Comment by pllbnk
4 days ago
ChatGPT has a good name. It's weird and awkward but it still rolls off the tongue. And I am saying that as a non native English speaker because the name has been migrated to other languages with the English pronunciation.
In comparison, Claude's name is very bad, it just doesn't sound right and people might mishear me when I say it. I never say "Claude" when talking to other, especially non-technical people, and instead say "ChatGPT" even though I am using Claude exclusively.
Google has another problem - they advertise their models as separate products. There is Gemini and there is Nano Banana, also Nano Banana Pro. But they are all somehow under the same product which is still called Gemini. I understand the distinction but I am sure many non-technical people find it confusing.
Claude may seem incongruous compared to the others, however it's the only human sounding name, compared to the robotic "chatgpt" or others that sound generic or bland company names (Gemini, perplexity).
They intentionally chose a more bland sounding name, as, I assume, they wanted to emphasise the "safe" nature compared to their competitors.
As more information comes out about openai, people may choose to move to for other reasons, such as
- Openai adding ads
- Openai's president donating millions to a MAGA PAC
- Openai getting closer to the US military whilst anthropic standing their ground and rejecting them.
- Openai's recent products not being at the top of the benchmarks
The choice is yours.
> They intentionally chose a more bland sounding name, as, I assume, they wanted to emphasise the "safe" nature compared to their competitors.
A lack of creativity seems more likely to me. It’s a GPT in a chat window.
> Openai getting closer to the US military whilst anthropic standing their ground and rejecting them.
Except they didn’t. They folded faster than a house of cards during an earthquake. It boggles the mind anyone thought they wouldn’t. Ultimately they only care about money and winning.
> Openai getting closer to the US military whilst anthropic standing their ground and rejecting them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145551
OpenAI has demonstrated a severe lack of ethics, you're right, it's just hard to know how educated the average consumer is about that. The anthropic-military thing is a big deal but I suspect few outside of the tech world really understand the implications of what's going on.
Anectode: My aunt was talking about how she had a conversation with ChatGPT about how bad OpenAI was and the AI said "we need regulations", and that seemed to satisfy her somehow.
In Japan many people call it "Chappie" (チャッピー), which I think is much easier to say and less awkward, haha. I see a lot of people using it here daily.
I feel like OpenAI should lean into that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappie_(film)
They initially wanted to call it just "Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (preview)" but the Internet stuck with the anonymous codename Nano-banana from LMArena because it's interesting and quirky. Google didn't officially adopt it until several days after the public release, exactly because of what you say. Eventually, not using it in their comms got more confusing because regular people were asking how they can find this Nano banana thing everyone is hyped about.
I have heard "cloud code" many times from colleagues who do not really know what either cloud OR Claude Code is more than "stuff we should use".
Whisper voice to text very rarely manages to make it Claude, here's some examples and I am not trying to make it bad
Lord code, close code, Clawed code, load code, Claude Chatbot, Claude Code, cloud code.
I wish it had a better name. We know it was named after Claude Shannon. A very nerdy choice rather than a marketeer.
Absolutely no enduser knows what 'GPT' stands for and if you tell them it's Generative Pre-trained Transformer they're even more confused than before.
There's better brand names out there.
> Absolutely no enduser knows what 'GPT' stands for
But there is no need to know what it stands for.
> ChatGPT has a good name
I don't know but around here common people all say "Chatty" nowadays, and also most people if writing the correct name fail to spell "gpt" right quite often in chat.
Claude is a terrible name but Gemini is pretty good.
Names-wise, I think 'Grok' is pretty good, there's just lots of other baggage that comes along with it.
I still hate how Microsoft ruined the value in the name 'Cortana'. If they had a modern LLM named Cortana with the right voice, I'd be very tempted to use it just because. What other LLM has a face associated with it?
Grok is way too nerdy and obscure.