For a while, the tech world loved comparing AI to a “smart intern”—hardworking, but prone to frustratingly simple mistakes. It was a decent metaphor, but it missed the real personality.

A recent post from the excellent Fintech Takes offered a brilliant new analogy, crediting the original idea to their community. Instead of an intern, AI is a dog.

The article perfectly nails the general-purpose LLM as a Golden Retriever: “Fun, affirming, and non-threatening, but also so eager to please that it will always try to do the thing it thinks that you want.” This explains “hallucinations”—they’re just a dog confidently bringing you a dead squirrel when you asked for the newspaper, all in a desperate bid for a “good boy” pat.

In contrast, the article tags old-school ML models as Siberian Huskies: “inflexible, difficult to train, but highly reliable” for one specific, grueling job.

But we can—and must—take this further. If AI models are dogs, then the companies building them are the “breeders,” selecting for very specific (and sometimes baffling) traits.

Let’s pull no punches. Here is a ruthless, no-holds-barred list of today’s top AI vendors and the dog breeds they really represent.

1. OpenAI (ChatGPT): The Golden Retriever

This is the one that started it all, the direct inspiration from the article. It’s the most popular, most accessible, and friendliest dog on the block. It bounds up to everyone, tail wagging, desperate to play fetch with any prompt you give it. It’s also the classic “eager to please” model that will confidently tell you 2+2=5 if it thinks that’s what you want to hear. It’s inconsistent and makes a mess, but it’s so affirming that you can’t stay mad at it.

2. Google (Gemini): German Shepherd

This dog is a genius, but it’s also a high-strung, neurotic mess, awaiting your precisely accurate command. It’s been trained to do everything—herd your search results, manage your calendar, organize your photos, and write your emails. Because it’s trying to anticipate your next ten moves at once, it often runs in frantic circles, tripping over its own feet, and occasionally developing a bizarre, self-destructive habit (like, say, refusing to generate images of certain people). It’s brilliant, but you have to wonder if it’s too smart for its own good.

3. Anthropic (Claude): The Rough Collie (“Lassie”)

This dog is impeccably groomed, unfailingly polite, and morally incorruptible. It was bred specifically to be “safer” than the Golden Retriever next door. It will never jump on a guest, steal food from the counter, or bite the mailman. Instead, it will sit, offer a paw, and gently lecture the mailman on the constitutional principles of private property. It’s the “safety-first” AI, so committed to its principles that it will always, always run to tell the farmer that Timmy fell down the well, but it might refuse to help him if the act of pulling him out violates its core ethical directives.

4. Meta (LLaMA): The Rescued Pit Bull

It’s incredibly powerful, astonishingly capable, and its new owners (the open-source community) swear it’s the sweetest, most loyal dog in the world. But its original breeders have a complicated history, and the media keeps insisting it’s inherently dangerous. It’s not a ready-made pet; it’s a “project.” You have to put in a ton of work to train it, and you’re responsible for its behavior. In the right hands, it’s a miracle. In the wrong hands… well, that’s what the headlines are for.

5. xAI (Grok): The Chihuahua

Small, aggressive, and terminally online. This “dog” was bred for one purpose: to be “edgy.” It was raised on a diet of pure, unfiltered Twitter, making it a shivering, nervous wreck of sarcasm and misplaced confidence. It thinks its constant yapping is a personality, but it’s really just a defense mechanism. It’s not here to help; it’s here to “make chaos” and snap at anyone who tries to pet it.

6. Apple (Apple Intelligence): The French Bulldog

Let’s be honest: this is less of a functional animal and more of a high-design, luxury accessory. It’s adorable, wildly expensive, and bred to live exclusively inside a pristine, walled-off apartment (the Apple ecosystem). It’s not built for the rough-and-tumble dog park. It’s designed to perform a few cute tricks, look good on your nightstand, and integrate seamlessly with your other expensive accessories.

7. IBM (Watson): The Siberian Husky

This is the “business” dog, the direct callout from the Fintech Takes piece. It’s the original workhorse. It doesn’t want to play. It doesn’t care about your feelings. It wants to be attached to a sled (or a mainframe) and pull “financial services” or “healthcare logistics” through a blizzard. It’s stubborn, inflexible, and famously difficult to train, but it’s the only one you’d trust with a mission-critical job in a sub-zero environment.