Artificial intelligence is here, and people are already integrating the latest generative A.I. tools into their daily lives and work. But which of these A.I. tools is the right one for what you want to do? And what do you need to do to actually start using one of these products?
If you feel intimidated, don’t feel bad—getting started can be confusing and even a little scary. Fortune took a look at three of the most popular A.I. bots—ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard—and distilled the experience of using each one into a few easy steps.
Here’s a super easy guide to help you start playing around with A.I. Bookmark this page on your browser, and come back to it for a quick reference whenever you need to.
Step 1: Sign up
Bing Chat
Bing chat is only available through downloading the Microsoft Edge app on your phone or computer.
It’s free to sign up, but Bing Chat is restricted to five questions at a time unless you log in. Once logged in, users can ask 30 questions at a time, up to 300 times per day.
ChatGPT
To use ChatGPT, you’ll need to create an account at chat.openai.com or download OpenAI’s mobile app, available through app stores like the Apple App Store or Google Play. It’s available in these countries.
ChatGPT is free and uses an optimized version of OpenAI’s large language model, GPT3. OpenAI has a variety of additional plugins and a premium ChatGPT option that uses the more advanced GPT4 and is available in the browser and various downloads. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month.
Google Bard
Head to bard.google.com for Bard. You’ll need to create a Google account if you don’t already have one. Sign in, and you’re ready to use the free, unlimited service. It’s available in these countries.
Step 2: How to talk to the A.I.
Each AI bot’s interface is slightly different.
– Bing Chat is available under the app’s search function. Once you type in a prompt, Bing Chat will start to generate a response to it (see screenshot below). You can ask essentially any question, from advice on buying clothes to how Tesla’s stock price is faring, and it will answer with a textual summary, footnoted by hyperlinks and citations indicating the source of the information.
-Bing has access to the internet, making it a less isolated and topical experience than ChatGPT. It uses a customized version of OpenAI’s language model, GPT4.
-Bing Chat also lets you choose its conversational tone. It can be “Creative,” “Balanced,” or “Precise” (see below). Creative is supposedly “imaginative and original,” Balanced is “informative and friendly,” and Precise is “concise and straightforward.” For yielding accurate results, precise is likely best.
-When you click on the “New Topic” button on the left—the one that features a broom, patiently waiting to sweep away your data—you can “reset” the conversation. Bing will forget what you just talked about, and it likely will give different answers, depending on any changes between or sequence in which you ask questions. This is good to use if your conversation has gotten out of line or the bot is confused.
-ChatGPT looks just like a messaging app. In fact, the empty text box asks you to input a “message” for the bot. Type in a question, a request, or a task, and ChatGPT will serve up an answer within seconds, as shown in the screenshot below.
-ChatGPT will also let you open a new chat, which reorients the conversation in a similar way to Bing’s reset function.
-ChatGPT does not have access to the internet and is better suited for generating text-based content.
-While it generally has the same capacity for language as Bing Chat, it’s less useful for research. It’s a great tool for “creative” tasks, such as writing emails, poems, and parody movie scripts.
-Google Bard is similar to Bing Chat in many respects, which isn’t surprising since both are based on a traditional search engine concept.
-It has access to the internet and provides a summary with citations to your prompt, but it uses Google’s proprietary large language model, PaLM 2
-One key difference: Bard does not go out of its way to remind you it’s not a real person, with real thoughts and emotions. ChatGPT and Bing chat don’t provide personal preferences — they always say something along the lines of “as an AI, I don’t have personal preferences, but I can tell you about …” Bard, as you can see in the following screenshot, will tell you about its favorite movies and songs.
Step 3: How to get the best results from an A.I. bot
A general rule for getting the best results is to focus your search by refining or broadening your language. If you’re not getting the result you want, ask the question in a different style—try a more conversational tone or a less specific prompt.
Ask follow up questions. Tell the bot your feedback or specifics, or elaborate on what exactly you’re looking for.
You can feed Bing Chat or Bard a link if you want a synopsis of a specific news article, report, or work of fiction that’s online. For ChatGPT, which isn’t connected to the internet, there are third-party plug-ins that allow you to upload specific files, like a PDF.
-Some of the most common uses, particularly for ChatGPT, are helping with work, like drafting emails, and job applications like a resume or cover letter.
-Ask Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella about the power of Bing Chat and he’ll probably tell you how good it is for summarizing complicated texts. For instance, if there’s a 200-page paper or dense philosophical essay you want a summary of, ask Bing Chat to synthesize a summary for you. “Explainers” are a great way to use the tool.
-Have an interview coming up? Ask Bing Chat or Google Bard for some practice questions (“I’m interviewing for a sales job at a software company. Give me some practice questions to answer?”). Or tell it some of your skills and read its suggestions on what you could say about yourself.
-Ask for random ideas, like what to do that day, how best to solve a problem, or good ways to celebrate a holiday.
-If you need to research which product you should buy or reasons you should move to a new city, Bing Chat is a great way to speed up the research process.
Before you go…
As these tools are still prone to hallucinations and misinformation, it’s best to use them with scrutiny. It’s also unclear just how much these programs are tracking information, so always keep personal information away from the chats.
As already mentioned, ChatGPT is not connected to the internet. It has a knowledge cutoff at September 2021 and doesn’t know anything that happened after then — it doesn’t know Ketanji Jackson Brown is a U.S. Supreme Court justice or that Russia invaded Ukraine.
There are some great ways to find good uses for these bots, but it’s also worth keeping in mind whether you’re just looking to chat or if you’re looking for specific information.
