Before artificial intelligence had its big breakout, chatbots were those weird messaging tools that sat in the bottom corner of websites, rarely solving your problems and likely causing you more stress by blocking you from talking to a real person. But now, AI chatbots like ChatGPT have created a whole new category: It’s search, but with conversation.
You can use an AI chatbot as a thought partner, a research aid or a Google alternative for anything you want to know.
But beware that generative AI can hallucinate — that is, it may pass along wrong or made-up information, which was especially apparent in the early days of Google’s AI Overviews in its search results.
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What are AI chatbots?
While traditional Google search serves up the most optimized links, generative AI interprets information and summarizes it. Plus, you can ask follow-up questions, get more context and expand on your initial prompt. The chat component is what makes it different from search engines, with prompts being the keywords of chatbots.
Given that ChatGPT is the best-known chatbot, we’ll start there, and compare it with another popular chatbot, Claude. Both are free but come with a premium version for $20 per month.
Other popular chatbots include Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity. Start with the chatbot you’re confident with.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
What can you use AI chat for?
Some of the best things you can use chatbots for are:
- Questions you’d normally Google, with the ability to ask follow-up questions as you go.
- More personal decisions with more context.
- Work-related tasks, like summarizing documents and editing emails.
AI to chat about personal decisions
The better the prompt, the better the response. To avoid generic responses, give the chatbot as much context as possible. For example, let’s say you’re moving to New York City. While a “best neighborhoods in NYC” keyword suffices in search, the AI requires more distinctive personalization in its prompt.
Instead, your prompt could be: “Provide information on the best neighborhoods in New York, for a 36-year-old woman who is married and planning to start a family. I want to be around young professionals, artistic people, parks and outdoor spaces. I don’t need to live in Manhattan and prefer to save on rent and have more space. I’d like an apartment within a 10-minute walk to a subway stop.”
See how specific you can get with your initial AI chat? With ChatGPT’s new web search function, this is what I got back – a listing of five New York neighborhoods that the AI said might suit my needs: Astoria, Queens; Park Slope, Brooklyn; Long Island City, Queens; Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and Forest Hills, Queens.
After Astoria and Park Slope, rounding out the top five were Long Island City, Queens; Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and Forest Hills, Queens.
What’s great about a chatbot is being able to push back on what I disagree with or to request more information. I followed this up by asking the chatbot to provide more advice on Park Slope and Astoria.
I liked the real-time comparison function.
Then I asked for a demographic breakdown of each neighborhood. I discovered the median household income in Park Slope is double that of Astoria, so I asked what this means for locals.
ChatGPT responded that higher incomes may lead to elevated prices for local dining, entertainment and shops. However, increased household income can also result in more funding for local amenities such as parks and community programs.
All great information to know.
AI to chat about work matters
What about using chatbots for work-related tasks? That’s something Anthropic is steering Claude toward. Described as an AI assistant, Claude could come in handy nine-to-five.
For example, let’s say you’re an employee at a growing tech startup and you want feedback on your performance. This could be a prompt: “I’m an employee at a growing tech startup that doesn’t have formal performance reviews. I’ve been at the company for a year. We’re a small team, and we all wear many hats. Provide some informal ideas on ways to approach my manager and ask for feedback.”
Off the bat, the advice was helpful. Claude incorporated advice and actions, with suggestions such as initiating a standing one-on-one meeting to make feedback an ongoing process rather than a one-time event.
Love it.
Then I asked Claude to prepare an email to suggest a weekly 15-minute check-in call with a manager, framing it as an opportunity to align on issues and ideas.
It was pretty close to “hit send.”
I asked Claude to make it more conversational, and it was even better.
As with all AI tools, take it all with a grain of salt — just like with search results.
While AI chat won’t replace the first response to “just Google something” (yet), it’s a useful skill to have in your toolkit.
