The current research explores ChatGPT’s human-machine interactive translation performance in machine translation in comparison with neural machine translation (NMT) systems represented by Google Translate in English-Chinese translation. Case analyses show that ChatGPT overrides NMT systems in that it is able to provide multiple translations, produce translations of various styles, and adjust translations based on the meta information of the source text. In contrast, Google Translate does a better job than ChatGPT in terms of accuracy, adequacy, and consistency. In short, ChatGPT’s human-machine translation performance presents implications for translators, students, and software developers.