Hey. Haven’t written in a while. I’ve been thinking about it, and boy, my AI journey has been quite a wild ride.
Let’s time-travel back to 2022. It was winter, I was reading emails on my BrailleNote Touch+, and I kept seeing stuff about this new thing called ChatFTP or something. I finally clicked on an email from Lifehacker and read. I was very excited, and I knew I had to try it. Since I don’t my own phone, I, with his permission, borrowed my brother’s phone number to register for an OpenAI account and try this thing out.
I distinctly remember one of the first things I asked ChatGPT. My friend David (name changed) was with me at the time, and I told it something like, “Generate a story where David works at his office till midnight, and I fall asleep. He wakes me up when it’s time to go home.” Groundbreaking stuff, I know.
It’s response left me in total shock.
I didn’t touch AI for the next few months that much, since it was still pretty new, and for all practical purposes, pretty useless.
But then Microsoft changed that with Bing AI. It was a revolutionary product for it’s time, using Bing to search the web real-time and giving slow, often inaccurate responses in a semi-natural text-to-speech voice. Revolutionary, I say! Anyway, that’s kinda where I actually started using it more.
I gradually started using ChatGPT on my computer more for general-purpose stuff: “Is there such a thing as a wireless USB extension cord?” Just things that would be harder to find by Googling.
After Microsoft’s rebranding of Bing AI to Copilot, I tried it on my computer, and I kept on using it. I also still used ChatGPT, but then, recently, ChatGPT came out with a Windows app! How … oh. It was Electron-based. Not surprising, but whatever. But then Copilot broke their app by changing it to a native app and completely breaking accessibility for screen readers. I won’t dive into that rabbit hole here, that’s for a future post.
So, back to ChatGPT exclusively.
But then, I noticed Gemini. I had used Bard (by Google, not NLS), but it was, for lack of a more eloquent term, terrible. Since I was under 18, it kept BSing at me that it “couldn’t do this and that for people under 18”. But then I tried it again, and I must say, I was really impressed!
I now almost exclusively use Gemini. Why? Google. The simple answer, Google. It integrates with my calendar, YouTube, Maps, Search, and Docs, Sheets, and Slides. It also recently got the Canvas feature, live screen and camera sharing, and other features that ChatGPT hasn’t matched. Even Copilot, with it’s file-searching abilities, has an advantage over ChatGPT—it’s baked into Windows.
And I’m not saying that ChatGPT will fall in a dramatic scene of ashes and smoke. Actually, I would be completely unsurprised … is that even a word? Anyway, I’d be completely unsurprised if ChatGPT did go up in smoke. It’s just that Gemini (Android) and Copilot (Windows) have competitive advantages with their platforms’ and companies’ ecosystems.
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