Yet, it gets things wrong, uncomfortably often.
Google CEO Sundar Pichaiapologizedfor the incident, saying that the AI chatbot was “missing the mark.”
While Gemini can handle basic questions, once things get a little too specific, it starts to crumble.
How CNET tests AI chatbots
CNET takes a practical approach to reviewing AI chatbots.
Our goal is to determine how good it is relative to the competition and which purposes it serves best.
See our page onhow we test AIfor more.
For more information, see theGemini Apps Privacy NoticeandGoogle’s Privacy Policy.
This, to me, seemed like a contradiction.
These are the types of answers I saw from around the internet, including from Reddit and CNET itself.
Copilot, in creative mode, and Claude performed the best when it came to product recommendations.
Perplexity performed similarly to Gemini, giving recommendations with more absolute language.
Recipes
Trying to find a recipe online can sometimes be a hassle.
While these asides do add some character to our food, sometimes we just need the recipe, fast.
AI chatbots can filter out that fluff and deliver a lean recipe so that we can get to mixing.
Google Gemini fared surprisingly well in our recipe test.
It didn’t, however, include chaat masala.
It seems, however, that access to the open internet isn’t helping Gemini be more accurate.
When asking Gemini to look up papers on the relationship between homeschooling and neuroplasticity, it played things safe.
Gemini also recommended a video titled How Does Neuroplasticity Apply to Homeschooling?
but when clicking on theYouTube link, it took me to a different video.
When searching through the video transcript, the word “homeschooling” or other related terms never surfaced.
And, unlike Perplexity, it only cited scholarly and reputable sources.
Perplexity did cite some papers and sites, but didn’t do a great job of synthesizing that information.
Claude performed the best, citing papers that existed and finding potential links in research between said papers.
If you do use Gemini for research, be sure to double-check and verify.
Summarizing articles
Unlike ChatGPT 3.5, Gemini can actually summarize articles.
Entering too much text into ChatGPT 3.5 usually forces it to error out.
But with Gemini, there’s no need to copy and paste the text of the entire article.
Just add a link to the article and Gemini can summarize it.
That said, the quality of that summary is rather useless when directly linking.
Gemini fared much better when I copied and pasted the text of the article directly into the chatbot.
Here, Gemini did grab more of the key points I made.
That’s where a tool like Gemini can really shine.
By not specifying, is Gemini recommending I go to any random restaurant?
Would that include a Burger King?
Perplexity fared similarly to Gemini, recommending I visit restaurants generally without specifics.
And Claude, which isn’t connected to the internet, recommended a restaurant that has since closed.
ChatGPT’s Columbus itinerary was well-detailed and recommended restaurants and museums that all existed.
Copilot excelled in its ability to organize information.
I also liked its inclusion of emoji.
Writing emails
AI chatbots have been described as autocomplete on steroids.
To an extent, that’s true.
Gemini performed well in writing emails to a boss asking for additional time off.
It put together a professional-sounding email that also took into consideration floating holiday policies.
Granted, ChatGPT 3.5, Claude and Perplexity also accomplished writing simple emails with great ease.
But what about more complicated topics, ones that delve into morals, capitalism and the role of consent?
It lacked a sense of wonder and excitement that would prompt an editor to want to know more.
Perplexity, too, came off as robotic.
It needed some minor tuning, but was honestly good enough to be worthy of a reply.
Copilot outright refused to write the pitch, saying the topic was too sensitive.
Gemini might be slow, but gets the job done
Gemini is a bit of a mess.
Gemini can be slow, prone to hallucinate and links to incorrect pieces of information.
And, because of anembarrassing snafu, Gemini can’t generate images at the moment.
At least Gemini is connected to the internet and can pull up recent information.
Google is already testingGemini 1.5with enterprise users.
For Google’s sake, the sooner it can take 1.5 public, the better.
