Using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to check an NYC rent issue

I live in a former superintendent apartment in a prewar Manhattan co-op. Although I signed a market-rate lease, the unit’s rent history showed it had been registered as rent-stabilized in the 1980s with no obvious record of deregulation, so I wondered whether it might still be regulated.

I uploaded a photo of the rent-registration history and asked ChatGPT to interpret it. ChatGPT walked me through the document and noted that the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal often evaluates situations like this, citing rent-stabilization provisions and several court decisions.

I then asked Perplexity and Google Gemini the same questions to double-check the findings. The three tools reached similar high-level conclusions but differed in reasoning and how they showed their work. Gemini and Perplexity were better at surfacing sources, and Gemini’s more conservative framing made me trust it more.