ChatGPT was the first widely used AI chatbot, but now the competition is getting fierce. Other models are joining the scene, offering longer conversational memory, empathetic responses, and grounding in your own data—among many other possibilities.

Allow me to save you a dozen Google searches (or ChatGPT prompts). I spent time talking to some of the best AI chatbots to see how they measure up. You'll find a bit of everything here, including ChatGPT alternatives that'll help you create content, AI chatbots that can search the web, and a few just-for-fun options. You'll even see how you can build your own AI chatbot if you don't find what you're looking for here.

It's likely that between the time I write this and the time you read it, there will be even more AI chatbots on the market, but for now, here are the most interesting ones to watch.

The best AI chatbots

• The original: ChatGPT

• Longest conversation memory: Claude

• Online search, text, and image generation: Microsoft Bing AI

• Integration with Google apps: Google Bard

• For building your own chatbot: Zapier Chatbots

• Open license: Meta Llama 2

• For personal use: Pi

• Multiple AI models: Poe

• For internet deep dives: Perplexity

• Safety off: Grok

• Open source: HuggingChat

• For searching the web: YouChat, KoalaChat

• For content writing: Jasper Chat, Chat by Copy.ai, Chatsonic, ZenoChat

• For sales and marketing: ChatSpot

• For messaging: Personal AI

• For tinkering: OpenAI playground, DeepAI Chat

• For fun: Character.AI

• On social media: Snapchat My AI

• For learning: Khan Academy's Khanmigo

• On mobile: Chatty Butler, ChatOn

• For coding auto-complete: GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer, Tabnine, Codeium

What to look for in an AI chatbot

Before we dive in, let's talk a bit about how ChatGPT works. This will help you understand what's interesting about each AI chatbot and use it to your advantage.

ChatGPT is an app created by OpenAI that lets users interact with its AI models: GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. The app takes the prompts you write and passes them to the AI model. This model runs the prompt through its systems and returns the results back to the app, so you can read them in a conversational chatbot style.

While the app takes care of the features—for example, saving your conversation history—the AI model takes care of the actual interpretation of your input and the calculations to provide an answer. For more context, take a look at our breakdown of ChatGPT vs. GPT.

Many of the apps on this list are also powered by OpenAI's GPT models. But even when that's the case, the app developers can pass additional commands to configure how the model replies, so you may see different results when you try each chatbot, even though they're running on the same engine. (Some apps on this list use non-GPT models, which are proprietary to the company that built the app.)

With that in mind, here's what I was keeping an eye out for as I tested each AI chatbot online:

• Accuracy and responsiveness. Given that a lot of AI chatbots are using GPT right now, they'll generally give you similar-ish content. But there were some duds. I didn't include any platforms that couldn't generate coherent language, that delivered wildly inaccurate information on a consistent basis, or that couldn't move a conversation forward naturally.

• Easy access. There shouldn't be any advanced setup or technical requirements to talk to a chatbot, when you can do it quickly (and for free) with ChatGPT.

• Chat experience. There are lots of ways to interact with AI, but the staple of ChatGPT is interacting with the model through a chat window. With a few exceptions, each app on this list is a conversational AI chatbot (I'll explain any exceptions as I get to them).

• Extra features. Anything on top of entering your prompt and receiving the output is welcome, from multi-language support to connecting directly to the internet.

Based on my research and experiences interacting with them, here are the best AI chatbots for you to try. Have fun—I know you will.

ChatGPT

The original AI chatbot

Model: OpenAI GPT-3.5 and 4, DALL·E 2 and 3

ChatGPT is the original AI chatbot. After its late 2022 release, it took the world by storm in 2023 and put AI back in the news. It's very simple to use: start a conversation by writing your prompt at the bottom of the screen. As the output comes back, a new entry is created on the left-side menu, so you can keep all your threads separate and come back to them later. If any of these is particularly interesting, you can share a link to it and show it to others (and they can start where you left off).

Even though it sometimes puts out factual errors while displaying total confidence—what experts call hallucinations—ChatGPT is still the industry leader for now. It remembers what you've said within each conversation, using it as context to provide more accurate output as it moves forward. It can accept text commands, helping you format and customize the output. And it's extremely flexible, tackling tasks in any discipline with an acceptable level of accuracy—just be sure you fact-check. You can even share your conversations with others and add custom instructions to customize the bot even further.

While GPT-3.5 is already impressive, GPT-4 is even better. It's trained on a much larger dataset, making it even more flexible, more accurate with its writing output, and it can even predict what happens next when given a still image. 

A lot happened in the year since ChatGPT's release. You can now do text-to-image prompting (and tweaking) with DALL·E 3, directly in ChatGPT. And you can even build your own custom bot with unique instructions and data using GPTs. These bots can carry out straightforward tasks, simplify processes, or just do zany things for the fun of it. When you add Zapier's AI Actions to it, you can access thousands of other apps from your GPT too.

You can also do the opposite, building ChatGPT into your existing workflows with Zapier's direct ChatGPT integration. No matter where you are, you can use ChatGPT to summarize, generate replies, or anything else you can dream up. Here are a few examples.

Claude 2

Longest conversation memory

Model: Proprietary

Jumping from the bottom of this list in my last update straight to second position now, meet Claude. Anthropic's chatbot aims to be helpful, harmless, and honest. The conversation flows naturally, with responses that are straight to the point, without lengthy introductions and conclusions like ChatGPT sometimes prefers using.

What's impressive about it is the length of its context window. This is the fancy name for the conversation memory that chatbots are equipped with: it helps it remember what topic you're talking about, past questions you asked, and how it answered. This feature is what makes answering questions like "can you summarize everything we've talked about into a key takeaway?" possible to answer.

Where ChatGPT can only remember up to 12,000 words worth of conversation, Claude takes this to 75,000 words. Since there's a file upload feature, this AI model is great for summarizing and asking questions based on long documents. Just make sure to keep the entire word count—questions and answers combined—below the limit.

The free plan is limited to 25 messages per day. You can unlock more by subscribing to the pro plan, going for $20 per month. Once you remove that cap, you can integrate Claude with Zapier to automate your tech stack. Learn more about how to automate Claude, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Microsoft Bing AI

Online search, text, and image generation

Model: OpenAI's GPT and DALL·E models

Early in 2023, Microsoft upped its investment in OpenAI and started developing and rolling out AI features into its products. One of those was Bing, which now has an AI chatting experience that will help you search the web. Once you enter your prompt, it will search the internet for you, process the results, and present you with a reply containing the links it used as a base.

It can now show image results in the chat window, but it doesn't pick up too well on the intent of image search: it usually prints out a list of image links instead of an image gallery. And if you want to re-read past conversations, you can do so by clicking on each one on the right side of the screen.

Moving away from search, Bing AI is now connected to OpenAI's DALL·E 3, so I can get my daily fix of AI-generated golden retriever images. State that you want to generate an image while chatting, and enter the prompt. Once it's out, you can ask to regenerate with new instructions, though in my experience, it doesn't work well 100% of the time.

It's fully integrated into Microsoft Edge, the native Windows browser. There are a few cool tools there. The best one lets you generate text in the sidebar and paste it with one click into any input field on a web page. This is useful for generating emails and pasting them into the compose window, for example.

Bing AI is still behaving strangely, sometimes ending conversations abruptly—still, it's nothing like when it revealed its gaslighting skills. Don't take it personally if it says it doesn't want to continue the conversation. Hit New Thread, and keep going.

Here's a full rundown of ChatGPT vs. Bing Chat.

Google Bard

Integrates with Google products

Model: PaLM 2

Google has been in the AI race for a long time, with a set of AI features already implemented across its product lineup. After an epic hiccup during the initial product demo, Bard left behind the LaMDA model and now uses PaLM 2 to carry out your instructions. It got a lot of flak, but it's really growing on me.

Bard can connect to the internet to find sources (even offering a handy button that lets you Google it yourself), which is a huge selling point. The search results can even show images directly on the chat window. It also lets you edit your prompt after you've sent it and offers up to three drafts of each output, so you can pick the best one. It can keep track of your conversation history, and you can share your conversations with others.

But here's what I love: it integrates deeply with your Google account and with other Google products such as Hotels, Flights, and YouTube. Want to search your Gmail file jungle with one prompt? Do it. Summarize files inside your Google Drive? Yes, please. Check real-time flight and hotel prices as the AI builds your trip? Schedule that time off: it even gives you a packing list.

When compared with ChatGPT, Bard feels more conversational and less oriented toward text commands. To read more about their differences, here's a direct comparison: ChatGPT vs. Bard.

Zapier Chatbots

For building your own chatbot

Model: OpenAI GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 via your own API key

Zapier's free Chatbots tool lets you create custom AI-powered chatbots with the power of GPT. Creating a chatbot is easy: you just give it a name, an optional greeting and prompt placeholder letting chatters know what to do, and then the directive. In the directive, you'll tell the chatbot who it is, what it knows, and how it should answer. The Zapier team has created everything from a corporate jargon translator, to a press release generator, to a risk assessment bot. Whatever you want the bot to be, it will be.

You can turn the creativity up or down (like you might in the OpenAI playground) and even customize the look and feel of your bot. And you can even train the bot on specific documents, so it can serve as a knowledge source based on your documentation. Or you can start with a pre-made template like the Business Coach bot, the Explain bot, or the ZapChat bot.

Then you can create a nice little landing page for it and give it a unique URL that you can share with anyone. Read more about how to build your own AI chatbot with Zapier.

Llama 2

Open license AI model

Model: Meta's Llama 2

Meta joined the AI game in a unique way. Instead of building a commercial chatbot like all the competition, it decided to launch its own AI model with a generous open licensing framework. This means that you can use it and tweak it for free until you hit a revenue limit—but this limit is super high, designed to fence out the big tech competitors from ever using this LLM. 

This easy licensing process almost makes it look like an open source model, but you can't really peek into the details of Llama 2's development, so it can't really take that tag.

While the actual process of deploying a Llama 2 model is reserved for developers, you can try it on the Llama2.ai website to get a feel for how it responds. The output feels more direct, less tuned than other chatbots, a vanilla model ready to be specialized and tweaked to unique needs. This app implementation offers a chat experience along with a few controls such as the system prompt, the temperature, and the context window—the bare minimum to explore the possibilities and limitations.

Llama's promising future is tied to its open licensing terms. While using it isn't as exciting as other options here, it's definitely a model to keep an eye on. You may end up interacting with multiple implementations of it in other apps in the future.

Pi

For personal use

Model: Inflection-1

Pi: with a short name that stands for personal intelligence, Inflection AI's new chatbot sets out to be engaging and supportive. It may not be as flexible as ChatGPT—it can't write articles or search the internet—but it offers a fresh user experience that's worthy of mention.

The app is minimalistic and filled with loads of cute details and animations. You'll find that Pi isn't tuned for long answers. Instead, it prefers shorter bursts of conversation and loves asking questions. It wants you to share your day, mention difficulties you're having, or talk through problems in your life. It's friendly, and while vague at times, it always has nice things to say.

In addition to the standard chat mode, you can switch to SupportPi to talk things through, get advice, or just as a "sounding board" for stuff on your mind. You can combine these models with the Discover section, where you can choose a conversation type, with options such as "practice a big conversation," "get motivated," or "just vent."

No big productivity use cases, sure. But maybe there's no productivity if you don't keep your personal stuff in order, and that's exactly Pi's angle. 

It's free to use at the moment, so you can jump right in. To keep track of your conversation history, you'll have to provide your name and phone number. This way, Pi will be able to text you from time to time to ask how things are going, a nice reminder to check in and catch up.

Poe

For trying multiple AI models

Model: OpenAI's GPT and DALL·E models, StableDiffusionXL, Claude 1 and 2, PaLM, Llama (multiple versions), Solar 70B, Mistral 7B

ChatGPT, Claude 2, and StableDiffusion XL walk into a bar. That bar is called Poe, which acts as a kind of AI model aggregator. It's the best if you want to try out the top models on the market right now for a single-pack price of $20 per month. There will be message limits for the highest quality models, but it's still better than subscribing to each individual one if you want to explore.

When you're done chatting, you might want to try creating your own bot. You can set its system prompt, add a knowledge base, and configure a greeting message. This feels like one of OpenAI's GPTs, with two key differences: you can pick which AI model you want to use as a base, and you can monetize it by setting up your creator account. As I write this, you get $20 whenever a user subscribes to Poe by using one of your chatbots. If you create a good one, maybe your Poe subscription can pay itself multiple times over.

Perplexity

For internet deep dives

Model: OpenAI GPT-3 and GPT-4

Perplexity is another take on AI internet-connected chatbots for handling more information and longer, less organized searches. Here's why: when getting the output, you'll see a list of all the sources below it. Then, you can add a new prompt to continue that search, or pick one of the suggested related search terms. All the results will stack on the bottom, so you can scroll up or down to read everything.

You can tick Copilot in the search bar to get some help with product recommendations, best healthy recipes, or travel tips, for example. Once you enter your prompt, Perplexity will ask you a set of qualifying questions to home in on your intent. The resulting output summarizes all the key information, acting as a good starting point for a deep dive.

When you share your chats with others, they can continue the conversation you started without limitations. On your end, you can see the views for shared conversations, likes, and follow-up questions, making the experience more interactive.

A new feature, Discover, rounds up popular searches into one short, snappy article. For example, "the most streamed artist in 2023" brings together the sources that prove that Taylor Swift attained 26.1 billion streams, coupled with a short AI-generated summary unpacking the important information about the topic.

Now better prepared for advanced tasks like solving equations and processing real-time data by leveraging Wolfram Alpha, Perplexity is positioning itself more and more as a powerful and straightforward search tool.

Grok

Tuned for straight answers (safety off)

Model: Grok-1

Elon Musk is already in the space race, so why not also join the AI race? After a lightning development speed of four months from zero to ready, Grok can deliver promising results when compared with the leading models. But beyond the technical stuff, what's really magnetic about it are the details.

Let me open this by saying that I haven't been able to test it yet. I'm not much of a Twitterer (or Xer), so I can't subscribe to an X Premium+ plan because I've been inactive for a long time. What you're about to read is a roundup of news and opinion pieces I've been consuming online. I highly encourage you to dive in, too; it's super interesting.

Grok is supposed to deliver the truth, as straight as it can. Philosophical issues aside, this means that the AI isn't held back by the same safety measures as GPT or Claude. It won't shy away from replying to any question that crosses your mind. This cuts both ways, so it's hard to make a judgment here.

It's set to deliver this truth in the style of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This book is an interactive encyclopedia of trivia and how-to guides to anything in Douglas Adams' fictional universe: you ask, it delivers. I wonder if it does so in the same writing style: if so, the humor will be top-notch.

More than using its training data for generating answers, Grok may be wired into the X platform's real-time data one day. This is the equivalent of having a chatbot grounded in the live activity of a social media network. This is huge: imagine being able to ask questions about trends, conversations, or even user sentiment. I'm curious to ask how Grok rates the average mood of X users on a given day.

Finally, the name: to grok means "to understand something intuitively, or by empathy." An interesting moniker for an AI system that may have neither. I promise I'll keep my mind open to the possibility.

HuggingChat

Open source

Model: OpenAssistant Llama

Presenting HuggingChat, an open source chatbot assembled by Hugging Face. It's similar to ChatGPT in terms of user experience, it accepts instructions equally well, and it seems to be happier right from the get-go—at least judging from the number of "Sure thing!", "Of course!", and "Let me know if any of these spark interest and we can brainstorm further!" I got.

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but the road is still rocky:

• It delivers a decent number of factual errors (David Benger is not a Microsoft co-founder), but we should all work up our fact-checking skills anyway.

• Parts of the output seem out of place. In one of our conversations, the model told me that some parts of its earlier output may have spelling errors.

• It sometimes stops generating output in the middle of a response, so keep your prompts short. Asking it to "continue" won't work all the time: sometimes the model will stay on topic; other times it'll go on a wild goose chase.

Despite these limitations, it feels great to use HuggingChat. It's something to compare ChatGPT to, revealing a bit about how these models take your inputs and calculate the outputs. You can definitely add it to your brainstorming toolkit, but I'd keep it away from more serious parts of your workflow—at least for the time being.

You can connect Hugging Face to Zapier, so it can talk to all the other apps you use. Here are some examples of how to automate Hugging Face, or you can get started with one of these templates.

YouChat

For searching the web

Model: OpenAI GPT-3

YouChat's user interface is reminiscent of a Google Search results page. The difference is there's a tab for AI chat in addition to the traditional video, news, and image search tabs.

Once you enter your prompt and receive the output, you can browse a list of web search results on the right side of the screen. At the bottom, you can also find contextual buttons that open up a collection of Reddit posts about the topic or maps with pins of any places discussed, for example. If you like the simplicity of ChatGPT, this might feel a bit crowded, but it's great for browsing lots of information faster.

You can adjust the priority that the engine should give to different sources by up- or down-voting them. This feature is called Apps—you can browse a huge list containing names such as Reddit or TechCrunch, and you can set the priorities based on your interests.

Like ChatGPT, YouChat has a chat history, and you can also share your searches with others. If you wish Google had a Bing-like AI chat already, YouChat is worth a look.

KoalaChat

For searching the web and generating content

Model: OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo

KoalaChat is a simple AI chat app powered by GPT-3.5 Turbo. While that sounds like the latest model from a sports car manufacturer, the output is pretty good. When I asked it to prepare a trip to the Grand Canyon, it created a three-day tour with an outline of what to see and what to do. I then asked it to give me a link to a map—and I got exactly what I asked for.

In addition to the chat experience, you can use KoalaWriter to generate blog posts with either GPT-3.5 or GPT-4. There aren't many controls when compared with tools specialized for content writing (you'll read about those next below), but they're a step up from ChatGPT's more freeform experience. KoalaChat isn't entirely free: there's a 250-message limit, and a series of limitations for KoalaWriter too. To raise the ceiling, the prices start at $9 per month, also unlocking the shiny GPT-4.

Jasper Chat

The content writing powerhouse

Model: OpenAI GPT-3 and GPT-4

Jasper is an all-in-one AI content creation powerhouse. It has AI templates for all kinds of content types—YouTube video scripts, blog posts, LinkedIn profile, about page copy, you name it—and recently rolled out its own Jasper Chat, joining in on the hype.

The great part about it is that you can quickly turn a conversation into a document (or more), making ideation and pushing first drafts easy work. When you input a prompt to create an article, Jasper Chat will return the result and suggest follow-up articles on similar topics.

The output quality is more or less the same when compared with ChatGPT—after all, they both use OpenAI's GPT models—but when reading the output, it feels like Jasper's developers are tuning it to adapt better for content production. Jasper Chat also connects to the internet, so you'll be able to fact-check faster with lists of fact sources.

Once you have dozens of fresh pieces to post, you may need images to go along with the text. Jasper also offers an AI image generation add-on, so you don't have to leave the platform to take care of aesthetics. All these features come with a price, but if you're on the high-volume content game, it shouldn't feel too expensive for the power you'll have at your disposal.

You can connect Jasper to Zapier to automate a lot of your content creation workflows. Discover the top ways to automate Jasper, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Chat by Copy.ai

For content writing at a thoughtful pace

Model: OpenAI's GPT models

Copy.ai is a text generation platform that focuses on writing copy. Like Jasper, it has AI templates to write content and copy faster. (If you want to dive deep into the similarities and differences, here's a look at Jasper vs. Copy.ai.)

You can chat with Chat by Copy.ai on one side of the screen and add the best ideas to the text editor on the right. When you're satisfied with the results, you can start editing the piece and organizing it into the appropriate project folder. It's a thoughtful approach.

The free plan is generous if you only need to generate content occasionally, so it's definitely worth trying to see if it fits your tech stack.

You can do even more with Copy.ai by connecting it to Zapier, so you can access it from wherever you spend you time. Learn more about how to automate Copy.ai, or try one of these pre-made workflows.

Chatsonic

For content writing

Model: OpenAI GPT-4

Chatsonic is Writesonic's AI chatting experience. It's meant for content production at scale, straight from a chat window to your blog or social media. It connects to the internet to find sources and keeps track of the information in each conversation. But unlike the competition, it also offers:

• Voice-to-text (you can prompt by talking out loud) and text-to-voice (it can read its output out loud back to you)

• Sharing your conversations with family, friends, or co-workers

• Setting the personality of the AI, letting you talk to a fitness trainer, stand-up comedian, or philosopher

• Image generation using either Stable Diffusion or OpenAI's DALL·E

• A prompt library with recipes to generate SEO keywords, for example; you can also save your best prompts here to reuse them later

• A way to interact with Chatsonic from X and Slack

That's a pretty feature-rich chat experience. And you can take it one step further by connecting Chatsonic to Zapier, so you can invoke Chatsonic from whatever app you're already in. Discover the top ways to automate Chatsonic, or try one of these templates.

ZenoChat

For content writing

Model: Sophos 2, OpenAI's GPT-4

TextCortex is a content generation app that has a collection of templates to turn your prompt into a first draft quickly. Within this app, you'll find ZenoChat, the chat experience powered by Sophos 2, an in-house model. OpenAI's GPT-4 is also available if you're looking for something more familiar. 

The proprietary model improved a lot since I last tested it. It can generate good output, leaning on brevity and straightforwardness. You can tune its base personality in the chat box dropdown, enable or disable web search, add a knowledge base to it, or set it to a different language.

It has a good collection of prompt templates in the marketplace. Simply browse and pick the one that best matches the task at hand. If you're too brief when writing prompts, ZenoChat has a unique feature that expands your prompt with as much detail as possible. This way, when you send it over, you can be sure you covered all the bases to get the best possible answer.

ChatSpot

For sales, marketing, and exploring your HubSpot CRM data

Model: OpenAI's GPT models

Who'd guess that HubSpot was in on the AI race too? Yes, the CRM giant is building ChatSpot, still in alpha stage, and it has a lot of potential. The app can be connected to your HubSpot data, so you can:

• Create, update, and add new tasks to any contacts

• Run reports

• Research companies and leads

• See analytics data for your HubSpot sites

• Do keyword research

All this with natural language prompts instead of a festival of clicks on the HubSpot CRM app. But these features are just the beginning. You can also use ChatSpot to write blog posts and post them straight to your HubSpot website.

To further improve productivity, it connects with Google Drive to speed up document creation: you can send any prompt straight to a Google Doc, a table of companies to a Google Sheet, or a generated image to Google Slides, all with just prompts. It used to offer dad jokes in loading screens, but it's so fast now that you'll be spared from this kind of humor. And you can connect HubSpot itself to thousands of other apps using Zapier—read more about how to automate HubSpot, or get started with one of these templates.

Personal AI

For messaging and training your AI clone

Model: Proprietary GGT-P OpenAI's GPT models, Claude 2

It's difficult to get GPT-3 to communicate exactly like you do. Personal AI helps fix that. It's based on a proprietary AI model called GGT-P, and it trains on your data: messages, documents, favorite links, and anything else you send it. Your personal AI will learn what makes you you and will adapt to your communication style.

It doesn't require a massive amount of data to start giving personalized output. To make each response more flexible, it uses OpenAI's GPT-3 to plug in the gaps, creating a mixture between a general and a personal response. You can see how much of each it is by taking a look at the Personal Score percentage.

Personal AI is great for messaging others, writing emails, or creating content in your own voice and starting from your own knowledge. It will suggest replies in your conversations that will start sounding more and more like you over time. Once you're confident it represents who you are and what you know, you can set it to Autopilot on a conversation-by-conversation basis to let it take over.

You can also connect Personal AI to Zapier, so you can automatically create memories for your chatbot as you're going about the rest of your day. Discover the top ways to automate Personal AI, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

OpenAI playground

For tinkering and testing your prompts

Model: OpenAI GPT-3 and GPT-4

Want to take a look under the hood? With OpenAI's playground, you can test the GPT models by entering more than just a prompt. It lets you control lots of behind-the-scenes settings:

• Temperature controls the randomness of the output

• Maximum length controls the length of the output

• Stop sequences tell the model when to stop generating text

And that's just to name a few.

This is a great spot to test the capabilities of GPT. You can use it to get better at prompting, understand how AI language models work, or test the viability of an AI app business idea powered by OpenAI. It has slightly less of a chatbot feel (there's ChatGPT for that), but it still has an easy-access vibe.

If you're using it for more than tinkering, you can connect OpenAI to Zapier to do things like create automatic replies in Gmail or Slack. Discover the top ways to automate OpenAI, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

DeepAI AI Chat

For tinkering and getting a feel of a unique model

Model: Proprietary, based on OpenAI's GPT-2's architecture

AI Chat's user interface isn't as polished as ChatGPT's, but the output feels similar most of the time. It includes a range of AI presets that change the way the AI works, which feels a lot like you're tinkering with the settings under the hood. To use these presets, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on any of them to begin:

• AI Debate lets you enter a topic and start a debate on it. The AI will open with its own thesis, and you can reply criticizing those points. As your conversation moves forward, the AI will keep adapting and defending its ideas.

• AI Disagreement is great if you have trouble making choices, either individually or with friends and family. Enter all the possibilities of a decision you're making, and the AI will decide for you.

• AI Motivational Coach 1) assures you you're not alone, 2) provides a set of strategies to help you complete a difficult task, and 3) enthusiastically reminds you that "you've got this."

• AI Terminal acts as a code tester so you can check if you're on the right track.

• And there are a few more for talking about philosophy, discussing relationships, or giving a piratey flavor to each interaction.

There's a paid plan at $4.99 that unlocks Genius mode for chat and adds a collection of image generation credits to your pocket. AI Chat is a surprisingly solid playground—be sure to try it out.

Character.AI

For fun

Model: C1.2

Ever wondered why Elon Musk bought Twitter? While you can't pick up the phone and ask the real one, you can hop on Character.AI and do the next best thing: ask an AI model set to talk like Musk and brainstorm together about what's next for the social media platform.

There are plenty of characters to talk to. Click on their profile to see more information about them, and if you'd like to start a conversation, you can do so with a few clicks.

It's also possible to create characters of your own, with an impressive set of controls. You can then proceed to train them by chatting and rating the responses it gives you. If you're looking for an AI chatbot for fun, this might be your pick.

Snapchat My AI

AI in social media

Model: OpenAI's GPT models

Snapchat made a name for itself by introducing disappearing messages into the social media scene. Now it also offers My AI, an AI chatbot that can answer almost anything directly within the app.

It's powered by OpenAI's models, so the output isn't wildly different from the original ChatGPT experience. To access it, open the app, and tap the chat icon, where you'll find the My AI conversation. You can tap its profile image to change settings and manage your data.

As you might expect, the uses for productivity are limited, but My AI can answer quick questions on things to do around town, offer gift advice, and even comment on snaps you send over to it: "Wow, those eyes are really unique!"

If you're interested in new chatbots in development for social media, be sure to take a look at TikTok's Tako too.

Khanmigo

For learning

Model: Proprietary

Khan Academy has built a reputation for offering high-quality learning resources for free. As AI opens up new avenues in learning, Khan Labs is working on Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutor to help you master complex topics.

You have to make a donation to get on the waitlist, and then it will offer one-on-one tutoring on topics ranging from history to mathematics, helping you get your mind around the core issues. What I like about it is how it doesn't tell you the answer to an exercise—instead, it asks you a set of questions and provides hints to get you to think your way to it. It never, ever yields the answer, not even if you beg.

As you progress through Khan Academy's curriculum, you can review topics, see what's next, and hop on interactive quizzes to keep knowledge fresh. This interactivity is a breath of fresh air in the familiar online course experience, making the material more approachable and fun to engage with.

Chatty Butler

For a mobile option

Model: OpenAI's GPT models

ChatGPT was a bit late to the mobile scene, so a few GPT wrapper apps made it first. But this doesn't mean they aren't interesting on their own. Chatty Butler is our first example.

Powered by OpenAI's models, it offers a range of assistants to help you with multiple tasks. The Tutor can help you with classwork, the Salary Negotiator coaches you through securing your next raise, and the Mental Health Buddy will help you find your balance.

You can mark your own favorites for easy access and jump back into each conversation from the history. If you can't find the right assistant for the job, you can tap the plus icon at the top-left to suggest your own.

You can dictate your prompts to Chatty Butler, and it can also talk back out loud to you. There are a few settings to change generation speed, writing style, and intelligence level. For this last setting, it upgrades the AI model from GPT-3.5 to its more experienced GPT-4 sibling.

ChatOn (iOS, Android)

For a mobile option

Model: OpenAI's GPT models

ChatOn has a collection of task templates for your AI. Instead of being assistant-oriented like Chatty Butler, ChatOn asks you a series of questions to help personalize your prompt before sending it over to OpenAI's models.

There are dozens of possibilities. When you tap the Tasks for AI button at the bottom, you'll be able to see all the templates. You can generate X profiles, Instagram captions, or YouTube scripts; write an essay, put together an outline, or extract keywords from text; and many, many more options that are better experienced than described.

ChatOn has an interesting extra: the AI keyboard. Instead of using the default Apple or Google mobile keyboards, you can install a new one to generate anything wherever there's an input field in your phone. This means you can, for example, generate replies when sending a WhatsApp message without having to open the ChatOn app. No more clunky copy-pasting: you can generate the text you need exactly where you need it.

GitHub Copilot

For coding autocomplete

Model: OpenAI Codex

Technically, GitHub Copilot doesn't have the chat-like experience you're used to when using ChatGPT. But since it integrates with your integrated development environment (IDE) and acts as an autocomplete, it sort of feels like you're having a dialogue with an AI model as you code.

When you start typing a comment or writing a function, Copilot will suggest the code that best accomplishes what you're setting out to do. You can tap to cycle through all the suggestions, and if you find a fitting one, press tab to paste it.

Since there can be security risks when using generated code, Copilot includes security vulnerability filtering to ensure it doesn't create more problems than it solves. You'll still have to audit the code, especially since some suggestions aren't as efficient as they could be. If you want to take a look at the productivity and happiness impact of using Copilot, be sure to take a look at this study.

You can connect GitHub to all the other apps you use with Zapier, so you can do things like integrate GitHub with Slack. Here are some other examples.

Amazon CodeWhisperer

For coding autocomplete

Model: Proprietary

Amazon is in the AI game, too, with CodeWhisperer, a machine learning solution to help developer productivity. It's very similar to GitHub Copilot with a few key differences:

• Amazon is running a proprietary AI model trained on open source code and Amazon Web Services (AWS) usage data. It then trains on your own project data to learn about your coding practices to generate more personalized suggestions.

• Since it's built with AWS in mind, it will help you stay within the code best practices for Amazon services such as EC2, Lambda, and S3.

• It doesn't support as many languages as Copilot, being limited to C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, and TypeScript. As for IDEs, it supports all Amazon-based ones along with JetBrains and Visual Studio Code.

Tabnine

For coding autocomplete

Model: Proprietary

Tabnine feels like a more enterprise and team-oriented solution. Its AI models are trained in fully open source code, keeping copyleft code outside. For context: copyleft code can be freely used and shared as long as the resulting code is also copyleft. As a company, I'm sure you don't want to be exposed to potential infringement here, so it's nice to know that Tabnine's models will never generate code that can fall within this kind of license.

The AI models can be adapted to your own codebase, combining general coding practices with the ones preferred by your organization. There are plenty of security features to keep your data safe, with deployment options that range from a secure SaaS to on-premise. To top it off, Tabnine Chat beta can answer all your technical questions, grounded on your own data and on the best coding practices.

These features are shiny, especially for larger organizations. Offering all of this is surely expensive, which may explain the limited free plan that only offers two-to-three-word code completion.

Codeium

For coding autocomplete

Model: Proprietary

Another option with great online reviews and a generous free plan for individuals, Codeium does a bit more than completing your code. It has a chatbot that you can use to scope projects, ask to explain code, and get improvement suggestions. A programming language polyglot supporting more than 70 languages, integrating with over 40 IDEs, Codeium is another solid app to consider if you're a coder.

What about traditional chatbot builders?

AI chatbots are fun—and useful, in a lot of cases—but traditional chatbot builders absolutely still have their place when you want to create a chatbot instead of just use one.

If you're looking to build a robust chatbot that supports complex automation and workflows, integrates with the systems you use, and works on multiple channels, these are the best chatbot builders for you to consider. Some of the options even include AI capabilities, either by adding ChatGPT onto an existing bot or by training your bot on specific data.

Which ChatGPT alternative should you use?

As ChatGPT itself would tell you, "The answer to this question really depends on what you want to use the chatbot for. There are many different AI chatbots available, and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses." Nailed it.

The biggest thing to remember is that most of these AI chatbots use the same language model as ChatGPT, and the ones that don't sound pretty similar anyway...at least if you squint. Most of the differences are in how the apps are to interact with, what extra features they offer, and how they connect to the other tools you use. Almost all of these AI chatbots are free to test, so take a day and give them all a spin. At the very least, it'll be an experience.

Related reading:

• The best AI productivity tools

• How to use AI to spark content ideas

• How to use AI badly

• How to write an effective GPT-3 or GPT-4 prompt

• How to build a custom version of ChatGPT with OpenAI's GPT builder

This article was originally published in April 2023. The most recent update was in December 2023.