It was to be expected that ChatGPT would not remain “alone”. In the last few days, the new Perplexity.ai website in particular has been in the news again and again.

The Internet says: “Perplexity.ai is a state-of-the-art AI technology that combines the powerful capabilities of GPT3 with a comprehensive language model. It offers a unique solution for search results by utilizing natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning.” (Source: www.digitalbeech.com)

Put simply, you can also find descriptions such as “Unlike its better-known counterpart, Perplexity AI is connected to the Internet. It can’t write you a nice journalistic text (already tried), but it can summarize the current news situation on every conceivable topic. The selection of sources still seems a little bumpy.” (Source: www.tsri.ch)

But what can Perplexity.ai do?

What can ChatGPT do?

And what are the differences between ChatGPT and Perplexity.ai?

Below are three comparisons of the two tools ChatGPT and Perplexity.ai:

1st question: Which chatbot building tool would you recommend?

It is immediately apparent that the answers are completely different. Not only are the results different, but also the way in which the results are presented.

ChatGPT makes a much greater effort to present the results to the user in an appealing text. Perplexity.ai, on the other hand, displays the sources in addition to the results.

2nd question: Which of them host in the EU or in Switzerland?

Here, too, the results are completely different. The answers differ completely in terms of content and presentation. Furthermore, it quickly becomes apparent that the results of Perplexity.ai are even wrong. The sources mentioned lead to articles about chatbots, but SwissRe, for example, does not offer a tool at all, but has only published an article on the topic of maturity levels of bots.

3rd question: Can you write me a text on customer service in Swiss banking?

For this question, the AI tools should write a coherent text. ChatGPT did this without any problems. Although the text is written very superficially, the overall readability is at a very high level. It seems to be different with Perplexity.ai. This text reads a little bumpier and actually even integrates advertising for other sites. He names other providers and suggests contacting Textbroker.

Conclusion

First of all, good news: We still need people who think for themselves. While ChatGPT has a very good form of expression, the results are usually very superficial and incomprehensible.

At Perplexity.ai, the language is much worse. Thanks to the source information, users can understand the answers, unlike with ChatGPT. However, this also means that the errors made by the tool are noticed more quickly.

If you would like more discussion on this topic, you can contact me at any time(sophie.hundertmark@hslu.ch). The Institute of Financial Services Zug (IFZ) is already conducting research on this topic and more will follow.