Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changer for technology and the global economy. With the market size estimated at over $450 billion in 2022 and a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19%, leading to a predicted value of more than $2,575 billion in 2032, AI is bound to disrupt just about every industry.
A significant part of the overall AI development is related to conversational intelligence. AI-based conversational software market size was estimated at $7.61 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 23.6% from 2023 to 2030, exceeding the growth rate of the whole AI market.
What is conversational artificial intelligence (AI)?
Conversational AI refers to systems imitating natural, human-to-human communication. It rose to prominence with the launch of ChatGPT (short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer), a large language model-based chatbot developed by OpenAI and made available in November 2022.
Conversational AI facilitates natural, human-like interaction between computers and humans through text or speech. It allows machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language and engage in meaningful conversations.
Tools like ChatGPT can generate content, help you do research, and provide you with valuable information much harder to obtain, unscramble, and adjust for relevance through standard web queries.
However, they have also been known for creating low-quality, cliché-ridden content, lack of accuracy, errors, stereotyping, providing misleading data, and blatantly making stuff up. In other words, they're hardly reliable without their output being thoroughly checked by professionals in the relevant fields.
On top of that, content generated by ChatGPT has sparked lots of controversy in terms of political correctness and even safety and security. According to media reports, on various occasions, the chatbot expressed a wish to release nuclear secrets, compared a user to Adolf Hitler, and declared love to another user.
Such situations led journalists and researchers to hypothesize that AI models could steer users toward misinformation or even persuade them to commit harmful deeds, including crime.
What are ChatGPT's competitors?
The success of ChatGPT prompted other big tech companies to speed up the development of their AI models and perfect the existing ones. Currently, there are quite many ChatGPT alternatives and competitors, each with its own advantages and limitations.
Most notable examples include:
- Google Bard, an experimental conversational AI chat service praised for speed and creativity but criticized for plagiarism and inaccuracy,
- Bing Chat, Bing's AI chatbot feature based on GPT-4 (ChatGPT updated version), providing users with easier access and better usability,
- Auto-GPT, an AI assistant leveraging GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to carry out tasks semi-autonomously, without detailed prompts from humans,
- Copy.ai, an AI-based solutions able to summarize content based on the URL provided by a user,
- YouChat, an AI chatbot with multimodal functionality, capable of producing information in forms other than text to provide users with detailed answers to their questions.
The list goes on. The AI and machine learning ecosystem has been growing rapidly, producing new features and solutions in a variety of fields. Other popular tools include apps for generating graphics, movies, and music, such as Midjourney, Dall-E, AIVA, or Soundraw.
However, in the conversational AI department, the most popular and widely used chatbots are those based on the GPT-3, GPT-3.5-turbo, and GPT-4 language models (the latter being the latest iteration of the platform), with ChatGPT leading the field.
So, is there any real competition on the horizon? Recent news suggests that there might be. It's hard to predict its potential to shake the current AI landscape, but ambitions are high – which is hardly surprising if you consider that the solution's proponent is no other than Elon Musk.
TruthGPT: artificial intelligence in search of "deeper truth."
"I'm going to start something which I call TruthGPT," declared Musk, speaking on Fox News's "Tucker Carlson Tonight" talk show, on April 17, 2023. According to Musk's description, the TruthGPT AI chatbot will be "a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe."
Elevating AI from the level of a human-like interlocutor to make it capable of researching core mechanisms of reality seems like a bold mission, but it's not the first time Musk aims for the stars.
The billionaire has an outstanding track record of developing cutting-edge technologies and high-performing enterprises. His business achievements include:
- cofounding Paypal, the world's most valuable fintech enterprise,
- founding SpaceX, a spacecraft manufacturing and satellite communications company,
- investing and co-developing Tesla, a leading electric vehicle manufacturer,
- cofounding Neuralink, a neurotechnology company developing implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs),
- and… cofounding OpenAI, the exact same company that developed ChatGPT.
What is Elon Musk's opinion on OpenAI and ChatGPT?
In 2018, Elon Musk parted ways with the latter company, stepping down from his board seat. As a reason for his departure, the billionaire quoted "a potential future conflict [of interest]" related to his CEO position at Tesla, considering the company's research in AI. Musk also claimed that OpenAI was lagging behind other major players like Google and even suggested taking control of OpenAI, an idea that the board did not accept.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, Musk has been a vocal critic of the AI, or at least the current course of its development. On several occasions, he warned that AI may evolve to be able to cause "civilization destruction" and annihilate humans.
"AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production, in the sense that it is, it has the potential — however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential of civilization destruction," he said in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Even though Musk backed OpenAI as an investor, he opposed turning it into a for-profit business. He also claimed that he "put a lot of effort" into shaping OpenAI as a counterweight to Google, but he took his "eye off the ball," failing to achieve his objective. Later, he declared his intentions to fight public opinion manipulation with AI-based solutions.
Elon Musk criticized ChatGPT several times, calling it "politically correct." "You have to separate the truth from the politics if you want to be credible on the truth issue. It's a mistake to try to tie the two together," the businessman said.
TruthGPT or xAI? Elon Musk's maximum truth-seeking AI venture
Since the Tucker Carlson interview, TruthGPT made a lot of headlines and triggered "impostor" projects (we'll get back to that in a minute), but a few months later, it was revoked as a brand. At least, it seems so after the announcement Elon Musk made in July.
The billionaire declared the formation of xAI – an artificial intelligence project aiming "to understand the true nature of the universe." The initiative is featured on the x.ai website, whose launch coincided with Twitter's rebranding (obviously, Musk has a thing for the "x" letter).
x.AI's team, led by Musk, includes eleven engineers with previous experience at DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto. The collective boasts many achievements in the field of AI research.
xAI's experts have contributed to widely used methods, such as the Adam optimizer, Batch Normalization, Layer Normalization, and adversarial examples. They have co-created other innovative techniques and methods of analysis, including Transformer-XL, Autoformalization, the Memorizing Transformer, Batch Size Scaling, and μTransfer. Plus, they have been instrumental in developing breakthrough technologies, such as AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4.
With twelve people on board, the team seems small, but the company is actively recruiting specialists. So, if you feel like a seasoned engineer, you might get a chance to push our world towards the technological singularity.
Is there a TruthGPT chatbot?
Musk's AI-based truth-seeking declarations hyped the "TruthGPT" name, which seems to have remained nothing more than a jilted brand. However, some parties were clearly hoping for the concept to blast off under the initial flag.
To tap into the buzz and monetize user interest, they've cooked up several projects exploiting the name. One of them is the TruthGPT chatbot, which claims to "help the world through artificial intelligence." On its site, the initiative admits to being "inspired" by Elon Musk. Then it goes on to explain that TruthGPT is an "AI chat bot, living within a floating robotic character named Truth" (or Truthie, as a diminutive).
So, what does Truth do? It responds to prompts. It's simply a mobile app with a text assistant function able to provide feedback in reaction to user's messages. It can be helpful in some situations, providing interesting advice or support, for example, to enable faster communication with customers, but it's nowhere near the level of delivering fact-checked, reliable information, not to mention unveiling hidden secrets of the universe. In other words, Elon Musk can't vouch for the accuracy of Truth.
Are there other TruthGPT projects?
The TruthGPT initiative spawned a lot of copycats and impostors trying to leverage Musk's idea-turned-buzzword for their own gain. Typing the "TruthGPT" keyword into Twitter's search bar produces dozens of results – channels or accounts sporting the TruthGPT moniker combined with different handle variants, such as @TruthGPT_Guru, etc.
None of them is or can be affiliated with Elon Musk, especially since the billionaire apparently gave up on using TruthGPT as a brand name. Some accounts straightforwardly admit that they are not related to Musk's TruthGPT project and claim they're dedicated to pushing their own vision of AI. However, most of them are inactive or haven't posted for a long time.
A slightly more ambitious attempt to tap into TruthGPT's short-lived fame is TheWholeTruthFoods.com website. It's simply offering a chatbot named TruthGPT for asking questions on food and fitness.
Is there a TruthGPT cryptocurrency?
A more robust shot at harnessing the TruthGPT buzz is the TruthGPT cryptocurrency. Actually, CoinGecko lists three TruthGPT cryptocurrencies. Two of them are related to the TruthGPT chatbot project.
According to the white paper, one of those currencies is already defunct. It traded on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) until June 2023. According to historical data, its last recorded trading volume was approximately $8,000, and the highest price paid for TruthGPT (BSC), recorded on April 20, 2023, was $0.00770255.
The second TruthGPT cryptocurrency from the TruthGPT chatbot creators is an Ethereum-based one, and it's called – unsurprisingly – TruthGPT ($TRUTH). The new iteration of the "coin" has been intended as a utility token, allowing users to unlock premium features offered within the mobile application.
The second-generation TruthGPT cryptocurrency is traded on decentralized exchanges, predominantly on Uniswap V2. The 24-hour trading volume recorded on October 12 was $1,278.01, and the highest price paid for TruthGPT (ETH), recorded on July 17, 2023, stays at $0.00290032.
The third TruthGPT cryptocurrency listed by Coingecko is related to the TruthGPTOfficial.com website, which doesn't really make clear what it's about except for featuring a Truth GPT-related slogan: "TruthGPT : Elon's Truth Seeking AI," complemented by generic paragraphs about Elon Musk's project. The whitepaper linked by CoinGecko is a blank, four-page PDF file.
The "official" TruthGPT (TRUTH, obviously) cryptocurrency is a bit older than the one described above since it was launched in April, soon after Musk's revelation. The all-time high price paid for TruthGPT – recorded on April 21, 2023, just after the launch – is $0.00111939, and a 24-hour trading volume on October 12 was $96,370.27.
The interesting fact is that the "coin" has appreciated a tiny bit in October instead of plunging down into non-existence as might have been expected by scoffers. No market cap information for any of TruthGPT cryptocurrencies is available.
More TruthGPT-related inventions in this vein can be found on DEXTools.io, the DeFi portfolio and cryptocurrency price tracking app. The platform lists 160 "relevant results" for the TruthGPT query with eight related chains, including BNB Chain, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Solana.
Most of the results have a very low project reliability score, so think thrice before you decide to buy TruthGPT smart contract token in any shape or form, as it may be not the best asset in your portfolio.
