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Since its public launch in November 2022, ChatGPT, the mesmerizing AI chatbot by OpenAI, has grown in popularity like wildfire. Social media feeds are filled with incredible things people are doing with the chatbot. Jobseekers, programmers, high school teachers, content creators—professionals in almost every field are finding good uses for the tool.
However, when one tool takes center stage, it's easy to lose track of the alternatives that could offer equal or even better value. We've put together three of the best ChatGPT alternatives you can use right now.
1. Chatsonic
The underlying technology behind ChatGPT (which is GPT 3.5) is the same technology that powers Chatsonic, making it as interesting as ChatGPT itself. Rather than just being a clone of ChatGPT, Chatsonic goes a step further and builds on the abilities of ChatGPT while fixing some of ChatGPT's limitations.
If you ask ChatGPT who won the 2022 World Cup, it wouldn't know. You'd expect a powerful AI model like ChatGPT to answer this straightforward question in a heartbeat. However, because ChatGPT's knowledge base has a cut-off date of 2021, the AI model can't answer questions about anything that happened after 2021.
We asked ChatGPT to solve different problems in PHP, JavaScript, and HTML. ChatGPT responses were more "complete" and properly formatted in all instances, although not necessarily more accurate.
You'll find ChatGPT responses to be more detailed and longer than Chatsonic's. In several cases, Chatsonic tends to summarize its responses. That might work for some people, but we didn't find it useful when we needed a long-form response. However, those limitations aside, Chatsonic is exciting and one of the best ChatGPT alternatives you can find.
2. GPT-3 Playground
Even before ChatGPT went viral, there was GPT-3 Playground, a platform for the public to play with OpenAI's GPT-3 AI model. Unfortunately, the tool didn't create as much buzz as ChatGPT has. This is partly because of its rather technical user interface and lack of consumer-focused publicity.
Ironically, although ChatGPT is getting much of the spotlight, GPT-3 is a much larger and significantly more powerful AI model. It is undoubtedly one of the most powerful AI language models around.
ChatGPT is like an iteration of the GPT-3 model that has been streamlined and fine-tuned to be more conversational and human-like in its response. It can better understand human intent, provide context-specific answers and sustain coherent conversations.
You can picture GPT-3 Playground as ChatGPT for power users. You can tweak it to do what ChatGPT does and even much more. There are more options and settings to customize the AI model to behave the way you want.
There are also some differences in the nature of the response you'll get from both demonstration models. While ChatGPT will refuse to answer questions on some sensitive topics, the GPT-3 Playground tool is less likely to refuse to answer questions. If you'd love to get handy with the GPT-3 Playground, here's a guide on how to use the GPT-3 Playground.
3. YouChat
YouChat, like every other ChatGPT alternative on our list, is powered by OpenAI's GPT-3.5 AI model. This gives it similar capabilities as ChatGPT. It has a sleek, colorful interface and is neatly interwoven into You.com's search engine.
As a result, YouChat can act as a search engine that gives you a list of links to indexed web pages relevant to your query. Or, you can get the typical ChatGPT-styled conversational responses for questions. If you are looking for a search engine and a chatbot like ChatGPT rolled into one product, then YouChat is an excellent option.
Unfortunately, YouChat is plagued by the limitations of GPT-3.5, which is its base technology. Remember, GPT-3.5, and all related models can not provide accurate responses to events that occurred after 2021 (which is its knowledge base cut-off date).
As a result, if you ask YouChat questions about recent events, prepare for unpredictable outcomes. While ChatGPT will refuse to answer questions related to events after 2021, YouChat might attempt to answer such questions with wrong answers.
Nevertheless, YouChat still has the edge over ChatGPT when it comes to handling queries about recent events. We asked YouChat and ChatGPT to compare the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro smartphones.