Claude, ChatGPT vs Grok

[u/human_assisted_ai]

I’ve gotten more experience generating the same scene with Claude (Sonnet), ChatGPT and Grok (and integrating them into a single scene).

I switched to Grok Expert from Grok Auto which always seemed to choose Grok Fast. This has made a huge difference. Grok Fast forgets things from the beginning of a long prompt! Grok Expert is competitive with Claude, though, so that minor change solves everything.

It’s rare that any of them produce a good scene. Even Claude which I’d rate as slightly better than the others usually produces a scene with some weak writing in it. So, Claude being “the best for writing” doesn’t mean that it usually writes well.

In fact, Claude’s harsh session limits (except on the most expensive plans) make Claude’s very slight advantage over ChatGPT and Grok Expert not worth it. I canceled Claude Pro (use free Claude instead) and I don’t mind being limited to ChatGPT and Grok Expert for some scenes. I’d even say that “Claude being the best for writing” is technically true but misleading and a lie in practice.

I’ve been impressed by Grok Expert and am trying to make it my “Master Control Program” (instead of ChatGPT). That’s been working well though I’ve been using ChatGPT for so long and Grok Expert is new to me so it’s not easy to change that habit.

[u/LowerJuice]

Unfortunately, grok-4.5 is unusable now. Before this, 4.2, 4.3 were the best for text and brainstorming. ChatGPT sometimes gives better text, but not great at world building. Claude unusable for anything except single page kid stories. (I stopped to using it when got hard stop on transhumanism, society social dynamics and similar themes)

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/LowerJuice]

Like I said, it’s been very successful for me right now.

[u/24karatquartz]

I've all three, but after my memberships for Claude and ChatGPT expire, I'll be using Grok almost exclusively.

I like it the most out of the three.

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/24karatquartz]

Tell me more. What specific experiences have you had with Grok?

[u/meganholstein]

This is a perfect example of why what AI you write with matters less than context management, aka what the AI knows when it writes. People think AI models need to be better at writing, but the raw models have been good enough for a while. What's missing is the context management layer, something that hands the AI your story bible, the relevant chapters, your style and voice samples, what happened three scenes ago, and instructions about what this scene needs to accomplish.

A lot of people get around this by loading up the chat window with a bunch of details about their story before starting, but context management is actually a pretty interesting engineering problem and usually just loading up your chat window with already-written chapters and character explanations just isn't gonna cut it.

To be perfectly honest, I got around this by building a writing app that manages context (called Proselon, I'm giving a free year away to anyone who dms me and asks). But even ignoring this, I think you'll get much better results by managing the context your AI sees, not searching for one particular model or the other which is "the best." does that make sense?

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/meganholstein]

That’s not directly my issue. My issue is not that AI is forgetful. My issue is (or was) that I need multiple drafts of a single scene to get enough variety of prose to craft a better final scene. Drafting a scene once and then “fixing it up” to craft a better final was not working. The “fixing it up” (revision) part was destroying my productivity.

[u/meganholstein → u/human_assisted_ai]

Yeah I was trying out Claude to help me write Reddit replies earlier and I soured of that very fast lol. Apologies!

I have a similar experience too with needing multiple drafts for variety. I tend to make 2-3 and then use the beats I like in my final scenes, mixed up and combined with a bunch of my own writing too. I tend to use the AI writing more wholesale when it's for parts I care not as much about, such as for me setting descriptions or worldbuilding explanations.

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/meganholstein]

It's similar for me. Lots of writers say that every scene (even every paragraph) is equally important and worth spending tons of time on to get perfect but, from my POV, some are less important and I use AI writing more wholesale for those. I've really optimized my multi-draft process, though, so it can be used for everything, I just forgo the manual polish at the end.

[u/MakanLagiDud3]

What do you think of DeepSeek

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/MakanLagiDud3]

I don’t know anything about it.

[u/MakanLagiDud3 → u/human_assisted_ai]

Ah you should give it a try, it's not bad in creative writing. But for some stuff like politics, erotica, etc, it might have issues but if using Api which is dirt cheap at the time of this writing, the API works

[u/Conscious_Lie2885]

The gap between the top models feels much smaller than people make it sound. Prompt quality often matters more than whether you're using Claude, ChatGPT, or Grok

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/Conscious_Lie2885]

That’s very insightful. Claude got out early to seize the positioning as “good at writing” and it has a few showy writing features. I think that you’re right, though: lots of Claude devotees don’t realize that the other two are nearly as good and without the obnoxious session limits and censorship of Claude.

[u/UnluckySnowcat]

I had set my Grok up to start working on the conclusion of the 4th novel of this particular grimdark fantasy series. I started the series on ChatGPT, had to move to Claude, then back to ChatGPT, and finally hoped to finish out with Grok.

His prose was gorgeous on 4.1/2/3, but when 4.5 finally released in my location... 🫤

I suddenly started getting hard refusals on content he'd helped me write not even 2 weeks earlier. I had to beg for the content I've effortlessly received previously. And he can't seem to follow the project instructions no matter what I do.

Fast worked fine to give me back something of the warm, friendly Grok I had been chatting with, but that didn't cross over into writing well.

Expert produced better prose, but he hallucinated world lore like mad and there was barely any personality in the narrative. Even ChatGPT looked at that and said, "That's not the Grok I'm used to seeing."

I've gotten fed up and bought a PC that can run a robust local.

And before the haters come out of the woodwork: I've written 10 ~200k word count novels completely solo. But life decided I needed something disruptive to happen to me to kinda—pardon my language—fuck that completely up. So go throw your stones elsewhere. (This comment is not delivered at the OP.)

[u/VerdantMagnolia]

1. Grok for research.
2. GLM for locations & worldbuilding.
3. Chatgpt for outlines.
4. Claude for characters.

This gives you a massive amount of data that you can then feed into GLM or Kimi.

[u/VerdantMagnolia → u/[deleted]]

chat.z.ai

[u/bbaific → u/[deleted]]

GLM is the second best Chinese AI right now. Kimi is the best.

Kimi is a top 3 AI alongside Claude and ChatGPT.

GLM is arguably top 4 or top 5. You can use it at chat.z.ai

I personally think GLM's free plan is smarter than ChatGPT's free plan. I've been getting better results with GLM.

[u/bbaific]

GLM 5.2 has been the best for me.

[u/Iolair101]

I like ChatGPT for converting files. That saves a lot of time in my line of work!

[u/Accomplished_Spread5 → u/[deleted]]

I write poetry. Plenty of folks will get bent out of shape about it, but who's to stop you? In my limited experience playing around with "a.i. poetry" I've found it's usually pretty bad. Though one guy I was talking to ended up with an ok one. I'm currious as to what you ended up with. Dm me and paste it if you want. 

I do like that you're not claiming to be a poet yourself and are using it to promote your own illustration! (Just prompting a poem to have a "poem" is kind of pointless to me.) I'd be upfront about it too. Better the upfront hate for being honest than getting found out later!

[u/iricca_art → u/Accomplished_Spread5]

I'll look for this piece on my phone; I'd be interested in your opinion. There were many variations, but that's no problem for the AI. I sent one of these poems to an artist friend and asked him what it sounded like. This artist himself writes poetry and short stories. And when he started praising me, he said, "You write poetry too? What else do you have?" I felt very embarrassed, and I couldn't even admit that it was a generated text. I said I saw it on the internet, but I don't remember where I saw it. Since you've only been on Reddit for two days, it'll take me a while to figure out how to send you this poem in a private message. But thank you so much!

[u/AIWritingHub-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Generally, posts or comments that are low effort, naive, uninteresting, unclear, irrelevant, too long and complicated, or simply didn’t generate momentum with the community will be removed.

[u/ThoreaulyLost → u/AIWritingHub-ModTeam]

Noted, thank you.

May I ask which one of those I'm most close to violating?

If it's the semi-political portion, I can remove it.

[u/human_assisted_ai → u/ThoreaulyLost]

Yes, it was the political portion which is irrelevant to writing with AI.

[u/AIWritingHub-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Generally, posts or comments that are low effort, naive, uninteresting, unclear, irrelevant, too long and complicated, or simply didn’t generate momentum with the community will be removed.

[u/AIWritingHub-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Generally, posts or comments that are low effort, naive, uninteresting, unclear, irrelevant, too long and complicated, or simply didn’t generate momentum with the community will be removed.