ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Codex, Midjourney, GPT-something, Llama. If the names blur into one, you're not behind — the industry is genuinely terrible at naming things, and it renames them roughly every six months for good measure. Here's the map, in plain English, so you can stop nodding in meetings.
Four companies, four assistants
Almost everything you'll hear about boils down to a handful of companies, each with one main "assistant" product:
- ChatGPT is made by OpenAI. The famous one — for most people "ChatGPT" means AI the way "Hoover" means vacuum cleaner.
- Claude is made by Anthropic, a company founded by people who left OpenAI. Has a reputation for being good with long documents and careful writing.
- Gemini is made by Google. Increasingly woven into Gmail, Google Docs and search whether you asked for it or not.
- Copilot is made by Microsoft, and is mostly OpenAI's technology wearing a Microsoft lanyard. It's the one embedded in Word, Excel and Teams.
That's the core of it. Meta has one called Llama, and there are credible competitors from elsewhere — but if you can place those four, you can follow ninety per cent of the conversation.
Products versus models (the bit that actually confuses everyone)
Each of those products is a friendly shopfront in front of a model — the actual artificial brain, which has its own, worse name. OpenAI's models are called GPT-this and GPT-that; Anthropic's models are called things like Opus, Sonnet and Haiku; Google's carry version numbers like software. Companies release new models constantly, which is why the AI you used in spring feels different by autumn.
Here's the liberating part: you don't need to track any of this. Model names matter to technologists the way lens serial numbers matter to photographers. When someone says "we ran it through GPT-5" they mean "we used ChatGPT and it was probably the newer version". Nod. Move on.
So what on earth is a Codex?
Codex is OpenAI's tool for writing software — an AI that programmers set loose on their code. Anthropic's equivalent is called Claude Code. Unless you write software, you can file these under "not my department" — with one asterisk: they're the reason small arts organisations can now afford little custom tools that used to require a developer on retainer. (More on that in our post about modernising your systems.)
The picture and sound department
Different names again, and different ethics. Midjourney and OpenAI's image tools generate pictures; Adobe's Firefly does the same inside Photoshop; ElevenLabs clones and generates voices; Suno and Udio generate music. Be aware that these are exactly the tools at the centre of the fight over artists' work being used without consent — the anger we wrote about here. Knowing the names is not an endorsement; it's knowing what's being discussed.
Which one should an arts organisation actually use?
The honest answer: pick one general assistant, pay for it, and stop worrying. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are more alike than different for everyday work — summarising, drafting, untangling spreadsheets. The differences that matter to you are practical:
- If your organisation lives in Microsoft 365, Copilot is already in your tools (check whether your licence includes it before paying twice).
- If you live in Google Workspace, the same logic points at Gemini.
- If you want a standalone assistant for serious document work, ChatGPT and Claude are both fine choices. Try each free for a week on a real task — minutes, a report summary — and keep the one you argue with less.
What you shouldn't do is buy five subscriptions out of anxiety. One good assistant, used properly — and used for more than chat — beats a drawer full of logins. And whichever you choose, set it up as an organisational account with the data settings checked, not a tangle of personal ones; here's why that matters.
The names will keep changing. The map won't: a few companies, one assistant each, models underneath you can ignore, and specialist tools for code, images and sound that deserve their own ethical caution. Pin that to the noticeboard and you're as informed as most of the people talking loudly at conferences.
The image above was AI-generated — as ever, we'll always tell you.