AI Searches on the 2024 Presidential Election Have Mixed Results

Subtopics included the gender divide in voting patterns, key battleground states, the latest betting indicators, and polling’s limitations. All bullets included footnotes and sources were predominantly news articles or government and nonprofit websites. A Google spokesperson said that last year, the company announced that it would restrict responses for election-related queries on its AI apps (referred to as Bard in the blog post) and web experience.

• A Google spokesperson said that last year, the company announced that it would restrict responses for election-related queries on its AI apps (referred to as Bard in the blog post) and web experience.
• Now, while this is a paid program, being an official Google course, it’s easily one of the best prompt engineering courses you can make use of right now.
• But asking for the weather worked, even if the chatbot failed to determine my city accurately.
• It also explained how to calculate the exact amount I’d have to pay in taxes.

ChatGPT Search combines the chatbot’s excellent natural language understanding with a search engine for up-to-date information. If you’ve ever used Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat), you will feel right at home – the way they work is extremely similar, inline citations and everything. While OpenAI ChatGPT App hasn’t revealed how it ranks online sources, the company’s VP of Engineering confirmed on Reddit that the feature relies on Bing to some extent. The appeal of the best AI chatbots lies in their ability to understand and respond to natural language, making them increasingly intuitive to interact with.

What is ChatGPT Search?

They can answer questions, provide information, generate creative content, and even perform tasks, streamlining our interactions with technology and even automating some mundane activities to a certain extent. Google offered links to four news stories, followed by an irrelevant list of search suggestions. But if I’m just looking for a quick answer, ChatGPT is the unquestionable winner. However, Perplexity went further by adding bullet points with educational information that contextualized trends.

Meanwhile, Grok — created by Elon Musk’s X — focuses on real-time updates by pulling from tweets, giving users a way to explore the latest news and opinions on trending topics instantly. Google didn’t offer an AI-generated response for this question, and instead flooded me with ads. Scrolling down to the actual results, though, it did provide relatively recent links. I also appreciated that it placed authoritative Japan-focused blogs at the top of the search result list rather than generic travel websites looking to capitalize on a popular search term.

Elon Musk’s Grok AI was pretty excited Trump won the 2024 election. Here’s what else AI chatbots had to say.

All in all, I’d say ChatGPT Search is a good starting point and a great secondary source of information. But despite what OpenAI says, it’s not a search engine replacement and I would caution against relying on it for any critical task. In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson from Perplexity noted the Election Information Hub was launched specifically for election-specific topics. Grok and Perplexity provided more general information about same-day registration and provisional ballots. To make things easier for you, the Google itself has launched a new Google Prompting Essentials course with Coursera. Just as we hone our social skills to interact with peers, mastering conversations with AI chatbots is now essential.

Whether it’s the relentless onslaught of ads or the dozens of inauthentic links occupying the top spot, using Google Search has never felt more unrewarding than in 2024. So it’s perhaps not surprising that entire AI startups ChatGPT like Perplexity have sprung up to threaten Google’s search business. Shortly after Google was forced to respond with its controversial AI Overviews feature, OpenAI also threw its hat into the arena with ChatGPT Search.

If the information you’re looking for isn’t too recent and requires an in-depth explanation, ChatGPT Search can indeed pull information from various sources to deliver a better response than Google. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. In two of the above examples, I preferred ChatGPT’s response as it delivered an answer quickly and at a glance. However, I still had to rely on my personal knowledge and experience to know that the responses were factually correct. Switching to ChatGPT as your primary search engine doesn’t make sense just yet.

Not too long ago, I wouldn’t trust ChatGPT with a question that would influence my purchasing decisions. But with the world’s knowledge now at the chatbot’s fingertips, could it finally rival Google Search? Only kind of — ChatGPT managed to spit out a list of eSIM apps with the cheapest plans for Japan, as requested. The Android 15 update has only made its way to a handful of Pixel devices so far, but we have covered how manufacturers like Samsung have started testing the update in recent days too. ChatGPT picked our coverage, and correctly said that the Galaxy S24 series will get its Android 15 update alongside One UI 7 sometime in 2025. I asked for Intel’s stock price next, and ChatGPT Search managed to respond with the correct price and a useful infographic.

Once you have achieved that, you can not only use some amazing ChatGPT prompts but also converse with Gemini and other chatbots well enough to take your workflow to the next level. With each company eager to claim the AI throne, it’s safe to say we’ll continue to see chatbots evolve in new and exciting ways. Are you sticking with a favorite, trying a new one, or still waiting to see which chatbot proves itself the most valuable in the long run? Google, Meta, and Microsoft have all invested heavily in AI chatbot development, each aiming to integrate these tools into their existing ecosystems. Asking Google Search the same question yielded an article snippet that answered my query, but it didn’t offer any follow-up information.

Perplexity AI launched a dedicated “Election Information Hub” to inform voters about voting logistics, ballot measures, candidate stances, and track results. This official Google course is divided into 4 modules and 12 assignments that take 9 hours to complete, at a pace of 3 hours a week for 3 weeks. Remember just two years ago when ChatGPT burst onto the scene, and suddenly, everyone was talking about AI? Since then, the tech world has been in a full-blown AI arms race, with every major player vying for a piece of the chatbot pie. “Fun” and “beta” are another strategy for not taking responsibility for its content, Morita told BI. “Give us the safe space to experiment, regardless of whether the experiment is harmful or not.”

• Google didn’t offer an AI-generated response for this question, and instead flooded me with ads.
• Google, Meta, and Microsoft have all invested heavily in AI chatbot development, each aiming to integrate these tools into their existing ecosystems.
• It doesn’t have any kind of advertising or sponsored links, at least in its current state.
• This can be tricky for an AI to handle since the value of currencies and stocks keep changing in real time.
• Meanwhile, ChatGPT only reveals a handful of search results in a narrow sidebar when you click on a small “Sources” button.

Whether you’re a student, a working professional, or just someone trying to navigate the digital world, these bots offer a range of helpful features. However, upon further inspection, I found that ChatGPT’s very first source article was a year old and had outdated prices. The chatbot’s answer was still generally relevant, but it underscores the problems of taking AI responses at face value.

“As a company, we are committed to helping safeguard voters, candidates, campaigns and election authorities,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. Google’s AI Overviews finally made an appearance in response to this prompt, offering a detailed summary from at least four government-backed sources. This is heartening to see, given that ChatGPT only referenced third-party websites like GoodRx, Mayo Clinic, and WebMD. Still, the quality of information was consistent across both search tools, so it’s technically a tie.

The latter is finally rolling out to the general public, so I took it for a spin to find out if ChatGPT could potentially supplant Google for my search needs. Though the presidential election has been decided, the evolving role AI-enabled search and chatbots will continue to play in elections moving forward has yet to be fully seen. The top of the AI search results included the latest news articles about the election and a ticker for the Electoral College. The 2024 presidential election has been called, and this year voters had the option to follow along with AI-enabled search tools.

Business Insider examined outputs from popular AI chatbots and search engines throughout Election Day, and on Wednesday morning to see how they responded to questions about the results. My search activity balloons during tax season, but Commonwealth countries often announce changes during the annual budget so chatbots with hard knowledge cutoffs fail to offer accurate guidance. Unsurprisingly then, ChatGPT with its new search capabilities managed to pull information from the official website of the Government of Canada to answer my query. It also explained how to calculate the exact amount I’d have to pay in taxes. As a frequent traveler, I tend to look up exchange rates between various currencies.

ChatGPT Search takes a couple of seconds longer to respond than a typical search engine. And the responses themselves don’t always contain the information you’re looking for. This means typing in a prompt yet again, while Google offers a wide variety of links and at least some likely cover the topic in-depth. Finally, ChatGPT only references a handful of sources to draw its conclusions, which could lead to biased or outright false responses.

The overall experience is still rather barebones and the chatbot has limited means to fetch real-time information. Finding follow-up information can also be quite tedious, as ChatGPT doesn’t offer related search suggestions like Google. This is an area where Perplexity excels, although it often relies on outdated and inaccurate sources too. ChatGPT, the OG bot that started it all, now runs on OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4o, offering powerful capabilities like real-time web search without a paid subscription.

This can be tricky for an AI to handle since the value of currencies and stocks keep changing in real time. So without a dedicated data source for this kind of information, it’s not surprising that ChatGPT Search doesn’t keep up with Google. “We curated an authoritative set of sources to respond to election-related questions, prioritizing domains that are non-partisan and fact-checked,” the spokesperson said. Amidst all this corporate maneuvering, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that AI chatbots can actually be pretty useful.

All of these drawbacks apply to Google’s AI Overviews too, which currently show at the top of select search queries. The company has broadened their scope over time, though, so we may see AI-generated summaries at the top of search results more often if ChatGPT Search threatens Google’s business. google’s chatbot OpenAI has also released a Chrome extension that allows you to set ChatGPT as your default search engine. I did just that for the past couple of days to find out if I could live with it long-term — here’s how it went. BI did not see any references to Bing’s search during the chatbot experiment.

Clearly, the old way isn’t too bad in this case if you don’t mind clicking through one or two links. An OpenAI spokesperson pointed to an official blog post about the company’s approach to worldwide elections. The post referenced investments to improve authoritative voting information, including partnerships with sites such as canivote.org with the National Association of Secretaries of States.

The markets were still closed at this time, so I couldn’t test its ability to update in real-time but it’s an indication of OpenAI working to solve this problem. But asking for the weather worked, even if the chatbot failed to determine my city accurately. Google has a wealth of location data via my phone, meanwhile, so it had no trouble pinpointing the exact suburb I was in. That said, Google does still offer a traditional search experience with a list of indexed links if you scroll past the AI-generated summary. Meanwhile, ChatGPT only reveals a handful of search results in a narrow sidebar when you click on a small “Sources” button.

Now, while this is a paid program, being an official Google course, it’s easily one of the best prompt engineering courses you can make use of right now. Each chatbot brings a different flavor to the table, shaped by the goals of its parent company. Whether you’re exploring travel options, streamlining work, or finding new ways to stay informed, there’s an AI chatbot built for your needs. Before I can show you any side-by-side comparisons, it’s worth noting that ChatGPT Search has a few advantages over Google from the outset. It doesn’t have any kind of advertising or sponsored links, at least in its current state. Elon Musk-owned X’s chatbot Grok analyzed the site’s content and prioritized Trump-related posts.