ChatGPT 3.5 vs ChatGPT 4: A direct comparison

The staggering differences between ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4, side-by-side.

Welcome to our newest blog. Today we’ll be delving into the details of 2 of the most popular AI tools in the world. ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4. As some of you may already know, Chat ChatGPT is the paid subscription provided by OpenAI, we’re here to compare this paid service to the free counterpart. We’ll be looking at the background of both the tools, as well as their key differences.

Introduction to ChatGPT and OpenAI

AI has become the front-runner in the world of sales, marketing, automotive, and more. Developing these AI models has made working on tedious tasks considerably more efficient and helped develop industries accordingly. Along with it has come one of the most renowned AI programmes: ChatGPT, a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT). Initially, ChatGPT 3.5 came out, and it showed the whole world its impressive ability to utilise large language models to answer questions and do miscellaneous tasks like a human at rapid speeds.

A little under 6 months later, ChatGPT 4 came out for €20/month and with it, we received new functionalities like DALL-E to generate images, the ability for the GPT to browse the internet, and the potential to make your own GPT with this new Chatbot upgrade. However, there are also a handful of improvements in the structure of AI that have had a significant impact on the utilisation of the tool. A truly impactful landmark in the AI history books.

Now we have made a comprehensive blog post on this exact topic so that you can learn if ChatGPT 4 is something you would like to invest in, and so that you know that you are using it to its fullest potential.

Background

GPT is short for a generative pre-trained transformer. They’ve been around for almost 6 years now, with the initial GPT being a much less advanced chatbot requiring a 2 stage approach. Initially, the GPT would be fed large amounts of data from the internet to learn about human grammar usage and spelling of words which was done unsupervised.

After that, in stage 2, there would be a fine-tuning stage which was supervised. In today’s GPT industry, it’s more common to use an SSL approach (semi-supervised learning). Here a small portion of the data will be supervised and trained and then that data will be extrapolated for the rest of the unsupervised data. This is how ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4 are trained.

OpenAI has been developing even more AI tools, like their most recent tool, “Sora” which is capable of generating video material based on text prompts, while still working hard on making their Chatbots even better with their current focus being on making ChatGPT 4 faster, allowing for longer context windows, fine-tuning their API, and more.

Key differences between ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4

In terms of performance, there are a handful of differences between the 2 GPTs. 

First of all, their understanding and context retention. ChatGPT 3.5 excels in understanding short and simple conversational contexts but struggles with more long and complex contexts, this is where ChatGPT4 has an easier time understanding these contexts due to its improved context retention and understanding architecture. 

Then there is the language and knowledge capability of both. ChatGPT 3.5 has a broad set of knowledge based on its last training data, which was around 2021. It even has multilingual abilities but struggles more with languages other than English.

Another difference is the GPT’s ability for creativity and problem-solving.
ChatGPT 3.5 has the ability to output some impressive and creative solutions to simple tasks but may have have less varied solutions compared to its superior counterpart, ChatGPT 4, as has been the trend thus far.

Another topic that cannot be overlooked is performance and efficiency. ChatGPT 3.5 is an impressive tool delivering high performance at the cost of its efficiency and speed based on the complexity of the task and server load, and issue ChatGPT 4 does not struggle with due to its optimisation that has the potential to reduce response times and allow it to do multiple tasks at once.

We would also like to touch upon the accuracy and reliability of both GPTs. ChatGPT is quite accurate on the data that it has been taught back in 2021 but is not capable of producing answers based on data that exceeds its knowledge. Here ChatGPT 4 is capable of searching the internet and staying up to date with trends and news happening by the minute. ChatGPT 3.5 can make mistakes from time to time, albeit rarely. ChatGPT 4 also has this issue but it’s even less common and the tool knows when to show uncertainty.

Lastly, we are going to compare their ethical and biased considerations. ChatGPT 3.5 has safeguards against generating harmful content, but it still has its flaws in biases that the training data may have presented. ChatGPT 4 has updated and further optimised safeguards but still suffers from the same flaws as 3.5, just a little less common.

Functional additions of ChatGPT 4

DALL-E is a tool that OpenAI created that can make a picture based on text prompts, the creativity of the tool is impressive and it’s even possible to customise the art style of the picture generated. This can be abstract, realist, etc. DALL-E was created with GPT-3. It uses a large library of pictures along with the transformer to create its own picture. This tool is a free addition when subscribing to ChatGPT 4 and has a lot of functionality for both business and leisure.

Internet connectivity is no longer locked behind a safeguard with ChatGPT 4. Now it’s possible to ask up-to-date information and you’ll get an answer based on a quick search on the internet. This has led to more creative and accurate answers than those of ChatGPT 3.5.

Input and analysis have also become more advanced, with the option to analyse large PDF files, scan websites or presentations, and much more.

Creating your own GPT may very well be a viable option if you notice that you are using ChatGPT a lot in a certain industry or field of expertise. It may even be fun to see what it’s like. The allows you to have your GPT altered to your preferences, like always ending a message with a certain prompt. Typing in your preferred style or having it type with a goal in mind, like SEO. There are almost endless possibilities with this function, and you can even share your GPT and integrate others into your account to use them regularly.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

As we have mentioned, the main difference between the two is generally architectural improvements that are behind the scenes, for example, the GPT’s ability for understanding and context retention, language and knowledge, creativity and problem-solving, performance and efficiency, accuracy and reliability, and ethic and biased considerations. There are also functional additions like DALL-E, input and analysis improvement, making your own GPT, working with other GPTs, and the ability for the GPT to search the internet.

AI is an ever-moving industry with new inventions happening more frequently than ever, think of the new AI tool “Sora” that is now generating videos based on text prompts and all of the functionality found in ChatGPT 4. With these advancements, we’re all anticipating the next big leap because we know this. The AI from today is the worst it will ever be from now onward. Keeping pace with that curve is where our AI consultancy work comes in, turning each new model release into practical next steps rather than another tab to track. If you’re interested in reading about more side-by-side comparisons, have a look at one of our other posts, which goes in-depth on the topic of who’s the better search engine, Google vs Bing.