As kids, we all wished for an Aladin’s lamp and kept dreaming about what we could do with it. Well, that childhood dream came true in November of 2022. A genie by the name of Chat GPT was created. Following the footprints, another tool was released to compete with ChatGPT called Perplexity AI on January 20, 2023.

These two giants have always been hot topics for AI-related content creators. One of the major reasons behind the Boom of AI and Chatbots is an American company that goes by the name Open AI. It developed monumental language models like GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4, on which the majority of these chatbots function.

In an article, the Times of India mentioned Chat GPT as “One of the finest products of Artificial Intelligence”  while researchers worldwide are calling Perplexity, a groundbreaking development. New technology is something everybody looks forward to and this was witnessed as the release of these such sophisticated AI tools attracted a lot of users. As a result of this, Chat GPT generates 1.8 billion website impressions every month. Perplexity Ai though not close to Chat GPT, still manages a staggering 10 million monthly impressions.

Let’s help you figure out which of these tools is better for you.

Reliability of Information:  ChatGPT vs Perplexity AI

In the era of Photoshop and Adobe Premier, it is wise not to trust things you see online. The same thing is applicable to the information seen on the web. When writing a research paper, do you use information that you see in the first instance?

No, right. It is almost certain that you will check every piece of information with multiple links and that is the right thing to do. But things are somewhat different when it comes to chatbots and user dependency on them. Looking at the level of sophistication of these tech tools, the user trusts everything that the chatbot puts on the plate.

A funny instance surfaced while the Ai tools were getting popular. A newspaper was alarmed by the citation of articles by Chat GPT that were never published. The Guardian told about this issue in an article – After searching the whole database, title alterations, and deleted articles, cited articles were nowhere to be found. Even the said reporter couldn’t recall writing the specific piece. This sounds terrifying for someone writing research based on these resources.

So shall we stop using Ai chatbots? Get rid of that sad face amigo, Perplexity is here to rescue you.

Perplexity AI is different from Chat GPT. It does not respond to anything like its predecessor. The response of Perplexity gives results along with the links to the source. The results of Perplexity AI when compared to Chat GPT Plus were found more refined and also included relevant content on the periphery along with links to support the response further. With Perplexity, you can verify the information and cite them in your work.

Database – The Brains of AI

Suppose you went to a restaurant, the best one in your city. When you ask for the menu, it comes with a disclaimer that our stock was bought 10 days ago, but you won’t find better-tasting food in the city. Would you still eat there?

Sounds weird, right?

Chat GPT does something similar. The majority of the responses will have a disclaimer “I don’t have real-time data and my knowledge was last updated in September 2021”. The user is so amazed by the capabilities of this tool, thus they don’t care about the disclaimer, or maybe because it eliminates most of the work and users are too lazy to do their own research.

Perplexity AI on the other hand gives results based on information updated in real-time. To test this in real-time, we searched for the Best MBA colleges.

While the response of ChatGPT was not bad, it was based on data dating back to September 2021.

On the other hand, Perplexity gave a more convincing response. The only reason is Perplexity takes into consideration the data in real-time.

Functions – What do they offer?

The two competitive tools have been continuously updated to take over the other. GPT Plus offers a great number of additional features to its subscribed users. The most important one among those features is the ability to access new features in the beta stages.

Recently it released several plugins that created a buzz among its users. There are close to 11 official plugins offered by Chat GPT Plus, each with a unique capability. While there are countless other unofficial plugins offered by various developers.

It offers a  direct approach to providing answers to queries with links to trail the source of information and verify its integrity. It offers a unique copilot mode where users can interact with a more advanced language model GPT-4. Though it’s a bit slow but it guides you and you will land directly on the answer to your query.

ChatGPT Plus and Perplexity Pricing

A major question that everyone has– “is chatGPT free?”. Well, no! The reason Chat GPT got so much hype was that it was free initially. But now along with the free tool, there is a new subscription-based premium tool is released. Though most of the work can be done using the free tool, some users prefer the paid subscription. The free tool is comparatively slower and is unavailable during peak hours.

With the Plus subscription, you get the support of GPT-4. Open Ai described GPT-4 as “10 times more advanced than its predecessor, GPT-3.5”. Don’t believe it bluntly, it can still make blunders. Users reported that the responses appear to present a more in-depth answer but still couldn’t handle complex problems.

The Plus subscription of Chat GPT costs $20 monthly subscription which gives access during peak hours, cuts down the response time, and gives priority access to any new feature while still in the beta stage. There is no annual subscription available yet.

On the other hand, Perplexity Ai is a completely free tool, yet there is a subscription plan similar to Chat GPT Plus at $20 for a month but it also has an annual subscription which can save 40 bucks for you. It costs $200 annually.

You might be thinking right now, why would anyone pay for something which is freely available?

There is a strong reason for it. Recently Perplexity Ai has incorporated copilot mode for GPT-4, which can only be used 5 times every 4 hours. The copilot mode is a game-changer. It has the ability to refine and guide complex and incomplete prompts.

Which has Faster Speed?

The release of Chat GPT Plus has increased the troubles for its competitors. GPT Plus uses the latest and the greatest language model GPT-4. This is considered to be more creative and collaborative than any of the previous versions.

On the contrary, Perplexity AI uses an older language model- GPT-3.5. At first, you might think, this is it GPT Plus is better. It’s not that simple. Of all the models, GPT-3.5 is proved to be the fastest but GPT Plus with GPT-4 model appears to be beating its predecessor which uses GPT-3.5. Well, this can be considered as an exception.

Perplexity AI with GPT-3.5 is marginally faster as compared to its competitor GPT Plus based on GPT-4. A possible reason could be the complex processing of human-like responses as such a level of sophistication requires more processing power. 

Case-based Advantages

Though both of these ginormous AI competitors are way ahead of their time, both have their shortcomings and one cannot be recommended over the other. These tools are getting better with each question asked because of their sophisticated machine-learning capabilities.

Both have their domain of expertise in which the other cannot compete. This expertise differentiates the tool from each other. Perplexity has been widely appreciated for providing the link to the source of the information which is very essential in the case of Research projects. But it fails to give a human-like response and produces creative works like poems, and essays, unlike Chat GPT Plus. This makes Chat GPT Plus stand out.

Perplexity AI is more of an answering bot, responses generated are addressing the question with links and sources where you can find the answer, whereas Chat GPT goes a step forward and tries to summarise the answer for you.

Parting Words

At last, it can be concluded that both Chat GPT and Perplexity are good at their respective forte. It is worth noting that Chat GPT Plus and Perplexity are improving and their capabilities will only get better with time.

Chat GPT Plus is a chatbot that uses conversational language and provides a detailed answer. On the other hand, Perplexity AI gives brief answers and a list of information that can be dug deep to understand things better. We use Chat GPT Plus if we need natural responses and detailed answers whereas Perplexity may be more suitable if you need a chatbot that can search the web and provide real-time information and their sources.

That’s all from GFG for this time! 

Also read – How to Use ChatGPT on WhatsApp