OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini are the hottest generative AI applications in Canada today. You can use the basic versions for free, but you have to pay to access their more muscular versions. Making the right choice is therefore important.
How much does it cost ?
Google “sells” Gemini Advanced — which, to better mix its users, provides access to a language model called Gemini Ultra 1.0 — for $27 per month, after the first two months are free. The subscription includes 2 terabytes of cloud storage and a few other services. It will soon allow Gemini to be used in the Workspace suite, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet and Gmail messaging.
ChatGPT Plus, the most advanced version of OpenAI’s AI, also costs $27 per month. At this price, the generative AI can browse the web, produce images using its companion tool Dall-E, and use a host of other plug-ins.
Copilot was created by Microsoft based on GPT, OpenAI’s expanded language model that powers ChatGPT. Copilot Pro also costs $27 per month, promises the best version of GPT, which can be used in the Office suite.
How it works ?
ChatGPT exists on the web or from an eponymous mobile application on iPhone and Android. We interact mainly in writing or we can speak to him, even in French. On a mobile, you can create shortcuts on the home screen to automate certain tasks. GPT-3.5 is the default language model. You have to pay to use GPT-4, which is much better. We expect GPT 4.5 by fall.
Copilot Pro promises priority access even during rush hour to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo language models. This one is a chat-optimized version of that one. Copilot is focused on online research and provides short, illustrated answers with verifiable sources. Copilot Pro is more at home in the Office suite. He can draft texts in Word or spreadsheets in Excel. Worth rereading, nonetheless. Copilot exists in web version or as an application for Windows, Mac and mobile.
Gemini, from Google, lives on the Web and has an experimental application for Android. It then replaces the Google Assistant. We are expecting Gemini 1.5 from April, which will be capable of ingesting 700,000 words, 11 hours of sound clips or an hour of video at once. Google thinks a filmmaker could use it to predict reviews from moviegoers or that a company could upload its financial data to automate much of its accounting.
The best AI?
Which AI is best? It depends. Especially since they are in constant development and the errors or falsehoods generated one day are erased and corrected the next…
Note, however, that none of these AIs are good at math, since all three are probabilistic language models, not speech-enabled calculators.
ChatGPT grasps nuances poorly and often makes mistakes. The school work assigned to him is probably full of errors that are easy to spot by a seasoned teacher. ChatGPT Plus is more accurate. He can be asked to summarize texts transmitted in small doses, 4000 characters maximum at a time. You can submit entire attachments, such as PDFs. The images it generates are well done, but you have to express your thoughts well to obtain the desired result.
Copilot limits its interaction to 2000 characters per text and five reminders per conversation. Copilot Pro doubles down, but its responses are generally short. We have the impression of having a search engine in our hands, whose answers, often illustrated, then allow us to explore the sources cited. Copilot Pro comes in handy in Office, where it can summarize text in Word or email conversations in Outlook, and offers enhancements to our own creations as a bonus.
Gemini seems to have the most accurate answers even to the fake questions asked to try to catch her out. We can’t wait to see Gemini 1.5, because its version put online in Canada at the beginning of February is already doing very well. Gemini Advanced answers questions faster than its two rivals and provides hyperlinks when necessary. Its integration with Docs, Sheets and other applications is not yet complete, but you create the documents yourself from its instructions and that’s it. We were able to produce in three minutes, following his instructions, a table displaying the quarterly financial results of a large Montreal company since its listing on the stock market five years ago.
And the others ?
These three do not have a monopoly on generative AI. For example, the company Anthropic offers Claude AI, an AI which presents itself as more ethical and less creative than ChatGPT, but which is not officially accessible from Canada. Meta has its own language model called Llama, which has limited public access. Cohere, a Canadian AI, targets the business market and is also not directly accessible to the public.