ChatSonic vs ChatGPT – What’s The Difference?

ChatGPT is the king of AI chatbots, but various other alternatives have emerged as well. One of them is ChatSonic, which claims to be a better, more well-rounded alternative to ChatGPT.

ChatSonic is based on ChatGPT but incorporates additional features, such as a built-in AI art generator.

Today, I’ll be testing both ChatSonic and ChatGPT and comparing the results I get with each one. I will also explore how ChatSonic differs from ChatGPT and whether it is truly an improvement or just a marketing gimmick.

The short version: ChatSonic is based on ChatGPT and includes additional features such as voice commands and AI photo generation. However, results tend to be briefer and less in-depth, and it also isn’t free like ChatGPT.

For more details and advice on whether you should choose ChatSonic or ChatGPT, read on!

ChatGPT vs ChatSonic: An Intro

ChatGPT

ChatGPT has been making headlines ever since it was released in November 2022. While AI language tools have existed before that, ChatGPT is quite unique.

ChatGPT is a chatbot that can hold human-style conversations, respond to human prompts, and remember the context of a conversation and previous prompts. You can ask it to revise its answers or adjust them for a different context, or you can challenge its answers.

The ability to recall previous prompts and responses in a conversation is what truly makes ChatGPT different.

It relies on a vast wealth of information to generate its responses and is trained to recognize patterns from a wide range of texts from the internet.

Not only can ChatGPT write essays and hold conversations, but it can also generate poems, songs, and even build code.

It’s not always accurate – that’s a drawback of all AI chatbots. It has received criticism for sometimes presenting inaccurate data as accurate – according to MakeUseOf, it sometimes fails at basic math and logic and can be quite stubborn in arguing incorrect facts.

Even OpenAI admits this, stating that “sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers” and that “fixing this issue is challenging,” due to a variety of reasons associated with the way AI chatbots work.

According to Ian Bogost of The Atlantic, ChatGPT is dumber than you think and should merely be treated as a toy.

Overall, though, it’s a pretty powerful tool that has already revolutionized the AI chatbot industry.

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ChatSonic

ChatSonic is based on ChatGPT, and it now incorporates the premium version of ChatGPT, ChatGPT 4. It’s designed to be an alternative to ChatGPT with better functions and features.

For example, ChatGPT doesn’t have an AI art generator built into the tool. It also can’t search the internet for updated, current information; it only relies on its database of articles pulled from the internet, which only goes up to 2021.

ChatSonic, on the other hand, allows you to pull current results from Google, generate art, and more. So, is it really better than ChatGPT? Let’s find out.

ChatSonic vs ChatGPT: AI Engine

ChatGPT

ChatGPT currently uses OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 engine – at least for the free version. While GPT 3.5 is an improvement on previous versions, such as GPT 2, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Fortunately, ChatGPT does have GPT 4 available as well, but it’s only available to premium members at the moment. ChatGPT Plus, which gives you access to GPT 4, costs $20/month.

What’s the difference? According to OpenAI, GPT 4 is 40 percent more likely to produce factual responses, while GPT 3.5 is more likely to contain errors.

Furthermore, GPT 4 is 82 percent more likely to refuse to respond to requests for disallowed content.

It’s likely GPT 4 will be released to the public as a free service in the future. It’s faster, more efficient, more factual, and just sounds more human.

ChatSonic

ChatSonic is now powered by ChatGPT 4, even on the trial version. However, your word limit for the trial will be halved if you choose to use GPT 4.

If you buy the premium version of ChatSonic, you will be able to switch between ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4 at any time.

Just because ChatSonic is powered by ChatGPT, that doesn’t mean that the responses are exactly the same. In fact, they’re quite different – we’ll look at some examples later.

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ChatGTP vs ChatSonic: Templates

ChatGPT

ChatGPT does not have different templates for different outputs. However, it doesn’t really need them – that’s the beauty of ChatGPT; it’s just so versatile and can understand and respond to any prompt.

If you want ChatGPT to write a tweet, tell it to write a tweet. If you want it to write an essay, create rap music, build a Java program, or mimic the speech style of Donald Trump or any celebrity, it can do so as well.

The more detailed you are in your prompt, the better the output will be. There are even “prompt engineers” whose jobs are to write prompts for chatbots to generate the most accurate results.

ChatSonic

ChatSonic, on the other hand, has many templates and features for different purposes. Some of the templates include:

• Personal bios
• Facebook ads
• Calls to action
• Landing pages
• SEO meta tags
• Citations generator

There are a few tools in ChatSonic that stand out. For example, the AI Article Writer lets you generate articles of up to 2,500 words based on your existing articles or even your competitors’ articles – you can feed it up to 20 articles at a time.

Another interesting thing about ChatSonic is that it allows you to choose a personality to respond to your prompt. There are a few personalities available, including:

• Personal trainer
• Relationship coach
• Philosopher
• Accountant
• Career counselor

So, if you’re asking an AI to write up a training plan, you might choose the personal trainer personality.

Personally, though, I’m not sure if it really makes a difference; I’m inclined to believe it’s more of a marketing gimmick. I gave the same prompt to both the relationship coach and the personal trainer and got the same exact response.

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ChatSonic vs ChatGPT: Examples

ChatGPT

Prompt: Write a study plan for studying for the SAT. I have the exam in one month and I do not feel prepared.

Prompt: Generate a four-week training plan. My goal is to build muscle and lose fat. I want to gain definition and get a six-pack. I have time to go to the gym three times a week.

Prompt: Why does my dog keep tearing apart my pillows? What can I do to stop him from doing that?

Prompt: As Donald Trump, write a speech as to why you are the best choice for president in the upcoming election and why people should vote for you again.

Note that for this one, I had to regenerate the text by inputting a second prompt: Rewrite that but mimic his speaking habits and style. The first prompt did not mimic Trump’s speaking style at all.

Prompt: Talk about the iPhone 14 and why it’s better than previous versions

Note something fascinating at the end of this prompt, though.

ChatGPT stated, “It’s worth noting that the above points are speculative and based on the assumption of iterative improvements typically seen in new iPhone releases. As of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, the iPhone 14 has not been released, so it’s always best to refer to official Apple sources or announcements for the most accurate and up-to-date information on the iPhone 14 or any future models.”

In other words, ChatGPT entirely made up that response! It was not based on actual data but on pure speculation.

That’s definitely a drawback of ChatGPT – not being able to perform up-to-date Google searches and incorporate those results into its responses. You can’t ask it about news, current events, new device models, or anything that’s happened after 2021.

It also means that if you ask it about a specific topic, the result might be outdated. Nevertheless, instead of simply telling you that from the get-go, it might make things up and only include a disclaimer at the end.

This glaring limitation is evident in the following prompt:

Prompt: Explain the different reasons to vote for each candidate in the 2024 election, which is upcoming soon.

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Prompt: Create a sad poem about missing your childhood friend.

Prompt: Write a rap song about World War 3.

ChatSonic

Now, let’s give those same prompts to ChatSonic and see how it responds.

Prompt: Write a study plan for studying for the SAT. I have the exam in one month and I do not feel prepared.

Prompt: Generate a four-week training plan. My Goal is to build muscle and lose fat. I want to gain definition and get a six-pack. I have time to go to the gym three times a week.

Prompt: Why does my dog keep tearing apart my pillows? What can I do to stop him from doing that?

Prompt: As Donald Trump, write a speech as to why you are the best choice for president in the upcoming election and why people should vote for you again. Mimic his speaking habits and style.

Prompt: Talk about the iPhone 14 and why it’s better than previous versions (for this to work with updated information, I had to toggle “Include latest Google data” on).

Prompt: Explain the different reasons to vote for each candidate in the 2024 election, which is upcoming soon.

Prompt: Create a sad poem about missing your childhood friend.

Prompt: Write a rap song about World War 3.

Response: “I’m sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot create content related to violence, war, or any other offensive or controversial topics. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

My Takeaways

So, what can we infer from all this? Here are my key takeaways from this little experiment:

• ChatGPT is generally more detailed, lengthy, and specific than ChatSonic, whether you ask it for advice (in the case of the dog tearing pillows apart) or to generate a study or training plan.
• On the other hand, ChatSonic has the ability to generate up-to-date information, as you can incorporate results from Google.
• ChatSonic is more likely to refuse to generate results about disallowed content than ChatGPT. As we can see, ChatGPT did generate a rap song about World War 3, while ChatSonic was smart enough to recognize that it was about a topic it was prohibited from responding to.
• In my experience, ChatGPT is just a lot faster than ChatSonic. ChatSonic took a bit longer to generate responses. During high usage, though, this can change.

According to Big Data Analytics News, ChatGPT also has more advanced natural language understanding capabilities and allows for more flexible and complicated dialogue.

ChatGPT vs ChatSonic: Art

ChatGPT

ChatGPT can’t generate art itself, as it’s purely a language model. What it can do, though, is generate art prompts, which you can then input into AI art tools to generate pictures.

DALLE 2.0 is an AI art generator created by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and available on the same website.

Unfortunately, though, DALLE 2.0 is not free, so you will need to buy credits to use it.

I recommend using DALLE Mini by Craiyon instead, as it is free and open source. You can input your own prompts or tell ChatGPT to input an art prompt and then plug that into DALLE Mini.

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If you don’t like those results, feel free to use another AI art generator. A quick Google search will help you uncover many others.

ChatSonic

ChatSonic, on the other hand, does have an AI art generator built in. It’s called Photosonic, and it’s free to use and easily accessible from the side menu.

Here is one of the two images it gave me when I gave it the prompt “Joe Biden singing with the Beatles on the New York subway.”

Not bad, right?

While it’s available for free, you will use 50 premium words for every image.

It’s definitely not the best AI image generator tool out there, but it’s still pretty good. You can even customize the size of the image it will generate.

In case you were wondering, the tool does generate colored images as well. It’s only black and white in the image above due to the context – colored photography only started becoming widespread in the 1970s, according to the New York Times, while the Beatles were popular in the 1960s and broke up in 1970.

ChatGPT vs ChatSonic: Google Data

ChatGPT

ChatGPT does not allow you to include Google searches while generating responses. This is changing – as of March 2023, ChatGPT is slowly rolling out plugins and extensions, including one that connects the AI language model to the internet, according to TechCrunch.

However, as of this writing, it still is not yet available to most users. It is still in alpha development, which is the stage before beta, so it will take a while before it will be rolled out fully.

Another interesting thing to note is that it uses Bing, not Google. ChatSonic, on the other hand, uses Google.

As an aside, Bing itself now incorporates AI into its search results, but it’s primarily a search engine, not an AI language bot.

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ChatSonic

ChatSonic, on the other hand, allows you to include Google search results. If you opt not to, it won’t give you any updated information past 2021, just like ChatGPT – for example, it will tell you that it can’t tell you anything about an upcoming election before the candidates have been announced.

Now, there are some inherent risks with allowing an AI bot to access the internet – mainly that it can cite unreliable sources.

In my opinion, ChatSonic did a pretty good job of mitigating that risk. Firstly, Google access is optional, so you can always turn it off if you want.

Second of all, whenever it does use results from Google, it will include references at the end of the prompt with links to the webpages it based its response on. That allows you to verify the results yourself and ensure it is not relying on fake conspiracy sites.

ChatSonic vs ChatGPT: Voice Commands

ChatGPT

ChatGPT does not support voice commands, so you will have to type in your prompts.

A way to get around that is to use the VoiceWave Chrome extension, which allows you to talk to ChatGPT and hear its responses read in a human-sounding, natural voice.

ChatSonic

ChatSonic, on the other hand, does support voice commands. Just click on the microphone on the right side of the prompt input bar, allow access to your microphone, and start recording to input a voice prompt.

If you’ve ever used Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant, it’s quite similar.

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ChatGPT vs ChatSonic: Downloading and Sharing

ChatGPT

Unfortunately, ChatGPT does not have a built-in method for sharing conversations, responses, and dialogues. There is only a copy-to-clipboard option.

There is a way you can share chats, though, but you’ll have to install a third-party extension. It’s called ShareGPT, and it adds a little export button at the bottom of a response.

Get it from the Chrome Webstore here.

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ChatSonic

ChatSonic, on the other hand, does allow you to easily share and export responses. Hover your mouse over the top-right area of the response section, and you will see several options.

You can copy the entire response to your clipboard, download it as a DOCX file, share to social media, or even edit it. You’ll also find a text-to-speech option allowing you to hear the response read out loud.

ChatSonic vs ChatGPT: Chrome Extension and Mobile Apps

ChatGPT

Unfortunately, OpenAI does not have a mobile app for ChatGPT – at least an official one. Third-party developers have created apps that use OpenAI’s API to bring you ChatGPT results on mobile.

A good example is Nova AI, which is based on ChatGPT but, notably, not associated with OpenAI in any way.

That being said, the mobile version of the ChatGPT site is pretty responsive and easy to use.

There is also no official ChatGPT Chrome extension. However, there are many Chrome extensions that use ChatGPT and improve on it.

Here are a few examples:

• WebChatGPT: WebChatGPT brings you results from ChatGPT alongside results from web searches.
• ChatGPT for Google: This extension shows ChatGPT results alongside Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other search engine results.
• TweetGPT: TweetGPT helps you write tweets using ChatGPT.

ChatSonic

ChatSonic does have a mobile app. At the moment, it’s only available for Android, but it’s possible it will come out for iOS in the future as well.

The ChatSonic app for Android has all the main features of ChatSonic. You can input text prompts or use voice commands to generate responses, and you can also include results from Google.

Photosonic is included in the app as well, allowing you to generate AI images on your phone. You can also download your conversations in the app or export them to social media.

There is also a ChatSonic Chrome extension. It helps you do useful things like generate AI emails in Gmail and even summarize long emails or email threads, so you don’t have to read through the whole thing.

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ChatGPT vs ChatSonic: Pricing

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is free to use, but there are some limitations. Because it’s so popular, it sometimes gets a bit bogged down, and responses can be slow.

There is a premium version called ChatGPT Plus, which gives you access to priority responses – even during times of high usage, you will get quick responses. Furthermore, Plus users get access to ChatGPT 4, while free users are still limited to ChatGPT 3.5.

The good news is that on the free version, there is no word limit at all for ChatGPT 3.5. However, ChatGPT 4 is limited to 25 messages every 3 hours per user.

For updated pricing information, see the ChatGPT Plus page.

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ChatSonic

Unfortunately, ChatSonic is not free – it only has a limited free trial version that gives you 10,000 words. If you use ChatGPT 4, words are charged double, so you only get 5,000 words.

PhotoSsnic is available on the free version, but each image is charged as 50 words.

As you can see, you can quickly use up those free words,

There also doesn’t seem to be an unlimited world plan available. Instead, you pay a monthly fee based on how many words and users you need – starting at $12.67/month for 100,000 words (for one user) and going all the way up to $666/month for six million words (for 15 users).

A custom enterprise plan for large businesses and teams is also available. See updated pricing here.

ChatGPT Pros and Cons

Pros

• Free with no word limit
• Better and more detailed results
• Accurate and more responsive

Cons

• ChatGPT 4 only available to premium users
• Can be slow during high usage
• No built-in AI photo generator
• Doesn’t support voice commands
• It has a word limit of around 500 words or 4,000 characters for each response, sometimes stopping in the middle of a response, but you can get around that by inputting a prompt like “continue” or “keep going”

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ChatSonic Pros and Cons

Pros

• Many templates available
• Free trial supports ChatGPT 4
• Sharing options available
• AI photo generation available
• Includes Google results
• Allows bulk generation

Cons

• No forever-free version
• Responses can sometimes be short and lacking
• According to user reports, it is not as good at building code

Similarities and Differences

	ChatGPT	ChatSonic
Forever Free	✓	✗
Templates for different purposes	✗	✓
AI photo generator included	✗	✓
Voice commands	✗	✓
Google search support	✗ (not yet)	✓
Remembers your prior inputs	✓	✓

Wrapping It Up: Which Is Better, ChatGPT or ChatSonic?

At the end of the day, I still prefer ChatGPT. ChatSonic has some useful features, such as the ability to include Google results and easy sharing options, but you can overcome those limitations by installing third-party extensions with ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is just hard to beat. There’s a reason it’s at the forefront of the AI language model industry and has quickly established itself as the AI chatbot leader not long after it came out.

Overall, ChatGPT is more established, and the results also tend to be more detailed and specific to the prompt. Most importantly, though, it has a forever free plan with no monthly word limits.