Why You Want to Use Free ChatGPT-4o Instead of Search

The best artificial intelligence tool is now free! That changes everything.

I googled “what's the most convenient option for an overnight stay at Heathrow when arriving in the evening and leaving in the morning on Iberia”.

Google answered, as we’ve come to expect, with four ads. I asked ChatGPT-4o the same question. It gave the right answer.

Would’ve been better if ChatGPT Sofitel included a link to Sofitel (it’s inconsistent; sometimes it gives the link).

I asked Google “how do I get from United to the Sofitel in the evening”. It doesn’t remember previous questions so didn’t know I was talking about terminals at Heathrow.

Same question to ChatGPT which remembers my previous question so knows I’m talking about Heathrow.

Two weeks ago, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT-4o, their highest quality large language model (LLM), is available free to everyone. By this time next year, you may have stopped using plain old search completely in favor of talking with chatbots. I mean “talking” literally since GPT-4o, the version announced recently, is fluent in many spoken languages. Much coverage of the announcement has concentrated on cool features like emotion detection and the ability to look at images with a user – these all add to usability and broaden the audience for AI.

Although Google sometimes adds useful summaries to answers, it clearly didn’t in this case. Google is certainly working on using AI to improve search; OpenAI, as you can see, has embedded search in its large language model. Google could’ve been a pioneer in introducing AI through LLMs; but it wasn’t. My guess is that the search giant was not eager to torpedo the paid placement model in search results which is the source of much of their income. They are trapped by what Clay Christainson described as “The Innovator’s Dilemma”: large, successful companies are usually not prepared to capitalize on disruptive technologies. They focus on innovations that directly satisfy their existing customers and lower costs rather than adopting new technologies or business models that will meet their customers' future needs, especially if these new technologies make their current offerings obsolete. Without a reboot, Google is likely to fade quickly. All the more reason to try free ChatGPT now. If you tried the former free version of ChatGPT 3.5 and weren’t impressed, give free 4o a try; it’s much better and is automatically available now in the account you set up.

There are lots more reasons than just ad-free, context-aware, and more relevant answers to go to Openai.com and get a free subscription to ChatGPT 4o. I’ll write about them in the weeks to come.

Despite my boostership, I have no business relationship with OpenAI other than as a customer nor with Microsoft, who own just shy of a majority share of the company, except that I worked at Microsoft three decades ago and use its products as well. I was going to recommend Perplexity as a new gen replacement for traditional search but its free version is built on OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 which is far inferior to 4o. BTW, the “o” in 4o stands for “omni” since this version has audio, vision, and imaging built in.