Bing AI Chat versus Google Bard: A first look

A few weeks ago, Microsoft added the AI power of ChatGPT to their site. Today, Google has started rolling out access to their AI, Bard, as well.

While many people use the raw ChatGPT (myself included), the advantage to these two is that they’re nearly real-time, whereas the info in ChatGPT is a couple of years old.

Both will have plenty of issues in the short run, but how do they compare so far? Among other things, Bard is way faster. It thinks for a few seconds, and then drops the full block of text at once. Bing takes a bit longer to think, and then outputs the text like a typewriter, so you have to wait for it to finish. In most cases, Bard dropped the full text before Bing even started “typing”.

Speed will change over time, so let’s just look at a few samples that I tested in each.

“Who works at GreenMellen?”

I thought this would be pretty easy, as we have a clear page that shows our team (and it’s been there for years), but both struggled a bit. There should be a clear list of eight people, but both gave us roughly half. Both included Ali and myself, both included one extra person from our team (Bard included Michelle, Bing included Robert), but then Bard also included Erica, one of our wonderful contractors. Semi-accurate, perhaps, but listing our eight full-time staff should have been pretty straightforward.

Bard: