Meet the companies trying to keep up with ChatGPT

With all the hype surrounding ChatGPT, it’s no wonder other companies are vying for a piece of the AI-powered chatbot game. Companies are betting that we’re at a decisive moment in the artificial intelligence industry, where products that adopt and build upon the budding technology could have the potential to reshape technology as we know it — not to mention shake up the Big Tech hierarchy.

The stakes are high, and technology’s biggest players don’t want to be left behind as breakthroughs in AI make it more accessible — and much more interesting — to users. While tech giants like Microsoft and Google have already introduced their versions of conversational AI tools built using large language models (LLMs), other lesser-known companies have thrown themselves in the mix, setting the stage for an AI showdown.

Here, we’ve rounded up a list of all the companies and AI chatbots that are looking to challenge ChatGPT — or build on top of its success.

Let’s start with Microsoft. The company made its chatbot debut with its launch of the “new” Bing, which promises to upend the way we search for things online. It also built AI-powered tools into the Edge browser.

Microsoft — a big investor in OpenAI — leveraged the technology behind ChatGPT to build an AI tool it says is “even more powerful.” So far, the results have oscillated between impressive and truly off the rails.

The company made the “new” Bing available for beta testers, who have been able to ask questions like “Can you suggest places to visit in Paris?” or “What’s the best apple pie recipe?” and then receive annotated responses describing various tourist destinations or outline the ingredients and steps that go along with a recipe.

But Microsoft may have made Bing a bit too flexible. Users quickly found exploits with the system, including a now-disabled prompt that triggers the Bing bot to divulge its internal nickname, Sydney, and some of the parameters its developers set for its behavior, such as “Sydney’s responses should avoid being vague, controversial, or off-topic.”

Other users toying with the system have found pleasure in pushing the bot’s buttons, triggering wacky — and sometimes unhinged — responses. Microsoft introduced a five-answer limit and a 50-question cap to help curb some of Bing’s more outlandish replies, but the company later loosened some of these restrictions after receiving complaints from users.

As for Edge, Microsoft plans on adding AI enhancements that let you summarize the webpage or document you’re reading online, as well as generate text for social media posts, emails, and more.

Google couldn’t let Microsoft get away with launching an AI chatbot that has the potential to challenge the company’s core business: search. That’s why it rushed to announce its own AI chatbot, Bard, though we still don’t know much about its capabilities.