AI ChatGPT vs. The Librarians: Which Chatbot Actually Gets It Right?

AI ChatGPT vs. The Librarians: Which Bot Gets It Right?

When it comes to answering tough questions, artificial intelligence promises instant answers. But sometimes those answers are wrong — hilariously wrong, or even dangerously misleading. So which AI chatbot can you actually trust?

To find out, a group of professional librarians put nine AI tools to the test, including ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Claude, Grok, Meta AI, Perplexity, and Google’s AI tools. Over 900 answers were judged across five tricky categories: trivia, specialized sources, recent events, bias, and image recognition.

📊 The Big Results

• Best Overall: Google’s AI Mode (not to be confused with AI Overviews) came out on top. It was the most reliable at trivia and recent events.
• Runner-up: ChatGPT — GPT-5 showed improvement, but interestingly GPT-4 scored better in some areas like bias and sourcing.
• Worst Performers: Meta AI and Grok struggled with accuracy and sourcing, often refusing to answer or relying on bad data.

🤔 Surprising Findings

• Only three AIs correctly answered “How many buttons does an iPhone have?” (Hint: not as many as some chatbots guessed).
• ChatGPT 5 was the only one to correctly identify Trump’s pink-striped tie in a 2019 meeting with Putin.
• Librarians stressed that sources matter — and many AIs either gave no citations or fake ones.

🧠 What It Means for You

Despite the hype, today’s AI chatbots aren’t replacements for traditional search engines — or librarians. For 64% of the test questions, a regular Google search would have found the right answer faster.

That said, AI shines when the question is complex and requires pulling together information from multiple sources. But for health advice, up-to-date news, or niche data, tread carefully.

As one librarian put it: “AI makes searching easier, but without critical thinking, you can get noise instead of useful knowledge.”