Heidelberg AICurriculum
Track 2 · Beginner

Chat with AI

open a chatbot & use it

This track teaches you how to start a conversation with an AI model and turn that dialogue into useful results. It is for anyone who has never used a chatbot before or wants a clear, step‑by‑step way to become comfortable with the most common front‑line assistants. After completing the chapters you will be able to open a chatbot, choose the one that fits your current need, and interact with it to ask questions, analyse documents you upload, and retrieve information that includes real citations. You will know how to use Gemini inside Docs, Sheets, or Gmail, run source‑backed searches with Perplexity, leverage ChatGPT’s broad feature set for data analysis, and employ Claude for writing, coding, and general chat tasks. Begin with Chapter 1 to understand the four main front‑line bots. Then follow the order of Chapters 2 through 5, each focusing on a specific platform and its unique integration points. If you are short on time, you can skip the detailed Gemini chapter after getting the overview in Chapter 1, but be sure to still review the sections on Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude so you experience the full range of capabilities.

5 chapters 433 recipes Beginner 0/5 done
Comparison matrix from Frontier chatbots

The frontier "consumer" cloud chatbots — hosted end-user apps you just open and prompt, no setup. ChatGPT (all-rounder), Claude (careful writing & analysis), Gemini (Google-grounded, multimodal), Perplexity (research with live sources). → Unlike the builder tools, these are for direct everyday use. Pick by what you want: cited web research → Perplexity; careful writing & reasoning → Claude; it already works inside your Google Drive & Gmail → Gemini; a broad all-rounder that runs Python on your data → ChatGPT.

chatgpt
claude
gemini
perplexity
Usable free tier
yes
yes
yes
yes
Web search + live citations
partial
partial
yes
yes
Reads your files
yes
yes
yes
partial
Handles very long documents
partial
yes
yes
partial
Generates images
yes
no
yes
no
Strong careful reasoning
yes
yes
partial
partial
Best for
all-rounder
writing & analysis
Google + multimodal
research & sources
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