In my job, I spend a lot of time using AI chatbots. I’ve tried out the biggest and most-known, and the ones with small yet loyal followings. But, like most people, the one I keep coming back to is ChatGPT. It’s the biggest, the best-known and throughout most of its history, the best one too. In fact, despite a huge rise in competition, ChatGPT has repeatedly stood out.
But that lead is starting to slip, and has been for a little while now. The likes of xAI’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude have come a long way to offer viable alternatives to ChatGPT. However, it’s Google that OpenAI should be most scared of. Gemini has created a chatbot that in many ways could be the best option on the market right now, and the Gemini app has even surpassed ChatGPT as the No. 1 app in Apple's App Store. While I’m still a loyal ChatGPT user, that loyalty is slipping for a few reasons. Here's why a swap is on the horizon for me.
ChatGPT vs Gemini: Benchmarking
As part of the rapid growth of AI models, along with the heated competition with a variety of competitors currently available, a system of benchmarking has arose.
These benchmarks test AI models on their abilities to solve mathematical problems, deal with real-world problem solving, creativity and more. In other words, they are testing how effective each model can be.
Since Gemini 2.5 Pro came out, it has consistently come out on top or near the top of these benchmarks. GPT-5 came along, and with Grok 4, competed for the top spot with Gemini. And yet, despite both Grok and ChatGPT releasing newer versions, Gemini continues to lead the way.
One of the more recent benchmarks was one that simply blind tested user’s experience of each AI model. Across age, political opinion and country (it was tested in both the UK and US) Gemini came first in almost every part of the blind test.
Nano Banana is amazing
Benchmarking only tells us so much. Across most of these tests, the result changes between Gemini, Grok and ChatGPT, with all three appearing neck and neck in most categories.
However, one of Gemini’s great strengths comes from the introduction of Nano Banana. This allows you to use generative AI to transform existing images.
This, paired with Google’s exisiting image creation software, made it one of the best AI image generators around. While ChatGPT remains a fantastic image generator, it has seen few updates, and nothing came with GPT-5.
Through this new feature, Google became a go-to image editor for a lot of people. While I am still using ChatGPT for a lot of purposes, I have started using Gemini fully for image editing and creation.
Video creation
Along with Gemini’s image software, it is also a standout choice when it comes to video generation. Veo 3 remains one of the best video generators on the market, and is my go-to choice for this tool. While ChatGPT does have a video generator in the form of Sora, it has very quickly fallen behind.
In fact, compared to almost every other well-known video generator, Sora is unusable. It frequently makes mistakes and struggles to accurately capture prompts given to it. There were no updates to Sora in GPT-5, and while I’m hopeful to see it come back with a bang, it doesn’t seem likely right now.
Will I move to Gemini?
I, like a lot of people, had high hopes for ChatGPT when GPT-5 came out. However, it hasn’t really lived up to the hype. Gemini, on the other hand, is getting stronger and is consistently proving itself as one of the best developing chatbots on the market.
I now found myself splitting my time between both Gemini and ChatGPT. If both models keep developing at the rates that they currently are, Gemini would easily become my go-to tool.
More from Tom's Guide
- This new AI tool can predict your risk of 1,000+ diseases — meet Delphi-2M
- Chatbots don’t need punctuation — I tested ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude to find out
- Sam Altman suggests ChatGPT could ask you for ID to keep using it
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