ChatGPT as the Default Assistant
Might just work
Yesterday I mentioned - in a post mostly about Claude adding web search capability - that ChatGPT can now be used as the default Assistant app on Android devices. I said my tiny bit of trying that out left me feeling that it was ok, nothing more.
That big earth/cloud circle in the screenshot above is ChatGPT’s live voice mode, which you can use without making it the default assistant. Today I spent a little time using it as the assistant, and doing some direct comparisons with ChatGPT and Gemini. Now my - still very early - impression has changed a lot. I think ChatGPT has three big things going for it as the assistant. They are:
ChatGPT’s Memory feature
As long as you use this feature carefully (and Settings help here - you have to opt in to it, can turn it off any time, and delete everything in memory at any time), this a very powerful feature. Here’s a quick example of it from this morning:
Live Voice continuous conversation
No other GenAI app does this as well as ChatGPT. This has been true for a long while. It’s still so cool to be able to chat about a topic, pause to think on follow-up questions or change topic mid-conversation, and never have to tap anywhere on screen to keep the chat going. The combination of Memory plus continuous conversations levels up the whole experience.
Gemini is not competing well
I really don’t set out to pick on Gemini, but it just had such a poor showing in my head-to-head efforts today. Here’s an example where I tell it about my interest in PKM (because it doesn’t remember that like ChatGPT) and then ask it to suggest some sources for focusing on using the Zettelkasten method in the Obsidian notes app. I asked ChatGPT the same thing. Note how ChatGPT (on the left) offers specific (and spot-on) sources, while Gemini is generic:
The second example is worse, comical really. I asked both of them about March Madness - the NCAA Mens College Basketball Championship - and to tell me about some exciting matchups this weekend. ChatGPT picked some spicy matchups - featuring a fancied upset maker in the McNeese vs. Purdue game, one of the tournament’s top seeds - Florida - going up against two time defending champion Connecticut, and the betting favorite Duke against Baylor.
Gemini touted Name of Team A vs Name of Team B and Name of Team C vs Name of Team D. Seriously! Good luck finding betting odds or expert picks on those matchups :)
Perplexity is another option, a decent one too, as the default assistant - but today has really got me thinking that ChatGPT may end up being the best for this job.