instructions but overall provided a workable plan.
Bard added more details like walking my dog in the middle of the work but overall was on par with ChatGPT. It also provided tips to make this routine work making it more personal and better.
Bing always gives basic but on-point assistance which has its advantages.
7. Basic Maths
When it comes to solving mathematical problems, all three services did an average job. While they have improved over time since launch, they cannot be trusted completely on their own. Sometimes, they can easily solve the hardest trigonometry problems whereas other times, they get a simple multiplication wrong. All three services, ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard need to improve.
In this example, Bard understood that the sum of the three interior angles of a triangle should be 180 degrees. But unfortunately, it got the addition wrong.
Results from ChatGPT and Bing will also be similar when it comes to solving maths.
8. Summarizing Articles
All three AI chatbots can summarize the text. Just paste the article you want to summarize and ask for it. All three services will do an equally good job generating a summary. By default, summaries are generated in paragraphs, but you can ask in bullet points.
Bing Chat offers more options and summarizes better. Bing chat is available on the latest version of Edge browser. Now you can open any blog post or a PDF file on Edge and ask Bing to summarize that article or document. No need to copy.
Also, on the Bing chat page, you can paste the article’s link and ask it to summarize which is not possible with other chatbots.
9. Games and Quizzes
When it comes to playing games and conducting quizzes, ChatGPT and Bard are the only contenders. Bing is integrated into the search engine and is not meant for playing games.
Comparatively, ChatGPT is much better in terms of understanding the game’s rules and acting accordingly. Bard is hit-or-miss and gives up concluding it’s just a language model.
Check out all the games you can play with ChatGPT.
10. Speed
Undoubtedly, we feel Bard is faster than both ChatGPT and Bing. While Bing showed marginal improvement over ChatGPT, Bard came back with answers quickly. Bard, like Google Search, generates results quickly whereas both Bing and ChatGPT slowly generate the answer sentence by sentence.
11. User Interface
Choosing a user interface is subjective. ChatGPT and Bard both sport a minimal UI whereas Bing is integrated into Bing Search and additional UI elements on the screen at all times. We like Bard and ChatGPT, but to each his/her own.
12. Availability
ChatGPT can be accessed from any browser and there are many bots, extensions, and apps that bring ChatGPT to other platforms like Discord, Telegram, Android, and iOS.
Bard is just as accessible on multiple browsers and platforms. But at the time of writing this article, it is only available in US and UK. Also, there is a waiting list. You can use VPN to use Bard from unsupported countries. Anyhow, if you can start accessing Bard, then you have the flexibility to use the service on many platforms, browsers, and OSes.
On the flip side, Bing is restricted to the Edge browser making it not as accessible as the other two services.
13. Citing Sources
ChatGPT does not cite source material for any of its answers, but you can ask it to link the sources to access them.
Bard provides sources occasionally and that too only for a few answers. In general day-to-day usage, it is hard to check for sources.
Bing nails this aspect and cites sources for almost everything in the response.
Check out all the things Bing AI can do better than ChatGPT.
14. Understanding Context
In general, all three chatbots understand the question and its context and reply accordingly. But when the conversation gets complicated, AI chatbots often misunderstand your question or get confused totally. We have conducted various tests to check their understanding levels and reasoning skills. Like many other categories, ChatGPT understands the context and what’s exactly you are talking about most of the time.
For example, here the chatbot has to understand and visualize the cards and how we are moving them. ChatGPT can follow the question easily and answer correctly which is the “red box”.
Bing sometimes gets it wrong and sometimes right. With enough tries or hints, Bing will understand the question and give a proper reply.
Bard is similar to Bing where sometimes it gets it wrong, and sometimes it gets it right. Anyhow, Bard needs more hints and tries to get the answer right. In the image below, you can see how it is completely confused and unable to find the answer.
15. Accessing History
On ChatGPT, you can access the history in the left sidebar. Simply open the conversation and check ChatGPT’s answers and you can even continue the chat further.
Whereas for both Bing and Bard, you can only check the history with the question you have asked, but you cannot check the answer, nor can you continue the chat.
Which AI Chatbot Is Better
All chatbots have their advantages and disadvantages. If you prefer to use these chatbots for research purposes, then go for Bing. For most other needs, ChatGPT gets the job done. Bard isn’t completely bad, but as a new service compared to other services, Bard lacks behind in many aspects from understanding the context to getting the factual info.
