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Beyond ChatGPT: Discover best AI chatbots for conversational AI

Updated on: 17 February 2023

Neil C. Hughes
Contributor

ChatGPT alternatives — Image by Ascannio / Shutterstock

Get ready to broaden your understanding and explore the world of generative AI beyond ChatGPT. Whether you're seeking to save on monthly subscription fees or driven by a thirst for knowledge, we've got you covered. Discover a range of alternatives to ChatGPT and explore the full potential of this exciting technology.

Getting annoyed at the message, "ChatGPT is at capacity now," has become the epitome of first-world problems. But OpenAI recently offered easy access during peak times and priority access to new features by paying $20 a month. But when the next big thing in tech turns into just another monthly subscription, it's time to check out the competition before entering your card details.

Google Bard's $100 billion mistake

One of the biggest problems with early iterations of generative AI is its ability to provide incorrect information convincingly. But the actual cost of misinformation was not fully realized until last week. Bard, Google's Answer to Microsoft's ChatGPT, made an embarrassing mistake in its promotional video, causing investors to wipe over $100 billion from Alphabet's value.

The video showed Bard answering, "What new discoveries from the James Webb space telescope (JWST) can I tell my nine-year-old about?" with a response that JWST took the first images of exoplanets, which was incorrect, according to astrophysicist Grant Tremblay. Rather than talking about the technology, people began debating whether the search giant was losing its edge to its rival, Microsoft Corp.

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As Alphabet licks its wounds from a $100 billion error, Microsoft's Bing and Edge revealed a ChatGPT makeover. The much-maligned Bing is stepping into the limelight to reinvent search to make it fit for a cookieless future and an AI world. But other alternatives are also available outside the usual suspects in big tech.

YouChat

In its current form, ChatGPT is a text-based AI language model with a knowledge cutoff of 2021. It cannot generate visuals or graphics, respond to voice commands, or provide real-time updates. As a result, there may be instances where ChatGPT becomes unresponsive due to high traffic and displays an error message. In addition, the premium version of ChatGPT requires a subscription fee that may not be affordable for everyone.

YouChat is an AI chatbot and search engine powered by OpenAI's GPT-3, which makes it similar to ChatGPT. However, YouChat has the advantage of being able to provide up-to-date information and answer questions even for events that took place after 2021, which ChatGPT is not capable of.

The main features of YouChat include providing answers to generic queries and search results related to the request. Furthermore, it stays up-to-date with the latest trends and news and provides users with the newest information. Additionally, YouChat cites sources from Google, which ChatGPT does not have access to as it lacks internet connectivity. Finally, YouChat is a free tool, so users can head to their website and ask questions immediately.

Chinchilla

Chinchilla is the latest language model developed by DeepMind and is making waves in the AI world. Dubbed the "GPT-3 killer", Chinchilla is a compute-optimal model that boasts 70 billion parameters. Chinchilla's ability to perform well with relatively low computing power for fine-tuning and inference makes it stand out. The secret to its performance lies in the vast amount of text data it has been trained on rather than the number of parameters.

With its impressive accuracy of 70% and its ability to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and information, Chinchilla is poised to shake up the AI language model scene. So whether you're looking for a language model for research purposes or want a more advanced chatbot, Chinchilla is worth checking out.

Socratic

Socratic, developed by Google, is a friendly chatbot designed to help students with schoolwork. This app is an alternative to ChatGPT and is available on iOS and Android. Socratic utilizes AI to answer math problems, chemical reactions, and other school-related queries in seconds, with fun illustrations to help the user understand the concepts better. One of the best features of Socratic is its ability to answer questions with images and graphics.

However, the app requires a fee and is not designed to write an essay or story. With Socratic, children can type in their questions and receive a conversational, human-like response with unique graphics to break down the concepts. The app also has a feature that lets children scan their worksheets to get a specially curated answer. Socratic is an excellent tool for parents who want their children to take advantage of AI for their schoolwork, with some limitations.

Perplexity AI

People new to ChatGPT often raise concerns when they are asked to provide their phone number during the sign-up process. They might question the need to share this information. Perplexity AI is a powerful Chat GPT alternative for privacy-concerned users trained on OpenAI's API. But unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity AI is free to use and doesn't require an account. It's also capable of holding conversations and providing you with the sources it used to answer your queries.

The concept of Perplexity is straightforward and provides a clear and interpretable way to compare the performance of different NLP models. Furthermore, it takes into account the length and complexity of the test set, providing a more accurate evaluation of a model's performance. As a result, Perplexity is widely used and accepted as an evaluation metric in NLP.

Perplexity AI is often used in research papers and other publications to evaluate the performance of NLP models. By comparing the Perplexity of different models, researchers and developers can identify areas where a model may excel or struggle, allowing for improvement and optimization of the model's performance. But the biggest appeal for many is the fact you can ask the same questions as ChatGPT without handing over your details.

Bloom

Bloom is another substitute for GPT-3 that's worth checking out. A team of over 1,000 AI researchers created this open-source, multilingual language model. The team used 384 graphics cards with a total memory of 80+ gigabytes in training the model. It's also worth noting that it was trained on 176 billion parameters, which is 1 billion more than GPT-3.

The BigScience Workshop by HuggingFace has created a highly versatile model available in several versions with reduced parameters. Bloom is worth considering if you're looking for an alternative to ChatGPT. But there are many more alternatives worth an honorable mention, such as Jasper, Chat Sonic, and Rytr.

The best solution will depend on your unique requirements and what you want to achieve. But I suspect the highly anticipated release of ChatGPT-4 in the spring will ensure that Open AI will continue to dominate the headlines throughout 2023. But whether users will need to pay $20 to access the new version or if the premium version is worth adding another subscription to your life is a conversation for another day.