Gemini: A ChatGPT Competitor

Google rebranded its Bard AI product to Gemini, and my preliminary usage yielded surprising results. Gemini is a worthy ChatGPT competitor, which is a major benefit for end users like myself. The typical result of competition is better quality, lower price, and I believe there's potential to be the case here.So, which one is the best chatbot? This is a rather impractical question to answer, and trying to answer it will force you to dive into a rabbit hole that's impossible to climb back out.

Here's why, and let's use cars as an example. There simply isn't a "best" car. A track car will do very poorly off-road and vice versa. The takeaway here, I believe, is that it really depends on your use case.

This is exactly what I've been doing when testing out Gemini. In a trading context, there are a few things I need to accomplish:

Summarize high market impact news
Digest central bank statements and interest rate stance
Gauge social sentiment
Research and learn economic and finance theory
Understand historical context

The tl;dr is that Gemini performed quite well in my trading use case. Here's a quick run-through of how Gemini performed.

1. Summarize high market impact news

Gemini - High Impact Market News

Unlike ChatGPT, Gemini utilizes a combination of headers and bulletpoints whenever possible to optimize readability. This is something I really appreciate.

2. Digest central bank statements and interest rate stance

Gemini - Central Bank Statements on Interest Rates

Again, I get a very nice breakdown of each central bank's interest rate stance and statement along with the meeting date. ChatGPT seems to have a tendency to jumble everything together in paragraph form unless I prompt it to respond in a specific format.

3. Gauge Social Sentiment

Gemini - Social Sentiment

This response caught me by surprise. I entered a similar prompt a day ago and Gemini would not produce a response. It cited privacy reasons for limiting its ability to scrape social platforms.

Was that just a bug or did Google find a way gather anonymized data? While I'm glad that a response is generated, I'm not sure if I should be concerned about the response consistency.

4. Research and learn economic and finance theory

Gemini - Options Valuation

Both Gemini and ChatGPT responded with the correct answer, but Gemini was significantly more detailed by explaining why. ChatGPT does not do this unless I make a follow-up prompt asking why.

5. Understand historical context

Gemini - Historical Context

Asking ChatGPT the exact same question, I got a much shorter response:

The United States experienced a high interest rate and high inflation environment in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This period, often referred to as the "Great Inflation," saw inflation rates peak at over 13% in 1979. The Federal Reserve, under Chairman Paul Volcker, responded by significantly raising the federal funds rate to as high as 20% in the early 1980s. These measures were aimed at curbing inflation by tightening monetary policy, which eventually helped bring down inflation rates and stabilize the economy.

This has been an interesting experiment. I've been a ChatGPT Plus subscriber for a few months now and here are my thoughts after seeing Gemini.

Strengths

Readability & Detail: Gemini's response was consistently structured to promote ease of reading. It also provides a more detailed response each time in comparison with ChatGPT.
Stability: Gemini's web interface is incredibly stable. I haven't experienced any crashes that would require re-entering the prompt into the interface. I've had this happen quite a bit with ChatGPT, which will "crash" when I switch to a different tab or desktop.
Price: Here in Canada, Gemini is approximately $3 cheaper at $26.99 versus $30 after currently conversion. You also get more bang for your buck because paying for Gemini Advanced is essentially buying a Google One subscription that also comes with 2 TB of cloud storage along with many other features.
Integration: Although this can be classified as a big privacy risk depending on who you ask, it appears that Gemini can read other data in your Google account to provide more personalized responses. Some Google apps such as Images and Maps can be embedded in Gemini's response.

Shortfalls

Lack of Mobile App: Gemini hasn't been integrated into the Google iOS app just yet. Right now, ChatGPT offers a better mobile experience with its standalone mobile app.
Longevity: Google simply does not have a good history with offering long term app support, especially for new and experimental products. For example, Bard has essentially been scrapped in favor of Gemini. In my opinion, it's safer to pay for Gemini Advanced on a monthly basis rather than a full year in advance since there's a lot of uncertaintly as to whether or not Gemini will stick around.

My ChatGPT Plus subscription renews on the first of each month so I will likely pivot over to Gemini for long-term testing.