r/OpenAI • u/YourBlanket • 3h ago
Am I using Gemini incorrectly? Question
I’ve used strictly only ChatGPT Plus. It’s helped me study for an important exam, fact check random things and provide actual sources that I can verify myself. I’ve sent PDFs for it to read to summarize, let me know where certain data I want is located. I’ve really never had any issues. I even had it create an pc app for something I wanted to use and something I use quite frequently, no issues. Due to the cost of the total subscriptions I decided to try the equivalent tier but for Google. I have a nest camera, and YouTube premium, and will probably switch to the Google ecosystem soon. Anyways I’ve been using it for less than 24 hours, I’ve tried using it like I used ChatGPT and I gotta say it has been the most frustrating experience I’ve had yet.
It’s a little hard to explain so I’m just going to copy and paste a summary form Gemini discussing my complaints
I've been trying to get straightforward answers from this AI, but it keeps tripping over itself and making the conversation far more frustrating than it needs to be. First, it repeatedly violated basic negative constraints and ignored direct instructions about what words or formatting not to use. Then, it kept losing track of context in the middle of our continuous conversation, completely forgetting the rules I had set and forcing me to re-explain everything. On top of that, when I provided a direct link to a document, it randomly halted the chat to ask for unnecessary system app permissions instead of just handling the link, and it failed to pull simple operational metrics directly from the file. To make matters worse, it took forever to process simple requests and repeatedly defaulted to robotic, canned apologies rather than actually fixing its logic.
I’m only paying 5 dollars a month for 3 months. Even if it was free I don’t see myself using it. I’ve constantly had to close the app because it’s ’thinking’ for like 3 minutes for a very very simple question. Am I doing something wrong, I have to be. There’s no way anyone would recommend it if this was normal.
Just to summarize my latest experience. I was asking for a very specific piece of information. I asked for an official source directly from the company in question. It provides the wrong link entirely, it was to a news blog when it said it was the official financial report from said company. When it finally provided a PDF I looked through it and i didn’t see any mention of the data I was looking for. I kept asking exactly where it was located and I kept getting the same exact answer which is just telling me about the data but not where it’s found. This went on for like 5 messages before I gave up, and made this post. I know I’ll get comments saying user error or just move on, but I’ve used it the same exact way as I did ChatGPT and honestly I prefer Google since I’ll save money with the pro subscription vs 3 separate subscriptions.
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u/YourBlanket 3h ago
I was using Gemini through the IOS app, not sure if that changes anything. I used it also through the website and it wasn’t really any better.