Deep Research: Gemini vs. ChatGPT

As a boring, pure user who knows nothing about the technical benchmarks and infrastructure that go into AI, I'm only concerned with how it fits into my life. How do I use it in my everyday tasks? I'm tired of hearing AI can detect minute disease-causing organisms I've never heard of, not that I don't care; it just doesn't serve my immediate day-to-day needs.

How does AI fit into my typical day: wake up, speak with my husband, cook, wish to exercise, manage to pray, start my online courses, work, remember to eat, check social media, reply to messages, struggle to remember to call my people, remember to change position before pain reminds me, speak with my husband, and sleep. At what point does AI fit into this?

This has been my struggle, but I'm hoping I'll find one that does everything I want. So, imagine my excitement when I saw Google's announcement of Deep Research. I was like nice; I can use this as I have been on a slow journey of writing out a strategy doc for a client's business. This could help, I thought. However, I procrastinated subscribing to Gemini as I felt ChatGPT knew me already.

Then ChatGPT announced theirs, and I decided to try it out. Let's not discuss the flurry of features AI companies announce every second. As a user, I feel the heat of the intense battle. Can I breathe? Anyway, how was my experience?

On opening both apps, it feels safe because the interface is pretty similar, and nobody is going out of their way to introduce a different design from the conditioned norm of minimalist chat interface.

The deep research feature is pretty easy to spot on both apps. For ChatGPT, it's the 3rd telescope-like symbol by the left side of the text box. You have to choose the "1.5 Pro with Deep Research" model from the dropdown menu at the centre top of the screen on Gemini. Kindly note that this is on mobile.

I copied and pasted the same prompt on both platforms. No hassle. An outstanding moment for me was when Gemini gave me a structured plan layout. That made it feel different, whereas ChatGPT asked me a question in its standard chat layout.

Gemini Deep Research feels like walking into a top store, where you are welcomed with a beautiful smile and asked, "What do you want?" "Care for a glass of water", whereas ChatGPT Deep Research is that laid-back, carefree shop whose attendant has no regard for you and asks you to pick your goods yourself.

Unfortunately, for my initial use case of this feature on both platforms, ChatGPT took almost an hour to generate the report, while Gemini took a few minutes. I tried again in this video, and ChatGPT was slow compared to Gemini.

I mean, it's understandable and not a breaking point for me, but that's not the only place ChatGPT delivered below the bar Gemini has set. By the time it was done, it dumped the entirety of the report in the chat, resulting in long scrolls on my part to get to the chat before the report.

Whereas my highlight on Gemini was that it asked me to open the report leading to another page. The chat didn't look messy; I could easily go to the report if I needed anything—a top-tier experience.

So, for me, if I need any deep research done, Gemini is the go–to AI platform because it isn't clumsy. I can easily navigate the before-and-after of my report, generate another report within the same chat, and compare both. It will definitely be challenging to do that in ChatGPT, as you'd have to open another chat.

I'm sorry, but ChatGPT deep research feels like a slapstick comedy that depicts Sam Altman screaming during a meeting, "Give me something, anything called Deep Research. I need to launch it now. Google mustn't win this race."

ChatGPT is my most used AI, by the way. If its Deep Research feature update comes, I'd definitely try it out.