Almost everyone has probably heard of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot by now. However, with this wave of popularity came one major drawback – overloaded servers that sometimes prevent users from accessing the service. According to many, the quality of ChatGPT’s responses has also deteriorated slightly, leaving many looking for the best alternatives.
In terms of quality, OpenAI has also launched ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise versions for large companies, both of which include access to the newer GPT-4 language model, but these tools are paid for. Currently, only the GPT-3.5 version is free.
So let’s imagine other ways in which the dawn of artificial intelligence can be enjoyed in the comfort of our homes and most importantly for free.
Bing Chat
One of the best alternatives to ChatGPT currently is Microsoft’s Bing Chat. This AI tool powers a model that Microsoft calls Prometheus, which combines the classic Bing search engine and the information it offers with the ChatGPT language model.
Compared to the free version of ChatGPT, Bing Chat is therefore connected to the Internet, so it often offers better and more up-to-date information.
In addition to text responses, Bing Chat also provides the ability to create images or even logos. Bing Chat also lets you plan trips, find recipes, get advice, and more.
Perplexity
Perplexity is a popular alternative to ChatGPT, within which, however, similar technology also works, built on OpenAI data. As a result, it offers similar features to ChatGPT, including the ability to hold a conversation and provide simple replies.
However, unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity also lists the sources it draws from when answering questions. Because of this, many people praise the answers there as clearer and more accurate.
Other significant advantages include the ability to upload documents that can be read by artificial intelligence. Therefore, Perplexity can be recommended, for example, for conducting research.
The platform can be accessed both via a web browser and via a phone application. Google Bard
Ever since ChatGPT took the world by storm, many users’ attention has turned to Google in anticipation of how it will respond to the challenger. For a long time, the company has stepped on the spot, but recently Google opened the gates of its own artificial intelligence to the world – Google Bard.
Although it is still considered an experimental tool, it can be said that it can match the power of ChatGPT. However, each of them is suitable for different uses.
Google Bard uses the Google Pathways Language Model (PaLM 2) and can offer answers based on real-time current events that it gets information about directly from the Google search engine, making it a great research tool.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, uses a model that was trained on a larger amount of data going back to 2021. It doesn’t take current events into account, but it makes it a better tool for text generation or creative writing.
Claude 2
ChatGPT acquired another competitor in June called Claude 2, an improved chatbot from Google-backed Anthropic.
Claude does not use traditional language models like ChatGPT or Bing Chat. Instead, it uses a set of so-called “proprietary artificial intelligence techniques”, which nevertheless also involve a neural network or training data.
Claud is more focused on natural conversation, which makes it a useful, harmless and honest chatbot. In addition, however, it is capable of performing enough tasks – including writing complex content and code or solving puzzles. And it is also possible to upload text extraction files to it.
Currently, the Claude bot is available through the website for US and UK users. People from other countries can only use it if they turn on a VPN in those countries.
Llama 2
Llama 2 is Mark Zuckeberk’s Meta company’s attempt to keep up with Open AI and Google. It’s a competitively capable model, but according to the HumanEval benchmark, it lags well behind the GPT-4 and even the GPT-3.5 models.
Pretrained models in Llama 2 have been exposed to twice as many context tokens as in Llama 1, totaling 2 trillion. Over a million human annotations were used to fine-tune its models. Strengths of Llama 2 include the ability to program and think logically. It also has – unlike other models – open source code.
Final thoughts
It is important to note that there is no clear choice among all these chatbots. Each large language model has their strengths and weaknesses. However, although these tools are not yet perfect, it is clear that the battle between the technological giants will continue. Only time will tell who will win.