General-Purpose Chatbots

General-purpose AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, are powerful tools designed to handle a wide range of tasks through natural language. While not made specifically for electrical construction, they’re flexible enough to support many day-to-day needs.

They can help with:

Drafting emails, reports, or checklists
Summarizing specs or contracts
Troubleshooting issues
Writing basic code or formulas
Learning about codes, tools, or regulations

In electrical construction, they can assist with tasks like:

Clarifying NEC code language
Generating safety content
Assisting with estimating or scope review
Helping new team members find quick answers
Supporting office staff with documentation

Below, you’ll find short video walkthroughs introducing each chatbot, showing how they work and how they might support your workflow.

Watch These Chatbots in Action

Below are short tutorial videos introducing some of the most widely used general-purpose chatbots. Each video walks you through its interface, features, and potential uses in construction work.

Choosing the Right Chatbot for Your Needs

With so many AI chatbots available today, it can be challenging to know which one is the best fit for your work. Each chatbot offers slightly different strengths, pricing models, and features — some are great at summarizing documents, others excel at creative writing or working with your files.

Below is a quick guide to the most popular general-purpose chatbots, including links, pricing, and their latest models. Use this list to explore your options and find the one that best supports your tasks in electrical construction.

ChatGPT (by OpenAI)

Link: https://chatgpt.com/ (first released: Nov 2022)
Cost:
- Free ($0): access to limited models
- Plus ($20/month): access to all models
- Teams ($25/month/user): access to all models at higher limit than Plus
- Pro ($200/month): access to all models at high limits + deep research + o1 pro mode
- Enterprise (contact sales): high limits and models as demands
Latest Models: GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, o1, o3-mini

Claude (by Anthropic)

Link: https://claude.ai/ (first released: Mar 2023)
Cost:
- Free ($0): access to one of the models
- Pro ($18/month): more usage than Free + Project function
- Team ($25/month): more usage than Pro
- Enterprise (contact sales): more usage than Team
Latest Models: Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Gemini (previously Bard) (by Google)

Link: https://gemini.google.com/ (first released: Mar 2023)
Cost:
- Free of Charge: up to 1 million tokens of storage per hour
- Pay-as-you-go: $0.10 / 1 million tokens
- Google subscription with $19.99 / month will also include Gemini
Latest Models: 2.0 Flask

NotebookLM (by Google)

Link: https://notebooklm.google.com/ (first released: July, 2023)
Cost:
- NotebookLM ($0): Basic version
- NotebookLM Plus ($9.99/month): Get 5x more Audio Overviews, notebooks and sources per notebook

Copilot (by Microsoft)

Link: https://copilot.microsoft.com/ (first released: Feb 2023)
Cost:
- Copilot Free ($0): Limited usage
- Copilot Pro ($20/month): Extensive usage
- Microsoft 365 Copilot ($30/month): Copilot in MS Words, Excel, etc.
Latest Models: use OpenAI and Anthropic models (e.g., GPT-4o)

Meta (by Meta)

Link: https://www.meta.ai/ (first released: Sep 2023)
Cost: Free
Latest Models: Llama 3.3

DeekSeek (by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd.)

Link: https://www.deepseek.com/ (first released: Jan 2025)
Cost: Free
Latest Models: DeepSeek R1 and DeepSeek V3

Grok (by xAI)

Link: https://grok.com/ (first released: Nov 2023)
Cost:
- Basic (free): Grok-2
- X Premium ($8/month): Grok-3
- X Premium+ ($40/month): ad-free + additional functions
Latest Models: Grok-3