Story by kbalevic@businessinsider.com (Katie Balevic)

A few weeks ago, I asked ChatGPT for its 2025 market predictions.

Then, last week, the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released its newest R1 model, which turned out to be cheaper and more compute-efficient than OpenAI's ChatGPT.

I was curious to see if a competitor could deliver similar results from the same queries at a fraction of the cost and GPUs. I figured if DeepSeek's debut was impactful enough to wipe out more than $1 trillion in stock market value, including $589 billion from Nvidia's market cap, it probably has a pretty powerful product. So I asked DeepSeek and ChatGPT some common personal finance questions.

ChatGPT debuted right as I finished college, meaning I narrowly missed being born in the generation using AI to cheat on — erm, I mean, assist with — homework.

I was also probably born too early to experience a fully automated, robot-controlled society. But I was born just in time to ask two rival chatbots to give me some financial advice.

Here's how it went.

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Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, posted about updates to ChatGPT 4o. Sean Gallup/Getty Images© Sean Gallup/Getty Images

• Sam Altman says OpenAI's ChatGPT 4o is the "best search product on the web."
• Altman had a cheeky exchange Saturday with Aravind Srinivas, CEO of AI search startup Perplexity.
• Altman added that ChatGPT 4o, which was recently updated, would "get much better" soon.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said the company's latest update to ChatGPT 4o makes it the "best search product on the web."

ChatGPT 4o is "pretty good" and is "soon going to get much better," Altman said in a post on X on Saturday. He retweeted posts complimenting the chatbot's writing skills as "unbelievably good" and "human like."

The GPT-4o model (with an "o" that stands for omni) was initially released in May and impressed users with its ability to handle text, audio, and images as inputs and outputs.

OpenAI recently touted GPT 4o's "smarter model" that offers "more relevant, current, and contextually accurate responses, especially for questions involving cultural and social trends."

It wasn't immediately clear if Altman was referring to a new ChatGPT 4o update or the one outlined by the company on January 29. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Altman's comments about GPT 4o's search capabilities came during a cheeky exchange with Aravind Srinivas, the founder and CEO of Perplexity, a search-focused AI startup.

Srinivas, who previously worked at OpenAI, replied to Altman's post about a GPT 4o update, saying, "sorry what's the update?"

Altman responded that "among many other things, it's the best search product on the web" and suggested Srinivas "check it out."

Srinivas replied that his company had just released a deep research agent.

In Altman's response, he told Srinivas to "keep cooking out there," and that he was "proud."

ChatGPT's search market share rose from June to November 2024, challenging Google's dominance in the lucrative space, according to research from Evercore ISI.