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AI chatbot showdown! Get the scoop on who's hot, who's not, and how to spin up your own AI sidekick to ultimate no-code productivity.
ChatGPT started the trend, but now it's just another player in a crowded market. Competitors are popping up everywhere, boasting features like better memory, tailored responses, and the ability to handle your personal data—and that's just scratching the surface.
Skip the hassle of endless searching. Alternatives to ChatGPT for content creation, AI chatbots capable of internet searches, and even some novelty bots for entertainment—all down below. You can even roll your own chatbot if none of these fit the bill.
Now, let’s imagine you’re no-coding your own stuff with Directual, and you need some AI capabilities to offer something really good to your customers. What can you integrate? What can you use to speed things up? Let’s find out.
Let's get straight to it—here’s how ChatGPT works. Understanding this will help you figure out what each AI chatbot offers and how to use them effectively.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is essentially an app where you feed text prompts into AI models—specifically the latest ones like GPT-4o (for paying users) and GPT-4o mini. You type something, the app sends it to the AI, which then processes it and spits back an answer in a chat format.
The app handles the user interface stuff, like saving your chat history, while the AI deals with understanding your prompts and calculating responses. For a more detailed comparison, check out our guide on ChatGPT vs. GPT.
Most of the apps we’re looking at use these GPT models too. Developers can tweak how the AI responds, so the same AI might act differently across apps. Some apps don’t use GPT at all but run on unique, company-specific models instead.
Here’s what matters:
That’s the rundown. Use this info to pick the right chatbot for your needs.
ChatGPT has been around since late 2022 and really caught everyone's attention in 2023, putting AI in the headlines again. It’s easy to use: just type your question, and it answers. Responses are tracked on the left of your screen so you can jump between different topics or revisit them later. You can even share these chats.
However, ChatGPT isn’t perfect—it can confidently give you wrong information, something experts call hallucinations. Still, it's at the top of the AI game for now. It remembers your previous chats in a session to try to give better answers. It handles text commands and lets you tweak how it responds. It’s versatile, dealing with many topics reasonably well, but double-check its facts. You can also personalize it further by sharing your chats or setting custom commands.
With GPT-4o, ChatGPT has become even more capable, adding abilities like creating images from text, analyzing data, and conducting voice chats—and it does all this fast.
OpenAI is also working on a new tool, SearchGPT, which aims to outdo Google Search. It’s still in the development phase, and you can sign up to get updates about its release.
A paid subscription is priced at about 20 bucks. Very reasonable.
Meet Claude. It’s a chatbot that’s straightforward and avoids the fluff you might get with ChatGPT. Claude gives you responses that cut straight to the chase. It can remember a ton—up to 150,000 words per conversation, which is handy for when you want to throw a PDF at it or chat through the night. Interestingly, Claude 3.5 Sonnet is even outdoing GPT-4o in some benchmarks, shaking up the AI rankings a bit.
The standout feature? Definitely Artifacts. With a few prompts, you can whip up a custom dashboard to display data, complete with interactive buttons—like making your own personal budget planner. To use Artifacts, just hit the Feature Preview in the main menu, toggle it on, and start playing around.
Besides that, Claude helps you sort and organize your docs, code, and files into Projects, making it easier to keep track of everything in one place.
The free plan originally allowed 25 messages a day, but now that might change based on how busy the servers are—the app will alert you as you approach your limit. Want more? There’s a Pro plan for $20 a month.
Meta has launched Meta AI on Llama 3.1 model, but for now, it's only available in the U.S. You can sign in using your Facebook or Instagram and start interacting. The system lets you request generated images and even simple animations. There's a feature for creating short videos, but it's not quite up to par yet.
The quality of responses is decent, but this model sometimes makes up sources and presents its answers with a lot of confidence. Without a web search feature to add depth, you’ll need to double-check the facts it gives you—especially for anything critical. This basic setup means it’s more of a blank slate, ready to be customized for specific applications or business needs. Mix it with your data, and it turns into a solid reasoning tool.
Now, about the licensing: it’s pretty generous. Developers can use the Llama models in their apps for free until they hit a pretty high revenue mark. This setup seems designed to deter big tech rivals while letting smaller players use the AI without upfront costs—aside from the expense of running the necessary hardware.
The Meta AI site hints that this engine might eventually be fully woven into Meta’s social platforms—it’s already in some. If you’re curious about how it compares to other models, check out the ChatGPT vs. Meta AI comparison for more insights.
Google has been a player in the AI game for ages and has a bunch of AI tools spread across its products. Despite a massive blunder in its first demo, Gemini (used to be called Bard) is starting to win people over. Slowly.
Here’s the deal with Gemini: it connects to the internet to pull up sources and even lets you hit a button to Google stuff yourself—a big plus. You can see search results, including images, right in the chat. It allows you to tweak your prompts after sending them and offers up to three versions of a response, so you can choose the one you like best. It records your conversation history and boasts the longest context window around right now, and yes, you can share these chats too.
But the coolest part? It syncs up deeply with your Google account and other Google services like Hotels, Flights, and YouTube. Want to sift through your Gmail mess with one quick command? Easy. Summarize documents in your Google Drive? Done. Get real-time pricing on flights and hotels while it plans your trip? It’ll even throw in a packing list.
When stacked against ChatGPT, Gemini feels more like chatting with a person and less like issuing commands to a bot.
In early 2023, Microsoft ramped up its investment in OpenAI and started improving its products with AI features. One major update was to Bing, which now boasts an AI chat feature to help with web searches. You type something in, and it scours the web, returning a response with links it used for reference.
The chat can now display image results directly in the window, but it’s kind of clumsy with image searches—expect a bunch of links rather than a neat gallery. If you want to look over past chats, just click on them on the right side of the screen.
Moving on from search, Copilot is now hooked up with OpenAI’s DALL·E 3, which means I can get my fix of AI-generated golden retriever pics anytime. Just say you want to generate an image, pop in your prompt, and there you go. If you’re not happy, you can try tweaking the instructions, but it's hit or miss.
It's fully integrated into Microsoft Edge now, too. There are some nifty tools in there. The best one? You can generate text in the sidebar and slap it right into any input field on a webpage—handy for drafting and sending emails on the fly.
Still, Microsoft Copilot can be a bit quirky, cutting off chats out of the blue—nothing on the level of its past gaslighting episodes, though. If it shuts down on you, just start a new thread and keep at it.
GitHub Copilot isn’t your usual chatty AI like ChatGPT, but it kind of acts like your coding buddy in your integrated development environment. It’s like it’s tossing suggestions at you while you code.
You start typing out a comment or coding up a function, and Copilot jumps in with code suggestions that might fit what you're trying to do. You can flick through the options it throws out, and if one clicks, just hit tab to slap it into your code.
Now, just because it's handy doesn't mean it's perfect—there are some security risks with using code it spits out. Copilot tries to weed out any risky stuff to avoid messing up your project, but you’ll still need to double-check the code yourself. Some of it might not be as sharp or efficient as you'd like.
If you ever need to come up with some cool JSONs for Directual and you don’t know how, this little AI might be able to help you out.
Amazon's throwing its hat in the AI ring with Q Developer, which was once called CodeWhisperer. It’s a lot like GitHub Copilot but with its own twist.
Amazon uses its own secret AI model that learns from open-source code and how people use Amazon Web Services. It also digs into your project data to figure out your coding style and pops out more tailored suggestions.
It’s all about keeping you in line with the best practices for AWS stuff like EC2, Lambda, and S3. But it’s not as versatile as Copilot when it comes to languages—it only handles C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, and TypeScript. On the IDE front, it sticks to Amazon’s own, plus JetBrains and Visual Studio Code. Handy, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Tabnine's set up for the big leagues—more for enterprises and teams. It trains its AI on totally open source code, steering clear of copyleft stuff. That’s the kind of code that, if you use it, you’ve got to keep whatever you make with it open source too. Not exactly what a company wants if they’re trying to avoid legal headaches. Good news is, Tabnine’s AI won’t spit out any code that could trip you up with those licenses.
The AI gets tailored to your own code stash, mixing general coding smarts with your team’s own style. Security-wise, they’re solid, offering everything from cloud-based solutions to on-site setups. There’s also this Tabnine Chat in beta that can pull answers from your data and align them with top coding standards.
All these perks sound great for big organizations, but yeah, they probably don’t come cheap. Hence, the free plan is pretty basic, giving you just a taste with two-to-three-word code completions.
Perplexity is a new AI chatbot designed to manage bigger loads of data and handle messier, longer search queries. Here's the deal: when you get your results, you'll see a list of all the sources right below. You can then add a new query to keep searching, or use one of the suggested related terms. All results pile up at the bottom, so you can just scroll through to read them.
If you click on Copilot in the search bar, it'll help you find things like product recommendations, top healthy recipes, or travel advice. After you enter your query, Perplexity will quiz you with a few questions to really pinpoint what you're looking for. The answers you get will sum up all the essential info, giving you a solid base to go deeper.
When you share your chats, others can pick up right where you left off with no issues. You'll be able to track how many people view and like your shared chats, and see any follow-up questions, which makes the whole thing more interactive. A new feature, Discover, condenses popular searches into a concise article as well.
Now upgraded to tackle more complex tasks like solving math problems and handling real-time data through Wolfram Alpha, Perplexity is proving itself to be a robust and straightforward search tool.
Pi (based on Inflection-2.5), short for personal intelligence, is Inflection AI’s new chatbot aiming to be friendly and helpful. It’s not as versatile as ChatGPT—it can't write articles or browse the web—but it still delivers a unique user experience that stands out. The app itself is sleek, filled with charming animations and details. Pi doesn’t go for lengthy responses; it prefers quick, engaging back-and-forths and tends to ask a lot of questions. It encourages you to talk about your day, any challenges you’re facing, or just life in general. It’s generally supportive, although sometimes it can be a bit vague.
There’s also a SupportPi mode where you can get advice or just vent. This pairs with the Discover section where you can pick the type of conversation you need, like rehearsing a big talk, finding motivation, or just blowing off steam.
This isn’t your tool for productivity tasks, but it's great for sorting out personal issues, which is the whole point of Pi. It’s currently free, and signing up requires your name and number so Pi can send occasional texts to see how you’re doing—a thoughtful touch to keep you connected.
You.com, previously known as YouChat, originally mimicked a Google Search page, but now it's starting to look more like Perplexity with a heavier emphasis on chatting. When you type in a question and get an answer, you also see a sidebar with web search results. Below that, there are buttons that pull up Reddit threads or maps related to your query. If you prefer ChatGPT's straightforward style, You.com's setup might seem too busy, but it's useful for quickly accessing a lot of info.
You can influence which sources the platform prioritizes by voting them up or down. This part of You.com is called Apps, and it lets you choose from many sources, like Reddit or TechCrunch, adjusting their importance to you.
You can also switch between seven different AI models on You.com, seeing how each one uses the sources to come up with answers. The variety in responses can be pretty interesting, and you might find yourself preferring a less common model over the usual GPT types.
Le Chat is Mistral's open-sourced (like OpenAI promised to be but still is somehow) shot at showing off their AI models with a straightforward chat experience. This chat app isn't the most powerful out there, but it delivers responses in just the right length. Sometimes it gets wordy with bullet points, other times it sticks to a single paragraph for simplicity. This approach makes the conversation easy to follow—I'm not a fan of AI that dumps loads of text at once.
To start a new chat, use the model dropdown to pick one you want to try. As of now, there are three: Large 2 is your all-around knowledgeable model; Nemo is quick and cost-effective for basic tasks; and Codestral helps with coding, whether it’s complex issues or a missed semicolon at 3 a.m.
The company behind these models is based in France, staffed by former Google DeepMind and Meta AI pros. It's a small outfit but gaining traction, with their models popping up in other chatbots due to their quality. They're focused on offering open generative models to help developers and businesses, positioning themselves against OpenAI’s closed-model approach.
Jasper is an AI content creation tool aimed at big businesses with big needs. It provides templates for every type of content you can think of—from YouTube scripts to blog posts and LinkedIn profiles—and has recently launched Jasper Chat to compete with ChatGPT. The cool thing is how easily you can convert chats into documents!
When you ask Jasper Chat to write an article, it not only delivers but also suggests related follow-up pieces. Its output quality is comparable to ChatGPT, since both use OpenAI's GPT models, but Jasper seems more finely tuned for creating content. Plus, Jasper Chat has internet access, allowing for quick fact-checking with source lists.
If you need images as well as text, Jasper has you covered with an AI image generator, so everything stays on one platform. All these features cost money, but for producing content at scale, the price is justified by the convenience and capabilities you get.
Botsonic from Writesonic is your go-to if you need to whip up a chatbot that doesn’t just nod and smile but actually gets stuff done—think helping customers or pushing products. It plays nice with the big AI brains like OpenAI and Claude, but don’t sweat about choosing; they’ll only let you pick from the top dogs they trust at the moment. This way, you’re always using the best without having to jump through hoops to switch things up later.
You can feed your bot with data straight from your site or dump in your docs. Got stuff in Notion, OneDrive, or Google Drive? Pull it right in. It's pretty slick with customization too; tweak colors to match your brand, toss in some starter questions to nudge your visitors along.
There’s more under the hood—like setting up guidelines on how your bot should talk back or deciding how it should act when it hears certain things. And then there are the agent actions—these are the real deal, letting your bot do actual tasks in your systems based on chat inputs. It’s a bit of a pain to set up initially, but once it’s rolling, your bot is basically running the show on your site.
Merlin AI is like this mega 26-in-1 productivity booster—all about figuring out the usual stuff you do with AI and then making it quicker for you. Hit Ctrl (or Command) + M, and bam—you get a menu of actions to pick from instead of dragging yourself back to a browser every time you need something done.
It’s a browser extension, so you can mess with web pages, pepper a PDF with questions, or summarize your Google searches. A digital Swiss army knife, if you will—handling everything from crafting emails in Gmail to summing up YouTube videos and slapping comments on tweets as you scroll. And, you can clone any public figure’s tweet style to chat with—like making a mini-bot from their old tweets.
It connects with the top AI models—OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, and Mistral. Not sure which AI to use? The Merlin Magic feature sorts that out for you, picking the best one for the task and giving you a chance to test drive new models now and then. Very cool!
Ah yes, the fun one! Character.ai. Ever wondered why your favorite celebrity would star in a certain kind of movie? While you can’t actually chat with them, you can jump onto Character.AI and do the next best thing: talk to an AI model set to mimic them and hash out movie ideas or whatever else you think they’d be into.
They’ve got tons of characters ready to chat. Just click on their profile to get the lowdown, and if you want to start a convo, it’s just a few clicks away. Fancy making your own character? They’ve got you covered with some solid customization options. Craft your character, then train it by chatting and rating how well it responds. If you're looking for an AI chatbot for some fun, this might be your thing.
Just to show you how popular it is, the character.ai subreddit has 1.5M+ followers. Something worth looking into.
Copy.ai used to be all about churning out content, but they've switched gears. Now, they're more into helping sales teams get their stuff together for the market.
What's that mean?
Well, B2B sales teams have a ton to handle—scouring for leads, sizing them up, trying to turn them into customers. It's a headache to find good contact details, spy on prospects, and keep everything sorted and ready to go. Copy.ai is all about making that easier with some smart automated setups. You can just toss in a company's URL, and bam, it sorts out the rest—visiting the site, scraping info, and preparing a report so you know what you're dealing with.
The chatbot feature is pretty central to the action here. It lets you mess around with the data, tailor emails for leads, or whip up some snappy responses to customer gripes.
HubSpot's jumping into the AI with something called ChatSpot, which is still getting tweaked in beta but looks promising. You can link it up with your HubSpot CRM data and do a bunch of stuff without endless clicking around the app. Here’s what you can do:
And it's all powered by just chatting with it—no need for a click-fest. But wait, there’s more. You can actually write blog posts with it and shoot them directly to your HubSpot site. Same deal with socials.
Salesforce is the biggest CRM there is. Throwing AI into the mix with their Einstein-1 platform is like pumping rocket fuel into a fire—it just boost everything up. Einstein gives you these AI tools that practically automate the boring parts of your CRM and make your data way more visible.
So, they’ve got Einstein Copilot (another one!) that pops up on the sidebar and will answer any questions about your sales data. Ask it something, and it'll not only give you an answer but also show you where the info is coming from. This means less clicking around aimlessly and more time getting straight to the point.
But that chatbot? Just the start.
There’s a whole section for prompt engineering where you can whip up prompts to quickly wrap your head around customer cases or deal statuses, pulling whatever data you need from across the platform. You can even stick these as buttons all over the CRM, making it super easy to get insights fast. The catch? You might need to know a bit about coding or at least get the hang of basic system design to really make it work for you.
Hey, hear that beep from the website? That’s Intercom’s customer support chatbot, Fin, now boosted with AI. It’s handling the same old repetitive chats, using everything from knowledge bases to scripted flows to free up real people for the tough stuff. Big names like Spotify and Slack are already on board.
Setting up Fin as your support chatbot is really easy. Just plug in your website URL, and it starts looking around, picking up everything about your biz and the common questions new visitors throw at it.
Once it’s up to speed and live, it parks itself in the corner of your site, keeping chats flowing until it needs to hand off to a human. Besides chatting, Fin handles emails, too. Plus, it keeps track of useful stuff like how long chats last or when it hands off to real people, so you can tweak things—add more info, adjust settings, whatever—to keep improving the whole setup.
Most of these AI chatbots are running on the same brain as ChatGPT, and the ones that aren’t, well, they kinda sound the same if you’re not too picky. What really sets them apart is how they feel to use, any extra bells and whistles they throw in, and how they hook up with other stuff you’re using. Pretty much all these chatbots let you take them for a test drive for free, so why not? Spend a day, try 'em out. Worst case, you’ve got some stories to tell.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, uses the latest GPT-4o model that can handle many tasks, including creating images and conducting voice chats. Double-check its answers though—just in case.
Yes, many AI chatbots can be integrated with other platforms and offer extra features or link up with apps to expand their functionality, depending on what you're working with.
Focus on AI model quality, chat app tools, integration capabilities, conversational experience, and any extra features like multilingual support or direct internet access.
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