LibGuides: ChatGPT and AI Literacy: Which AI tool for your task?

Which AI tool for your task?

Since there are so many generative AI tools these days, it can be difficult to decide which one to use for a particular task.

A helpful way to think about this is to look at whether the tool is grounded in a source of facts.

Not grounded - these models rely only on their training data

ChatGPT 4o mini(free) - trained up to Oct. 2023
Claude 3.5 Sonnet (free) - trained up to April 2024

Grounded - these models can also use web search results or other types of search results (see below)

ChatGPT Plus (GPT4), $20 USD/mo
ChatGPT-4o (available for limited use in free accounts)
Perplexity AI (free & pro versions)
Microsoft Copilot (free & pro versions)
Google Gemini (free & pro versions)

Wordsmithing tasks (that don't involve search)

Task	Free tools
Brainstorming ideas or examples Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper Get ideas for keywords to search in library databases Summarizing and outlining information Changing the writing level of some text (5 years old, high school, college, faculty level) Changing the writing style (make it more humorous, more formal, more satirical, more diplomatic, etc.)	ChatGPT Claude Perplexity AI Microsoft Copilot Gemini All of these tools also have paid versions that are more capable.

Task

Free tools

Brainstorming ideas or examples
Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper
Get ideas for keywords to search in library databases
Summarizing and outlining information
Changing the writing level of some text (5 years old, high school, college, faculty level)
Changing the writing style (make it more humorous, more formal,
more satirical, more diplomatic, etc.)

All of these tools also have paid versions that are more capable.

Tasks that involve searching

For any of these tasks...	Free tools
Finding and summarizing websites that answer your question Asking questions or getting a summary of information on a specific website Example: Please summarize this: [your link here]	Grounded with web search Perplexity AI Microsoft Copilot Gemini ChatGPT-4o & 4o mini (Available in free accounts for limited use).
Finding scholarly articles Summarizing a particular scholarly article Asking questions of a particular scholarly article Uploading the PDF of a scholarly article and asking questions or getting a summary.	Start with library databases and Google Scholar. Their coverage is more comprehensive than the tools below. Grounded with scholarly sources Use these to find additional sources that may not have appeared with keyword searching. They use semantic searching, some of them based on Semantic Scholar, others on OpenAlex. They also include generative AI features, like natural language queries, summarizing, outlining, etc. Elicit Assistant by Scite Consensus Keenious (Learn more about Keenious). Inciteful These are not 100% free, as most have usage limits.

For any of these tasks...

Free tools

Finding and summarizing websites that answer your question
Asking questions or getting a summary of information on a specific website
Example: Please summarize this: [your link here]

Grounded with web search

Perplexity AI
Microsoft Copilot
Gemini
ChatGPT-4o & 4o mini (Available in free accounts for limited use).

Finding scholarly articles
Summarizing a particular scholarly article
Asking questions of a particular scholarly article
Uploading the PDF of a scholarly article and asking questions or getting a summary.

Start with library databases and Google Scholar.
Their coverage is more comprehensive than the tools below.

Grounded with scholarly sources
Use these to find additional sources that may not have appeared with keyword searching. They use semantic searching, some of them based on Semantic Scholar, others on OpenAlex.

They also include generative AI features, like natural language queries, summarizing, outlining, etc.

These are not 100% free, as most have usage limits.