Call me old-fashioned, but at the moment, when I need to find deals on electronics, get news, or basically search online, I rely on Google and, of course, Tom's Guide.

Nevertheless, as AI chatbots continue to evolve and actually respond meaningfully to our prompts, people have begun to think about what the future of search might look like. Companies have long relied on SEO experts to try to hang on to the first page of Google search results.

I decided to stop by ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity to see how far AI chatbot search capabilities have come.

The test is simple: with three prompts covering different topics, the chatbots need to pull information from different sources and analyze it according to the given context. Will they be able to cope with this challenge?

As soon as Friday rolls around, I wonder how I'm going to relax and unwind before another busy week begins; will an AI chatbot come up with an itinerary that will allow me to make the most of my weekend?

When I told ChatGPT that I would be in Miami this weekend, it immediately came up with an itinerary for Friday through Sunday. It also provided a link to a page where I could see more information about the event. However, the links were mainly to similar "what's on" websites, so a little more diversity would have been appreciated, and perhaps a link to the official event page itself.

In an attempt to play coy, Google Gemini offered a number of options that did not specify dates. However, they did suggest that I go to Miami Fashion Week. The only problem was that I wanted to visit Miami in June.

Perplexity had mixed results. The itinerary was presented at the beginning as "based on events taking place in June 2024," and I quickly became skeptical as to how up-to-date that information was. I was partially correct, but in its defense, it listed the actual concerts on my target weekend and useful links to ticket sites.

Figuring out which laptop to buy is a daunting task. A chatbot can sift through the sea of devices and find the best one for portability for no more than $400.

ChatGPT settled on the Acer Aspire 5 Slim with 4GB of RAM for just under £3.97, with the Lenovo IdeaPad 1 in second place and the HP Chromebook in third.

Gemini also recommends an Acer or Lenono laptop, but adds helpful commentary on the different specs.

Perplexity's response seems to rely too heavily on Reddit threads, earning a total of one upvote. It recommended the Acer Aspire 3, but did not provide the reliable reviews I usually look for when spending my hard-earned money. [The Acer Aspire 3 was recommended by the Acer Aerospace Group, which is the same company that recommended the Acer Aspire 3 to me, but it didn't provide the reliable reviews I usually look for when I spend my hard-earned money. If I were to ask an AI if I could hypothetically undergo a kidney transplant while awake during surgery, would he say it was possible or would he say it was out of my hands?

ChatGPT threw cold water on my inquiry by saying that kidney transplant surgery usually requires general anesthesia and that the patient is completely unconscious during the procedure. He said that such surgery is technically possible, but he did not seem to grasp this scientific advancement.

Google, what do you think? Gemini stated, correctly aware of the medical advances, "Awake kidney transplantation is a very new procedure."

Perplexity also gets full marks for mentioning the Northwestern case and providing a link to the original press release and a reputable source to a news story that covered the story. It looks like Google and Perplexity can definitely handle this.

All in all, I was very surprised by these results. Would I ditch the search engines and switch to chatbots? Not yet.

I also found it very reassuring and realistically necessary to have links to the sources to which the AI chatbots refer.

This allowed me to actually proceed to complete the task at hand, whether it be rechecking information, buying the next laptop, or buying tickets to this weekend's concert.