In the battle of AI chatbots, who comes out on top?

YOUR early-adopter friend swears by ChatGPT for meal planning.

- GEOFFREY A. FOWLER

Your boss thinks Microsoft Copilot will "10x productivity." Your social media feed thinks Meta AI is a slop machine. They're mostly going off vibes.I can tell you which AI tools are worth using - and which to avoid - because I've been running a chatbot fight club.

I conducted dozens of bot challenges based on real things people do with AI, including writing breakup texts and work emails, decoding legal contracts and scientific research, answering tricky research questions, and editing photos and making "art". Human experts including best-selling authors, reference librarians, a renowned scientist and even a Pulitzer Prizewinning photographer judged the results.

After a year of bot battles, one thing stands out: There is no single best AI. The smartest way to use chatbots today is to pick different tools for different jobs - and not assume one bot can do it all. Case in point: ChatGPT, the Kleenex of chatbots, won none of my head-to-head battles. And even the winners rarely eked out the equivalent of a human passing grade.

According to the judges, Anthropic's Claude bot drafted a better breakup text than yours truly. Most bots got stumped by the question "How many buttons does an iPhone have?" And ChatGPT beat a top doctor on one real medical question - but also doled out advice that could seriously hurt you.

Having human experts judge these tests changed how I think about chatbots, and how I use them in my own life. Even if you're anxious about AI taking jobs, harming the environment or invading privacy, there's something to learn from how today's AI tools actually perform when you strip away the hype. Developing AI literacy can help you see that bots are not actually "intelligent", while still getting the most out of their real capabilities.