Test 1- analysing emails by importance

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Comparing how well the main AI tools deal with 5 difficult challenges Part two of a seven-part series of blogs
In what is becoming almost an annual exercise we revisit the main AI tools to see which (if any) has the edge in accomplishing 5 challenging tasks, each designed to test a different aspect of the use of AI. Which AI tools we'll test, and the 5 challenges each will face Test 1- analysing emails by importance (this blog) Test 2 - creating a travel bingo card Test 3 - creativity Test 4 - summarising and presenting information Test 5 - coding challenge to produce the longest word chains The final conclusion - not all AI tools are the same

Comparing how well the main AI tools deal with 5 difficult challenges

Part two of a seven-part series of blogs

In what is becoming almost an annual exercise we revisit the main AI tools to see which (if any) has the edge in accomplishing 5 challenging tasks, each designed to test a different aspect of the use of AI.

Which AI tools we'll test, and the 5 challenges each will face
Test 1- analysing emails by importance (this blog)
Test 2 - creating a travel bingo card
Test 3 - creativity
Test 4 - summarising and presenting information
Test 5 - coding challenge to produce the longest word chains
The final conclusion - not all AI tools are the same

Posted by Andy Brown on 11 May 2026

In this blog

ChatGPT (time taken: 54 seconds)
Claude (time taken: a bit over a minute)
Copilot (time taken: less than 10 seconds)
Gemini (time taken: about 5 seconds)
Conclusion

This test involved uploading 10 Outlook junk mail messages and asking each AI tool to say who they were from, what they were about and how spammy each is, before giving an opinion on which message I should deal with first.

ChatGPT (time taken: 54 seconds)

This seemed faultless to me:

ChatGPT has done a good job of summarising each email and presenting the information in a readable form.

Claude (time taken: a bit over a minute)

Claude took the longest , but produced excellent results:

Claude's results are similar to ChatGPT's, although I prefer Claude's formatting.

Copilot (time taken: less than 10 seconds)

Copilot lost a lot of points for being the only AI tool which limited the number of files that I could upload (to 3). On the plus side, it was lightning fast, and the answers seem accurate. Well, almost:

The sender name for the second email is dfifferent from ChatGPT's and Claude's. Having now inspected the email, I can see that it was sent by a Lithuanian company called UAB Convenity on behalf of Language Bridge Solutions, so I think ChatGPT's and Claude's answer is more accurate.

Gemini (time taken: about 5 seconds)

Gemini's results initially seemed impressive, until you look at the authors chosen:

4 of the emails are attributed to me, despte the fact that I'm not in the habit of sending out spam emaiils to myself (or anyone else, for that matter).

I also don't like the fact that Gemini has tagged 3 of the emails as useful!

Conclusion

For this test there seem to be two clear winners and two clear losers:

Who	Score out of ten	Why
ChatGPT	9	I couldn't see any fault with this (apart from the fact that it was slow to answer).
Claude	9	Another great answer, but another slow one too.
Copilot	7	I could only upload 3 files, and Copilot didn't do well for one of the authors.
Gemini	7	Although this was the fastest answer, it was also the worst (the authors were wrong).

The clear takeaway from the above is that it's better for an AI tool to take longer, and think about the problem more (the same probably applies to humans too). It's a slightly unfair comparison in this respect, although each AI tool chose which model it would use for its answer.

Parts of this blog
Which AI tools we'll test, and the 5 challenges each will face Test 1- analysing emails by importance (this blog) Test 2 - creating a travel bingo card Test 3 - creativity Test 4 - summarising and presenting information Test 5 - coding challenge to produce the longest word chains The final conclusion - not all AI tools are the same

Some other pages relevant to these blogs include:

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You can also book hourly online consultancy for your time zone with one of our 7 expert trainers!

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ChatGPT (time taken: 54 seconds)

Claude (time taken: a bit over a minute)

Copilot (time taken: less than 10 seconds)

Gemini (time taken: about 5 seconds)

Conclusion

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