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Claude itself (outside of code workflows) actually works very well for general purpose chat. I have a few non-technical friends that have moved over from chatgpt after some side-by-side testing and I've yet to see one go back - which is good since claude circa 8 months ago was borderline unusable for anything but coding on the api.
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Why would I even use Claude for asking something on their web, considering that chips away my claude code usage limit?

Their limit system is so bad.

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I kinda agree. Their model just doesn't feel "daily" enough. I would use it for any "agentic" tasks and for using tools, but definitely not for day to day questions.
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Why? I use it for all and love it.

That doesn't mean you have to, but I'm curious why you think it's behind in the personal assistant game.

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I have three specific use cases where I try both but ChatGPT wins:

- Recipes and cooking: ChatGPT just has way more detailed and practical advice. It also thinks outside of the box much more, whereas Claude gets stuck in a rut and sticks very closely to your prompt. And ChatGPT's easier to understand/skim writing style really comes in useful.

- Travel and itinerary: Again, ChatGPT can anticipate details much more, and give more unique suggestions. I am much more likely to find hidden gems or get good time-savers than Claude, which often feels like it is just rereading Yelp for you.

- Historical research: ChatGPT wins on this by a mile. You can tell ChatGPT has been trained on actual historical texts and physical books. You can track long historical trends, pull examples and quotes, and even give you specific book or page(!) references of where to check the sources. Meanwhile, all Claude will give you is a web search on the topic.

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How does #3 square with Anthropic's literal warehouse full of books we've seen from the copyright case? Did OpenAI scan more books? Or did they take a shadier route of training on digital books despite copyright issues, but end up with a deeper library?
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I have no idea, but I suspect there's a difference between using books to train an LLM and be able to reproduce text/writing styles, and being able to actually recall knowledge in said books.
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I think they bought the books after they were caught that they pirated the books and lost that case (because they pirated, not because of copyright).
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My 2 cents:

All the labs seem to do very different post training. OpenAI focuses on search. If it's set to thinking, it will search 30 websites before giving you an answer. Claude regularly doesn't search at all even for questions it obviously should. It's postraining seems more focused on "reasoning" or planning - things that would be useful in programming where the bottleneck is: just writing code without thinking how you'll integrate it later and search is mostly useless. But for non coding - day to day "what's the news with x" "How to improve my bread" "cheap tasty pizza" or even medical questions, you really just want a distillation of the internet plus some thought

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It's hard to say. Maybe it has to do with the way Claude responds or the lack of "thinking" compared to other models. I personally love Claude and it's my only subscription right now, but it just feels weird compared to the others as a personal assistant.
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Oh, I always use opus 4.5 thinking mode. Maybe that's the diff.
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But that’s what makes it so powerful (yeah, mixing model and frontend discussion here yet again). I have yet to see a non-DIY product that can so effortlessly call tens of tools by different providers to satisfy your request.
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Claude is far superior for daily chat. I have to work hard to get it to not learn how to work around various bad behaviors I have but don’t want to change.
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Claude sucks at non English languages. Gemini and ChatGPT are much better. Grok is the worst. I am a native Czech speaker and Claude makes up words and Grok sometimes respond in Russian. So while I love it for coding, it’s unusable for general purpose for me.
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> Grok sometimes respond in Russian

Geopolitically speaking this is hilarious.

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The voice mode sounded like a Ukrainian trying to speak Czech. I don’t think it means anything.
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Claude is quite good at European Portuguese in my limited tests. Gemini 3 is also very good. ChatGPT is just OK and keeps code-switching all the time, it's very bizarre.

I used to think of Gemini as the lead in terms of Portuguese, but recently subjectively started enjoying Claude more (even before Opus 4.5).

In spite of this, ChatGPT is what I use for everyday conversational chat because it has loads of memories there, because of the top of the line voice AI, and, mostly, because I just brainstorm or do 1-off searches with it. I think effectively ChatGPT is my new Google and first scratchpad for ideas.

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Claude code (opus) is very good in Polish.

I sometimes vibe code in polish and it's as good as with English for me. It speaks a natural, native level Polish.

I used opus to translate thousands of strings in my app into polish, Korean, and two Chinese dialects. Polish one is great, and the other are also good according to my customers.

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Your game is amazing!

I wish there was a "Reset" button to go back to the original position.

Where are you in Poland?

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It feels very similar to how Lyft positioned themselves against Uber. (And we know how that played out)
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