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ZDNET key takeaways
- AI can save you time by summarizing long Terms of Service pages.
- ChatGPT and Perplexity offered the clearest and most helpful summaries.
- Summary quality varies, and some AIs give you more detail than others.
Have you ever actually tried to read an entire Terms of Service (ToS) page on your average website? Tis not a job for the faint of heart, especially for those of us who didn’t spend three years in law school. And even if the ToS is written in relatively plain language, many of them are so long and convoluted that reading them would truly be a time-consuming and onerous chore.
Despite all the obstacles, you’re expected to familiarize yourself with the Terms of Service to at least be able to use the site properly and avoid any misunderstandings or infractions. Plus, many ToS pages are important, most notably those that discuss issues of security and privacy.
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Well, instead of you struggling to decipher a lengthy ToS page, why not call in the cavalry? And by that I mean your friendly, neighborhood AI. Most AI tools can analyze and summarize all kinds of data, including web pages.
Yes, we know that AI is fallible. It can serve up wrong or invalid information as a result of its own programming quirks, also known as hallucinations. But even with a few mistakes potentially popping up, an AI-based summary should be able to provide the gist of this kind of information. The best AIs also link to their sources, so you can always check out the original content to confirm that the details are correct.
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To try this out, I asked seven AI tools to analyze and summarize the same ToS page. Specifically, I turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude AI, Perplexity, xAI’s Grok, and Meta AI. I used each one as is, meaning the default model with no Deep Research or Thinking or other advanced options enabled.
I chose as my test subject an Apple Terms of Service page on user privacy. To set this up for each AI, I asked them to analyze and summarize the page and then included the URL for the page itself. Here’s what happened.
ChatGPT created a summary of Apple’s privacy terms in a very digestible format. The information was organized into 11 different sections, each with bullet point items covering the main details. The final section was especially helpful as it cut to the chase by giving me the key talking points.
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Overall, the summary was long enough to provide all the relevant information but brief enough to encourage me to read it in its entirety. ChatGPT did a great job.
Copilot didn’t do as well interpreting the Apple privacy page, mainly because its summary was much too brief and sparse. The summary gave me an overview of the page but failed to delve into any detail about the key topics.
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Copilot’s writing style here also left a lot to be desired as the summary was less interesting to read than the actual ToS page.
Gemini started off well with a clear and readable explanation of how Apple defines personal data and what types of data could be collected.
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The summary seemed to catch most of the salient points. However, I did find it too brief. For a very quick read, Gemini’s summary was certainly adequate and interesting. But I wish it had fleshed out more of the details that ChatGPT revealed.
Perplexity’s summary was another exercise in brevity. But it managed to convey most of the key points in an interesting and informative way.
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Perplexity told me that the privacy page explains what personal data Apple collects, why it collects it, how it uses and shares it, and what rights you have to control that data. It then proceeded to address each of the major topics in a clear and readable manner. Unlike some of the other brief summaries that kept me wanting more, I felt satisfied after reading Perplexity’s take.
Meta AI’s summary was the worst of the bunch — way too brief and lacking any real depth. This one served up just two sections with a few bullet point items. Some of the points provided useful information. But there was a lot missing here that most of the other AIs captured.
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Meta AI did ask me if I wanted further details on Apple’s privacy policy. I told it that I did. But again it served up an all-too-brief summary without much detail. At that point, I gave up.
With the exceptions of Meta AI and Copilot, most of the AIs performed fairly well, albeit in this limited type of test. Most included footnotes or endnotes linking me to the relevant passages in the Apple ToS page. Most also tried to continue the conversation by asking me if I wanted more information or had specific questions.
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I came away with two favorites: ChatGPT and Perplexity. I liked the way ChatGPT fleshed out all the details that I would need to know. Its summary was longer than the others, but short enough and written well enough to provide an interesting read. Though fairly brief, Perplexity’s summary also impressed me by packing in a lot of useful information in a bite-sized nugget. Either of those two would be my go-to AI for this type of task.
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