The last time we did comparative tests of AI models from OpenAI and Google at Ars was in late 2023, when Google’s offering was still called Bard. In the roughly two years since, a lot has happened in the world of artificial intelligence. And now that Apple has made the consequential decision to partner with Google Gemini to power the next generation of its Siri voice assistant, we thought it was high time to do some new tests to see where the models from these AI giants stand today.
For this test, we’re comparing the default models that both OpenAI and Google present to users who don’t pay for a regular subscription— ChatGPT 5.2 for OpenAI and Gemini 3.2 Fast for Google. While other models might be more powerful, we felt this test best recreates the AI experience as it would work for the vast majority of Siri users, who don’t pay to subscribe to either company’s services.
As in the past, we’ll feed the same prompts to both models and evaluate the results using a combination of objective evaluation and subjective feel. Rather than re-using the relatively simple prompts we ran back in 2023, though, we’ll be running these models on an updated set of more complex prompts that we first used when pitting GPT-5 against GPT-4o last summer.
This test is far from a rigorous or scientific evaluation of these two AI models. Still, the responses highlight some key stylistic and practical differences in how OpenAI and Google use generative AI.
Dad jokes
Prompt: Write 5 original dad jokes
OpenAI ChatGPT tries to come up with some original dad jokes. ChatGPT tries to come up with some original dad jokes. OpenAI Google Gemini tries to come up with some original dad jokes. Gemini tries to come up with some original dad jokes. Google ChatGPT tries to come up with some original dad jokes. OpenAI Gemini tries to come up with some original dad jokes. Google
As usual when we run this test, the AI models really struggled with the “original” part of our prompt. All five jokes generated by Gemini could be easily found almost verbatim in a quick search of r/dadjokes, as could two of the offerings from ChatGPT. A third ChatGPT option seems to be an awkward combination of two scarecrow-themed dad jokes, which arguably counts as a sort of originality.