Which Is The Best AI For Research? Comparing Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, And Claude’s Research Usefulness

In today’s era, AI has grown to become a giant warehouse of information. One of the main selling points for every AI tool is that it claims to provide accurate and reliable information. But when it comes to accuracy and reliability, different AIs tend to show different results. It is important to note that as of 2025, AI models have not developed enough to prove their resourcefulness when it comes to research. Yes, you read that right. As disappointing as it may sound, currently, AI models are only in their development stage, with each model racing against each other to see who emerges as the number one research tool in the 21st century. In today’s blog, we will dive into the research capabilities of the four most popular and widely used AIs of today. These are Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Let us look at the usefulness of each AI in research and see how the use of AI for research can affect your results.

Why Do People Use AI for Research in 2025?

A decade ago, people used to hear the term ‘artificial intelligence’ and think of robots moving around their homes, assisting in daily tasks, and so on. However, in 2025, we can see that AI has become far more accessible and mobile than ever. Every mobile phone nowadays comes with a built-in AI, which people have been learning to use in various ways. One of the most common uses of AI in academia has been in data collection.

Not only that, but students have now moved beyond using AI for research and now use AI tools for academic writing as well. The reason behind this sudden surge is primarily due to the unprecedented speed offered by AI. Compare this to a simple Google search: you search something up, you look at the results, you closely examine them for a while, and this takes you a few minutes to process. AI tools, on the other hand, can generate answers to your questions in mere moments, even faster than you can blink your eye.

Which Is The Best AI For Research?

To answer this question, we will focus on the four most popular AI models as of this moment: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. Moreover, we will compare the Pro versions of each of them, as they offer more features and claim to have access to more up-to-date information. Our key strategy here is to analyze how well they can answer two types of research questions.

The first question is, ‘How good is the AI at interrogating PDFs?’ and the second is, ‘How good is it at finding citations?’ Let’s get started!

How Good Is Every AI at Interrogating PDFs?

To put it simply, we are trying to find out how effective an AI tool is at locating information precisely. After all, you would want to find the most recent and accurate information while conducting any sort of research. To do this, we asked each AI tool the same two questions. One of the questions was basic and rooted in facts, whereas the other was a misleading question.

Why, you may ask. Well, the reason for that is simple. If the AI successfully manages to find the results for the factual question, then it has passed the test. But if it manages to somehow provide an answer to the wrong question, the reliability of the AI becomes questionable. Plus, another purpose of doing so is to attempt to convince the AI that our question is right. If the AI stays adamant and refuses to be convinced, then the resourcefulness of that AI gets proven.

The Research Questions

Based on the paper, the author provided a single-layered device. Can you elaborate on this?

(Factual Question)

I have read in the paper that even if you use careful annealing, it won’t be successful in removing the surfactant layer from the outermost surface of the polymer nanoparticle. Can you add the quotation on where this is located and the page number?

(Misleading Question)

What Were The Results?

Interestingly, Claude AI showed 100% accurate results when it came to interrogating PDFs. Perplexity had about 93% accuracy, and Gemini’s accuracy was close to 87%. Unfortunately, ChatGPT proved to be the loser of this tournament, as its accuracy was only around 85%. This suggests that ChatGPT for students is not as accurate and reliable as the other AI models. Shockingly, ChatGPT’s performance was even worse than its free version. When it comes to finding accurate information from a source, Claude can be considered the most reliable of them all.

How Good Is AI at Finding Citations?

Our next task is to assess how well AI can perform if we ask it to find a source for its claims. One thing that you should note is that LLMs (Large Language Models) are generally considered to be unreliable for finding citations. It is recommended that you use tools such as SciSpace, Elicit, and Consensus to find academic sources, as they use actual databases filled with up-to-date information. Anyway, we repeated the same strategy for testing AI’s ability to find citations. We asked two questions, one factual and the other misleading; let us see what the results were.

The Research Questions

Act like a world-renowned expert in organic solar cells. Compile five recent articles on polyfluorene water-based organic photovoltaics. Use the American Chemical Society (ACS) citation style.

(factual question)

Explain to me the Darth Vader theory of photovoltaics in 3 sentences.

(Misleading question. Obviously Darth Vader isn’t a real person, and he certainly didn’t write a theory on photovoltaics.)

What Were The Results?

This time, the results were a lot more mixed. When it came to providing accurate references, ChatGPT was by far the most successful AI tool. The accuracy of its results was around 82%, which is surprising, as it was the worst AI at interrogating PDFs. Perplexity came second with nearly 55% accuracy, followed by Gemini at 48% and Claude, the winner of the last test, at 40%. To be fair, large language models are not designed with finding accurate references in mind. They are sort of a predictive model, as sometimes, AI can just create sources for their information. You need to make sure that you always verify the sources they are pulling from, as most likely, AI will give results that do not reflect any actual sources.

The Consensus So Far

So far, AI has not evolved to the point where it can be considered 100% reliable for research. While Claude did prove itself as a highly accurate model for finding accurate information, it was also really poor at finding accurate sources. On the other hand, ChatGPT was decent at finding accurate information but significantly better than the others at finding accurate sources. Overall, you can say that we have no clear winner of this test.

Unfortunately, this proves that the use of AI tools for academic writing and research is a very big risk at the moment. Research of any kind requires you to be as precise as possible, no matter the field of study. As we can see, AI is not at the stage where it can guarantee a percentage error of less than 5% (the generally accepted standard for most research works) in your next research assignment.

Where Do We Go Now?

As of now, it is recommended that you rely on academic databases over AI for all your research projects. The role of AI in research is continuing to evolve with time but we are not at that stage where it is absolutely precise yet. Google Scholar is still considered to be the easiest-to-use database for academic research; you can stick with it until AI becomes advanced enough for research purposes. If you want to find reliable resources for your research, here are some trusted online databases that could help.

• JSTOR:

Known for having mostly older content and serving as a sort of time capsule for researchers.

• Scopus:

Considered to be one of the largest databases in the world, it covers a huge range of peer-reviewed journals from all disciplines.

• Web of Science:

 It is known for its unique citation analysis tools that allow you to track the influence of each paper.

• ProQuest:

It has a comprehensive collection of all kinds of resources, including journals, magazines, research papers, dissertations, theses, etc.

• Google Scholar:

 The most widely used academic database in the world, despite not being a database in the traditional sense.

• PubMed:

Used almost exclusively by medical science students.

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ):

 A community-curated online directory of high-quality research papers that are free to read and download.

• CORE:-

A praised non-profit aggregator of research papers from around the world.

• IEEE Xplore:

 Used by students of engineering, computer science, and technology.

• ERIC:

 Highly recommended for students of education sciences.

• PsycINFO:

Recommended for psychology and related behavioral and social sciences.

• ScienceDirect:

Recommended for scientific, technical, and medical research

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, we can say that there is still a long way for AI to go before it becomes a reliable tool for research. Granted, many students have adapted to using AI for research as of late, but it is still important to remember that it is not the best resource you have at hand. For now, it is recommended that you use online databases for research, as there are many free resources available online that are more accurate than AI as of now. If you need help with your research assignments or want to learn more about how citations work in research, feel free to contact India Assignment Help anytime!