HuggingChat: The First Open-Source ChatGPT Alternative
The wave of new AI chatbots is not stopping anytime soon; another contender has jumped into the ring with ChatGPT. Released recently, it's called 'HuggingChat.' The main focus of this chatbot is to provide a more transparent, inclusive, and accountable alternative to ChatGPT.
HuggingChat is not the first open-source alternative to ChatGPT, but it appears to be the first available platform that resembles ChatGPT. In its current state, HuggingChat acts as a user interface that facilitates interaction with the Open Assistant-powered back-end allowing for chatbot functionality. It is powered by Open Assistant's latest LLaMA-based model which is said to be one of the best open-source chat models available in the market right now.
However, the LLaMA model is the work of Meta AI, and they have restricted any commercial use of their model. So, the LLaMA model will be used for now, and the developers intend to add support for more models in the future, paving the way for varying usage scenarios and even enterprise use cases.
How it works
HuggingChat's user interface has also been open-sourced. Users can take a look at the code that makes it run on the official website. Currently, as it is in its early development stage (version 0), a few key features are missing, such as saving the conversation over a browser restart or when switching browsers. Too much traffic errors also pop up when running chat commands.
When a command can be run, HuggingChat provides decent info about itself, which is a good sign for the future. The chatbot is running in what the folks over at Hugging Face (the creators of HuggingChat) call 'Space.' The inference backend is also running text-generation-inference on their Inference API infrastructure.
Why HuggingChat is a good alternative
Alternatives like Hugging Chat are needed so that no single service dominates a specific niche. OpenChatKit or Dolly can be some other options to consider, but for now, HuggingChat is a good option. Although it is not yet close to the levels of ChatGPT, these open-source alternatives will need some time, but someday they might be on par with ChatGPT or even better; who knows?
Conclusion
HuggingChat is a new open-source alternative to ChatGPT that is worth trying out. Although it has some limitations, it is a good option to consider for those looking for a more transparent, inclusive, and accountable chatbot platform.
