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The Great 'AI' Race Thumbnail

The Great 'AI' Race

Technology

BY: BILL HOWARD - MANAGER OF IT SERVICES


On November 30th, 2022, OpenAI announced the release of its AI (artificial intelligence) model, ChatGPT, for use by the public. While there is a free “Plan” available, ChatGPT now has new updated AI models available with GPT-4 to subscribers with a paid “ChatGPT Plus Plan”. GPT-4 offers new features over GPT-3.5 such as the use of chat with images/voice, creating images, and the ability to build and use custom GPTs (Generative Pre-Trained). Users can try out ChatGPT at chat.openai.com

Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft’s new AI chat assistant, started showing up via Windows update on  September 26th, 2023. Users can access the features of Copilot via the Copilot website, copilot.microsoft.com. Copilot was developed working closely with OpenAI and utilizes their latest version, GPT-4. Copilot is currently the only way to access GPT-4 features free.

The features of GPT-4 available via Copilot are only available via ChatGPT’s Plus subscription. When I asked Copilot to give me a comparison of the two, this is the purpose as stated by Copilot:

  • Purpose: ChatGPT is a natural language processing technology developed by OpenAI. It aims to engage in human-like conversations, answering questions and providing responses.
  • Purpose: Copilot is an AI-powered digital assistant that integrates with Microsoft 365. It aims to enhance productivity across various tasks.

Copilot’s answer mentioned being integrated with Microsoft 365. On November 1, 2023, Microsoft released Copilot for Microsoft365. This premium version is directly integrated with the Microsoft Office suite and is only available to “Enterprise” E3 or E5 subscribers with a minimum of 300 users. 

Copilot summarizes the difference between ChatGPT and Copilot in these words: “ChatGPT excels in conversation and general tasks, while Copilot shines in coding and personalized productivity.”

December 6th, 2023, Google introduced “Gemini”. Google is touting this as their “largest and most capable AI model.”  Unlike Microsoft, Google developed its own AI model and claims that Gemini Ultra outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 in most benchmarks. While full availability and product details of Gemini Ultra are currently unknown, users can experience some of Gemini’s features free of charge via bard.google.com, and most of you have experienced Google AI when using Google chatbots.

When using the free versions of each, the features are similar. You can ask questions and expect an AI generated response. No matter who or which version you work with, you must decide upon the validity of the results you receive.

Each of these free versions is available for use by everyone. Feel free to ask for anything like meal ideas or vacation itineraries or even ask one of them to create an image based on your vision/input. You choose the topic and let the AI do its magic. Do be aware, that the data and requests that you send, along with the results generated by each of these AI technologies, are assumed public. Keeping in mind the “Public” aspect of these technologies, the race is clearly on, and I encourage users to experiment with these budding technologies.