ChatGPT is a language model created to hold a conversation with the end user. A search engine indexes web pages on the internet to help the user find the information they asked for. ChatGPT does not have the ability to search the internet for information. It uses the information it learned from training data to generate a response, which leaves room for error.
Another major difference is that ChatGPT only has access to information up to 2021, whereas a regular search engine like Google has access to the latest information. So if you ask ChatGPT who won the World Cup in 2022, it wouldn't be able to give you a response, but Google would.
What are ChatGPT's limitations?
Despite looking very impressive, ChatGPT still has limitations. Such limitations include the inability to answer questions that are worded in a specific way, as it requires rewording to understand the input question. A bigger limitation is a lack of quality in the responses it delivers -- which can sometimes be plausible-sounding but make no practical sense or can be excessively verbose.
Instead of asking for clarification on ambiguous questions, the model just guesses what your question means, which can lead to unintended responses to questions. This limitation has already led developer question-and-answer site StackOverflow to at least temporarily ban ChatGPT-generated responses to questions.
"The primary problem is that while the answers that ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good and the answers are very easy to produce," say Stack Overflow moderators in a post. Critics argue that these tools are just very good at putting words into an order that makes sense from a statistical point of view, but they cannot understand the meaning or know whether the statements it makes are correct.
Another major limitation is that ChatGPT's data is limited up to 2021. The chatbot does not have an awareness of events or news that have occurred since then. Therefore, some prompts will render no results, such as "Who won the World Cup in 2022?"
Lastly, ChatGPT does not provide sources for its responses. There is a workaround, though. Here's how you can make it provide its sources and citations.
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