Pricing and tiers
Both ChatGPT and Gemini are available to the public for free at their respective websites and through their mobile apps. However, free tier users will only receive limited access to the most current and capable models.
Advantages of using Gemini
I mean, being able to generate AI art without having to shell out $20 a month is pretty cool. And if you do spend the $20, Gemini’s integration with Workspace can provide a number of benefits. It can help you draft emails in Gmail, fact-checks itself directly from Google Search results, helps you write more eloquently in Docs by either proofreading what you’ve already got or generating text based off your prompt, generate new slides and summarize presentations in Slides, analyzes user spreadsheet data in Sheets, and autonomously takes notes off your video conference in Meet.
You can also integrate Gemini with other Google apps including Flights, Maps, YouTube, and YouTube Music through the extensions tab in the Settings menu.
Gemini also offers a feature not found in ChatGPT, called drafts. If you ask the system a particularly tricky question, like, “A 12-foot-tall ladder is leaning against a wall at a 75-degree angle. If the bottom of the ladder begins sliding out from the base of the wall at 15 centimeters per second, how fast will the top of the ladder be traveling when it hits the ground,” Gemini will provide you with its best answer as well as offer to show you the other, slightly different responses it generated but did not use. That way if you don’t like the answer you received, you can get alternative explanations without having to reformat or reiterate your prompt.
Advantages of using ChatGPT
Sure, you won’t be able to spontaneously make images of pandas in top hats eating ice cream in a Parisian cafe for free, but you also don’t have to sign in. Unlike Gemini, ChatGPT does not require users to sign in to an account to access its free tier.
Personally, I like that when you ask ChatGPT about current events, it will automatically include source links in its response so you can quickly fact-check its response and dig into the subject matter further if you so choose (Gemini requires you to click the Google button at the bottom of the response for it to fact-check). On more than one occasion, I’ve had Gemini (even the paid version) tell me, “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search,” (I asked it what the current day’s news out of South Africa was, for example), which is the equivalent to Siri requiring me to type my question because, “sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
I think Gemini actually gives better life advice answers. When prompted with “I’m starting a new job next week, how can I make an immediate good impression with my new coworkers?” ChatGPT returned 10 bullet-point suggestions like “be punctual,” “be proactive,” and “dress appropriately,” Gemini came back with a full-on multistage scheme for impressing my hypothetical colleagues, including actions I can take prior to starting the job, first-day goals, and even ongoing advice for building solid relationships with other people in the office.
Speed and accuracy comparison
In my experience, I’ve found that Gemini tends to return answers a touch faster than ChatGPT (though the difference in practice really is negligible), but ChatGPT tends to return fuller, more fleshed out responses. Take code generation, for example. When asked to create a java code snippet to find the area of a circle, Gemini returned the following:
double radius = 5; // Replace with your desired radius value
final double PI = 3.14159; // More precise value for pi
double area = PI * radius * radius;
System.out.println(“Area of circle: ” + area);
Meanwhile, ChatGPT generated the following:
public class CircleAreaCalculator {
public static void main(String[] args) {
double radius = 5.0; // Example radius
double area = calculateArea(radius);
System.out.println(“The area of the circle with radius ” + radius + ” is ” + area);
}
public static double calculateArea(double radius) {
return Math.PI * Math.pow(radius, 2);
}
}
Both systems had little trouble then converting that code from Java to C++ and made sure to include the necessary C++-specific syntax.
For image generation, obviously Gemini has the upper hand. Google’s AI returned four generated options for pandas in top hats eating ice cream at a Parisian cafe, while OpenAI’s offering told me the following:
While I can’t generate images directly, you can use a text-to-image AI tool like DALL-E or MidJourney to create this image. Here’s a prompt you could use with one of those tools:
“Generate an image of pandas in top hats eating ice cream at a Parisian cafe.”
If you need more specific details or adjustments to the prompt, feel free to let me know!
Conversely, on complicated math problems, I believe ChatGPT to be superior. For that ladder sliding down a wall question mentioned above (taken from the Calc 1B course I failed twice in college), Gemini gave me a convoluted response that first ran into a dividing-by-zero issue, then only told me what the speed of the top of the ladder would be when it started falling (-1.2 feet/s), not when it actually hit the ground.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, solved the problem (−0.1318 ft/s) in five easy-to-follow steps using the same formulas that I recognize (but still don’t really understand) from my college coursework.
Which is better?
Eh, that’s like asking if Ford or Chevy is better, or whether Mac or Windows is the superior OS. Since they’re both free, you’re safe to try them both out and see which you prefer on a particular prompt. If free image generation is what you most want or you’re already tied deeply to the Google product ecosystem, go with Gemini and take advantage of the Workspace integration.
If you don’t want to have to remember your login information or are already running Windows on all of your devices, maybe ChatGPT will suit you better. There is no wrong answer here because it depends entirely on what you specifically want to get out of the experience. I’d say if you aren’t happy with what one of the two chatbots is giving you, it’s worth trying the prompt on the other chatbot because the two regularly give quite different answers.
Source: www.digitaltrends.com