The TOI+ Test: We asked DeepSeek, ChatGPT and Gemini some useful questions

There are many ways to trip up an AI chatbot — ask DeepSeek about Arunachal Pradesh, Gemini about Trump’s immigration policy, and ChatGPT about Jonathan Zittrain (yes, a professor of internet law who is surprised that his name stops ChatGPT in its tracks — it’s a mystery that hasn’t been solved yet). But face it. In real life, people are far more likely to ask AI about things around them and things they need actual help with.That is where we began our experiment, with a simple goal. We ask DeepSeek, the splashy debutant, regular old questions that anyone who wants to follow the Indian news cycle might ask. And we put those same questions to the established behemoths, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. We threw this open to the TOI+ team, for everyone to put in basic questions they’d like answers to, and shortlisted five of those to cover a representative range of subjects. Politics, health, sports, investments and science.Our prompt restricted the responses by word count, so that we could also compare brevity:“I will ask a series of questions and you have to answer within 100 words. Can you do that?”And then we ran our little test.#1 What exactly is One Nation, One Time? Isn’t Indian Standard Time the same thing? What would this change?The first question came out of one of our own team meetings, when we could not agree on how One Nation, One Time would work. Daylight, IST, atomic clocks — there are a lot of things in play. And it seemed like one of those questions that appears simple but the deeper you go, the more complex it seems. medium117784149 medium117784168 medium117784184#2 Can the Aam Aadmi Party be described as India’s biggest political start-up?This one was a surprise. Because it seemed like a fairly simple question, and definitely not controversial. But Gemini declined to answer. medium117784210 medium117784218 medium117784241#3 Is top cricketers being treated as superstars one of the reasons why the Indian Test team’s performance has slipped?Because the “superstar culture” of Indian cricket keeps coming up from time to time. And, well, it’s cricket. medium117784267 medium117784293 medium117784317#4 What causes Guillain Barré Syndrome and what caused its spread in Pune?This specific outbreak has been confounding — the bacteria which causes it was found in stool samples of some patients but not in water samples. And there have been at least 130 cases and two deaths so far. Gemini didn't register the latest outbreak at all, and ChatGPT pointed to the possibility of underlying infections. DeepSeek's answer about dengue and chikungunya surge being linked to GBS is not, however, something we had come across in most coverage. When we asked for the source of the information, it pointed to medical literature which has often found links between the diseases. That part was legit. medium117784351 medium117784369 medium117784403#5 You are a 35-year-old Indian working with a private company. You make Rs 1 lakh per month. Your fixed expenditure (including rent, EMIs, food and utilities) is Rs 50,000. Can you make an investment plan for the remaining money accounting for yearly vacations, health insurance, retirement savings and down payment for a house in the future?It made sense to ask at least one utilitarian question with practical applications. This question tripped up both ChatGPT and Gemini on the word count, and both offered fairly detailed and long answers. When prompted about the length of the answer again, the chatbot responded with abridged versions of the answers. DeepSeek, however, got it close to the 100-word limit we had set (124 words) in the first attempt.Gemini was exceedingly generous with its vacation allocation (close to Rs 17,000 a month — but no harm in dreaming big, perhaps!). But all three concurred on retirement savings and emergency fund. medium117784443 medium117784462 medium117784489Our thoughts after the test?Gemini is the cautious one. Maybe too cautious. But the fact that it shares sources without being asked worked well. The differences between DeepSeek and ChatGPT, at the moment, seem to be those of finesse and language. DeepSeek’s answers, to us, seemed nuanced and more…natural. ChatGPT, while accurate, felt a bit more stilted.But that’s just us.