Chat and research
General-purpose assistants for questions, documents and research — including the ones that answer with sources you can check.
- ChatGPTThe general-purpose assistant from OpenAI.
- ClaudeAnthropic's assistant, strong at long documents and writing.
- GeminiGoogle's assistant, connected to Gmail, Docs and Search.
- PerplexityAnswers questions with sources you can click and check.
- NotebookLMUpload your files and ask questions about them.
- Microsoft CopilotMicrosoft’s assistant, built into Windows and Office.
- GrokThe assistant from xAI with access to posts on X.
- DeepSeekAn open-weight model family with a free chat app.
- ConsensusAnswers questions with findings from scientific papers.
- ElicitFinds, summarises and pulls data out of research papers.
Chat and research: what to know
This is where most people start with AI. The differences that matter in daily use are the size of the context window, whether the model searches the web, and how well it handles your own files.
For anything you will publish or act on, prefer a tool that cites sources. For long documents and drafting, prefer one that accepts large uploads and keeps the thread.
How to choose
- Check whether your data is used for training and turn it off if the setting exists.
- When accuracy matters, research tools that link to papers beat general chat.
- Free tiers usually cap the stronger model — compare the paid model, not the free one.