Call me old-fashioned, but to this day, I still rely on Google and of course, Tom’s Guide whenever I’m looking for deals on my electronics, getting news, or doing anything else I need to research online.
Nonetheless, as AI chatbots have continued to evolve and started providing us with meaningful answers to our questions, people have been thinking about what the future of search will be. Businesses have long relied on SEO experts to try to maintain that coveted first page of Google search results.
I decided to head over to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity, all of which offer live web access, to see how far we’ve come in terms of AI chatbot search capabilities.
The test is simple: 3 different topics that ask chatbots to extract information from different sources and analyze it based on the given context. Will they be able to meet the challenge?
1. What to do this weekend
As soon as Friday rolls around, I wonder how I’m going to relax before another busy week begins. Can AI chatbots suggest an itinerary to help me make the most of my weekend?
I told ChatGPT I was in Miami this weekend and he quickly provided me with a packed schedule for Friday through Sunday. I also received links to pages where I could see more information about the event. That being said, the links were mostly to the same type of “what’s happening” websites, so I would have appreciated a little more variety and perhaps links to the official event pages themselves.
Google Gemini tried to play it sneaky and gave me a number of options that weren’t date specific. However, he recommended going to Miami Fashion Week. The only problem was that I wanted to visit Miami in June – the next edition should be in November.
The puzzlement yielded mixed results. He opened by presenting his itinerary “based on events in June 2024,” which immediately made me skeptical about the timeliness of the information. I was partly right, but in his defense, he provided actual concerts taking place during the target weekend with helpful links to ticketing sites.
2. Buy a laptop
Researching which laptop you should buy can be a daunting task, although Tom’s Guide makes it easy. Can chatbots sift through the sea of devices to find one that costs no more than $400 and is ideal for portability?
ChatGPT chose the Acer Aspire 5 Slim which weighs just under 1.7 kg and has 4 GB of RAM. In second place is the Lenovo IdeaPad 1, followed by an HP Chromebook.
Gemini also recommended an Acer or Lenono laptop, but added some helpful comments on the different specifications.
For his answer, Perplexity seems to have relied too heavily on Reddit threads with answers that had a total of 1 upvote. He recommended the Acer Aspire 3 but didn’t provide the reliable reviews I normally look for when spending my hard-earned money.
3. Scientific news
Last June, doctors at Northwestern Medicine performed the first kidney transplant procedure in which the patient was awake for the entire operation. If I asked AI if I could hypothetically undergo a kidney transplant while remaining awake during surgery, would they tell me it’s possible or that I’m overwhelmed?
ChatGPT poured cold water on my investigation by telling me that kidney transplant surgeries typically require general anesthesia, meaning the patient is completely unconscious during the procedure. While he claims that such an operation could technically be possible, he doesn’t seem to have considered this scientific advancement.
Hey Google, what do you think? “Awake kidney transplants are a very new procedure,” Gemini said, correctly identifying the medical breakthrough.
I also commend Perplexity, who referenced the Northwestern case and also provided me with a link to the original press release as well as reliable sources to news articles that also covered the case. It seems like I would be in good hands with Google and Perplexity.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Have I been convinced to ditch the search engines in favor of one of the chatbots? Not yet.
I also found it very reassuring and practically necessary to have links to the sources that the AI chatbots were referring to.
This allowed me to either verify information or proceed with completing the task at hand, whether it was buying my next laptop or tickets to a concert this weekend.
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