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The A.I. Wars Have Begun

For the past two years, I’ve spent a lot of time testing the latest A.I. tools. Personally I have always tested the latest hardware and software, but A.I. is the first time I get into the details to improve my everyday life. Using A.I. tools like ChatGPT for the first time feel like turning on my original PC or accessing the internet through Netscape Navigator. There is going back once you see the light.

At first, OpenAI had a significant lead when ChatGPT was released in December 2022. Even though Google invented the transformer model for these LLM chatbots, they hadn’t released an A.I. product for the real-world. So early on, everyone had to use ChatGPT because the competition didn’t exist. However, it only took a few months for everything to turn around in the world of LLMs.

By Spring 2023, Google started new products like Gemini, formerly known as Bard, and NotebookLM. They weren’t as good as ChatGPT but I prefer to use products within the Google ecosystem. Once OpenAI signed the deal with Microsoft, I started using Gemini more often because I thought ChatGPT would integrate better with Office 365 products instead of Google Workspace/Drive. Fortunately my short-term bet on Gemini paid off.

Gemini 2.0

For the past two years, Google flexed their muscles with Gemini. At first, it was powering several apps such as Search and NotebookLM. But now Gemini is powering a full suite of apps within Google Workspace.

If you sign up for Gemini Advanced (it was $20 per month when this article was published), you will get access to the Advanced models such as 2.0 Flash, 2.5 Pro and Veo 2. For me, they provide more context within the Google ecosystem. I even use Gemini’s Gem Manager to watch YouTube videos.

Google also integrated Gemini into Workspace so it can create images, rewrite content, and summaries files & folders. Gemini's ability to read content natively across Google Drive is worth the money.

The big leap for me personally was using Google’s A.I. Studio to access their most advanced versions through an API. To Google’s benefit, I had to learn how to use Google Cloud and pay extra for compute outside of the Gemini app.

The one thing Gemini has over the other A.I. tools is their massive context window. The problem with Claude, ChatGPT and even Perplexity were the constant context window limits. I would upload 2-3 codebase files or PDFs, and couldn’t generate a response because I hit the token limit. Even if those tools are better in some ways, I can’t use them to maximize productivity.

SuperGrok

I use X on a regular basis to connect with my community and read the latest news. Elon closed on the Twitter acquisition in October 2022 and it took him ~18 months to rebuild the platform. In that time period, I think X released more products in one year than Twitter did in the last five years before its acquisition.

Once Elon improved the X platform and hired a CEO, he refocused his efforts to build a competing A.I. I think Elon saw the threats from OpenAI (i.e. ClosedAI) and Gemini so he felt the need to build xAI from scratch. X also shut off their website from web scrapers so LLMs couldn’t live posts in real-time. He built xAI from scratch with a small team and called it Grok. I think it has a great name.

The most interesting part was X was the first social network to deliver a premium product for an $8-16 per month subscription. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn are all free to use in comparison. X was having trouble with advertising revenue so Elon had to figure out a more stable revenue model. Monthly subscriptions worked great to remove the bots and ads, while aligning the social network with a longer-term customer base. Subscriptions are also how new A.I. apps deliver their pricing model.

xAI soon raised north of $12 billion to build Grok. Elon merged xAI with X a few months ago to build a powerhouse social network. Now SuperGrok, or Grok 3.0, is available to users and it is amazing. Right now you can download the beta version as an independent app if you don’t use X on a regular basis. The latest version of Grok on X costs $40 per month, making it a premium A.I. tool.

I personally use Grok 3-4x a day because it is embedded in X now. Anytime I read the news or see a viral post, I ask Grok to explain the context. Grok is also the most unhinged A.I. with very few restrictions. I use different personas and am testing the workspace products.

Combined, Grok and Gemini, are excellent to power my personal and professional workflows. Initially I was skeptical to pay for the premium versions but the use cases are so powerful they pay for themselves. And at this point, I stopped using Perplexity Pro and ChatGPT even though those products have become very good as well. Instead I’m focused on doubling on using the tools I use most, that are in front of me everyday: Grok and Gemini.