Yesterday at Google I/O, Google announced
the public availability of Google Bard. Or, at least that they're rolling out
Google Bard to 180 countries. So depending on where you live
in the world, you already might have access to it
or you might soon have access to it. And therefore, now with Google Bard
and with Microsoft Bing Chat and – of course – with ChatGPT,
that started it all, you now have the choice between three
really capable and great A.I. chat bots
that can help you in your day to day life.
And, as a side note, in that big ChatGPT course that we launched yesterday,
āChatGPT – The Complete Guideā, we already added a complete section
where we also take a closer look at Google Bard and Microsoft Bing Chat –
and also the Bing Chat integration in the Microsoft Edge browser –
so that you can really use these A.I. chat bots in the best possible way. And what you'll learn in this course
about prompt engineering and so on, of course, will also be relevant
for these other chat bots. But in this video here, I simply want
to give you a brief comparison of these three chat bots, show you
which different features they offer, and, of course, also show you
which chat bot produces the best results.
So let's start with ChatGPT. ChatGPT is really powerful
and can be used for generating blog posts, tweets, drafting emails,
summarizing text, translating text, writing code
and many other things as well. Now to use it, you simply need to create
an account – which you can do for free – and that's all! You can get started right away thereafter, you can insert your prompt
and get back a result by ChatGPT. And, since it's a chat, you can of course also send follow up messages and ChatGPT will take the existing chat history into account and ChatGPT will go ahead
and generate a new response. Now there is a certain limit
regarding the amount of context it can take into account,
but it's a quite generous limit – and therefore, that's of course
one of the amazing features of ChatGPT and all these A.I. chat bots in general:
That they take the history into account. Now ChatGPT becomes even better
if you upgrade to āPlusā. Because the āPlusā version, which is a paid version, gives you access
to more and better AI models.
For example, here it generated a way
more detailed and elaborate blog post, and it also got that email right
and did not just give me a summary, but actually wrote an email
with that summary to my colleague. But of course, as mentioned,
we don't just have ChatGPT. We for example, also have Google Bard –
Google's answer to ChatGPT you could say. Now, Google Bard might not be available
in all areas of the world yet, but it soon should be. And you do need a Google account
in order to use it. And once you are logged in, you're greeted
by a typical chat interface. Now Google Bard also has this āUpdatesā
area here where it tells you what's changed,
which can be a nice place to stay updated. But the most important question,
of course, is how it performs compared to ChatGPT.
And one difference you'll notice
when you start using Google Bard is that it can take slightly longer
to get started, but it then gives you the entire response
in one single step. You don't have to wait for it.
It's not generated step by step. Instead, boom, it's there instantly. And you can also choose between different drafts and these draft
versions are also available instantly. You don't have to wait for them
to be generated. And that,
of course allows you to pick the draft you personally like most, which can
of course be a very useful feature, since –
if you don't like the initial draft – you don't have to send
the same prompt again and wait for a new response
to be generated – which can take quite some time with ChatGPT,
especially when using their latest model, which is the best model,
but also the slowest. Now regarding the quality of the responses,
I guess the responses here look all right.
I think the ChatGPT responses look
slightly more elaborate, but that will of course always also depend on
what specifically you were asking for. It is worth noting, though, that of course here we also have a chat and we
therefore can send a follow up messages. And just like ChatGPT, Google Bard tries to take the entire chat
history into account. It should do that. But as you can see here, for example, it fails for me and it gives me
some random email draft instead. Now, in the past I also had scenarios
where instead it gave me just the summary without an email. Though there it at least gave me alternative drafts
that gave me a summary in an email. So to me, Google Bard right now
at least definitely doesn't seem to be as helpful
and polished as ChatGPT is now.
It's also worth
noting that Google Bard has access to the Internet or, to be precise,
to web search, to search results. So you can, for example, ask
Bard for the weather or for any other data that might need a web search
to get the correct result. And Bard will go ahead and do that web
search under the hood and give you a response
that takes those web search results into account without explicitly
telling you that it performed a search. But at least here I can confirm that this data here or,
this output here, is correct. And ChatGPT, for example, is not able to
do that, at least if used without plugins. With plugins, a feature which is not available
to everyone yet, for example, I don't have access to it,
it would be able to also search the web.
So this likely is a capability
ChatGPT will gain in the near future. But at least right now where I'm recording this, it's
not able to search the web yet. Now, last but not least, we also have Microsoft Bing,
which of course is a search engine. But they also added an AI chat
bot to their page, to the search engine, basically. And if you're logged into a Microsoft
account, which is a prerequisite on the bing.com starting page,
you should have this input area which does not just allow you to ask questions for which it
then could perform a web search, but which can also be used
for more complex requests like here, where I want it to write me a blog post
about the rise of A.I. and that then uses its A.I. capabilities to generate such a blog post. Though, interestingly enough, Microsoft
Bing actually uses the same models, the same GPT models, as ChatGPT does. Probably with a different fine
tuning and configuration – it's hard to tell from the outside – but in general
the same technology nonetheless.
What's interesting about Microsoft, Bing,
is that just like Google Bard, it's also able to search the web
and it incorporates those web search results into the responses
it generates. And it even marks the parts that are coming from web search
in its response, which is pretty useful, something Bard is not doing,
at least not right now. Here in Bing, I can see which information
is coming from which source, and that of course can help me confirm the validity
and correctness of the generated content. Because that is something
you should be aware of. For all these chat bots:
They can produce wrong results and they will do that
in a very confident way. So you should always validate
the responses they give you. And here for Microsoft Bing,
that might, for example, be a bit easier because you get these references
right inside of the response, allowing you to find out
where the information is coming from. Now with Microsoft Bing,
you can also enter chat mode. Also right from bing.com,
from its starting page. And then here, you can have the same kind of conversation
as you can with Google Bard or ChatGPT.
Now as you can see and as you could see
before as well, unlike Google Bard, it does generate its response
step by step, just like ChatGPT. And at least here for this example
where I requested a blog post, I think it's also fair to say
that this response which I got here is worse than what I got from Google Bard
or ChatGPT. This might be a nice summary,
but it isn't really a blog post. Now, of course it is a chat though,
so you can send follow up messages and then, like ChatGPT and Google Bard,
It should take the entire chat history into account. Though here, for me, in this example,
as you can see, just like Google Bard a couple of minutes ago, it actually fails to give me an email
with a summary for the blog post. It instead just gives me some
generic email.
Now, this,
of course, might not always be the case, but it is the case here,
and it is a good example that even though Microsoft Bing Chat should be using
the same model under the hood as ChatGPT, at least here, for me, it doesn't produce results that have the
same quality as ChatGPTās results have. Now one nice additional feature
offered by Microsoft Bing, is that you can choose between different modes:
āCreativeā, āBalancedā and āPreciseā. āBalancedā is the default, but you could, for example,
choose āCreativeā if you wanted – guess what – a more creative
and also often more lengthy response. For example, here in this response it's generating for me, it even includes
some formatting, like a big title, a bullet point list with some bold text
and things like this. And as you can also see, it's
definitely a longer blog post
than what I got before in āBalancedā mode.
It's less
focused on giving me a concise summary, and instead it does what I want it to do
and writes me a blog post. So this āCreativeā mode can be great
for tasks like this. Though I will also say that
the danger of incorrect information is a bit higher in that mode. I mean,
you should always validate the results, no matter which mode
and which chat bot you're using, but in this āCreativeā mode,
the danger is a bit higher and therefore you should be extra careful, and carefully
evaluate the content that was generated. Which at least is made a bit easier
because it does give you these extra references to the search results
it did use for generating this response,
or at least parts of the response. Now, if you do switch
to the more āPreciseā mode, on the other hand,
it is exactly that. It's more precise. It focuses on giving you a short summary,
and it's not really made for tasks
like writing a blog post, for example.
So instead, this precise mode might be the kind of mode you want to use
for research tasks, for example. So therefore, as you can see,
all these different A.I. bots have their strengths and weaknesses. Google Bard and Microsoft Bing
incorporate web search results, ChatGPT might soon do that
or might soon enabled is for everyone, but it's not available yet. On the other hand, ChatGPT,
in my experience, after playing around with all these bots for some time, tends
to often produce better results. Though it's, of course, kind of hard to
really measure this in an objective way.
But I found out that,
especially when using certain advanced prompting techniques,
about which you, for example, also learn in our ChatGPT course, –
this āComplete Guideā course – ChatGPT often tends to perform a bit
better and produce better results. On the other hand, for example, for Bing,
it's great to have these different modes and to have these references that indicate
which data is coming from web search. Whereas for Bard it's great
that it's so fast and that we get those responses
and those different draft versions almost instantly – which of course
makes it more pleasant to use this tool than, for example, ChatGPT,
where you might need to wait quite some time
until you have the response. Of course, on the other hand,
if the ChatGPT response is better, that might be the more important
aspect though. Now, of course, it's also worth
mentioning, though, that the best ChatGPT model
is only available to paid subscribers and not to everyone – whereas
Google Bard and Bing, despite maybe being a bit worse
– though, as mentioned, that's kind of hard to tell –
also are free to use.
You just need a Google or Microsoft
account and you're ready to get started. You don't have to pay for them. But in the end, of course,
these different bots are all under heavy development
and are constantly evolving. So they will all probably just
get better and not worse..
