Beyond ChatGPT: A Closer Look at Generative AI Alternatives

It’s amazing to think that it’s been less than a year since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022. From being lauded for generating impressively detailed text that signified major strides in AI development, ChatGPT has only gone from strength to strength, with the latest update featuring text-to-speech capabilities.

With all these capabilities, it’s no surprise that 64% of businesses expect AI to increase productivity. 87% of global organisations even believe that integration of AI technology is what will give them a competitive edge. Their sentiments are not entirely unfounded, either. According to a report by Grand View Research, the global artificial intelligence market size was valued at USD 136.55 billion in 2022, with the marketing and media sector leading with more than 19.5% of the global revenue share. 

No matter how things eventually pan out, it’s undeniable that using AI tools is quickly becoming the new workplace norm. But will tacking on AI to current processes be as revolutionary as we might think?

The problem with solely relying on ChatGPT

Despite the constant upgrades, ChatGPT is not flawless. Since its launch, the AI chatbot has been plagued by copyright issues, with American newspaper The New York Times preparing a lawsuit against OpenAI for using their content in training the language model. Other writers, including Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, have also sued OpenAI for the same reason.

Copyright issues aside, ChatGPT has also been known to produce incorrect information through “hallucinations”, generating entirely made up ‘facts’ and statistics that cannot be relied upon for research. To date, GPT-4 only has access to information up to August 2022. And while there are workarounds that allow the robot to plug into real-time data, the aforementioned lawsuits may mean that more companies will find ways to protect their data from AI bots moving forward.

The good news is that even if ChatGPT does become limited or slow down in development, there are other AI tools on the market that may be even better at helping professionals solve common problems at work.

Elicit: The go-to research assistant

In the world of journalism, marketing, and investing where speed is of the essence, publishing fake news can quickly land writers in hot water. AI has only added to these woes by spreading misinformation while increasing the pressure for faster turnarounds. 

Aware of these issues, developers of Elicit have formulated a way to expedite literature reviews by giving immediate summaries of trusted documents. To provide assurance of reliability, the application also cites and links its sources for easy verification. Users can even gain access to datasets used by other authors to gain inspiration and direction. At present, Elicit is free for everyone to use.

ChatSonic: A focus on accurate fact-based content

ChatSonic by Writesonic is one of the plugins used to address GPT-4’s limited access to real-time data. Built on top of ChatGPT in combination with Google search, ChatSonic’s developers have found a way to meticulously curate datasets while feeding their bots with up-to-date knowledge.

And instead of shooting in the dark with prompts, writers can generate text with intention by relying on preset personas such as accountants, poets, and even movie characters. Unfortunately, ChatSonic does require payment for usage. They do, however, provide a free trial that lets you generate up to 10,000 words per month.

Perplexity AI: A platform that ensures sources are credited

If you’re looking for an AI alternative that was not created by OpenAI, then Perplexity AI might be right for you. Just like Elicit, Perplexity cites links within its responses, allowing users to easily prefer back to the original source and avoid plagiarism.

Another leg up that Perplexity has over ChatGPT is its ability to accurately solve mathematical problems, summarise content, and further elaborate on answers. What’s more, Perplexity synthesises real-time web data to ensure that its sources are relevant to the prevailing news climate. 

These functions are available under a “Popular Now” tab that proposes autofill suggestions to streamline the ideation process. The cherry on top is that Perplexity’s GPT-3 version is completely free to use, even without an account. However, the Pro version that runs on a GPT-4 engine costs $20 per month or $200 per year after the initial 7 day free trial ends.

WriterZen: Personal assistant for content creation

For writers, managers, and even business leaders who are looking for an assistant to bounce ideas off, WriterZen may just become your new best friend. It offers a blend of functionalities aimed to assist content creation, from generating article outlines to creating complete paragraphs from a single prompt — but you can use its conversational outputs as a testbed for your own ideas, too.

Through its natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, WriterZen offers users a SEO-optimised Keyword Explorer and a Topic Discovery tool for the most relevant topics in your field. Best of all, it has a Plagiarism Checker to ensure your content’s originality.

Similar to ChatGPT, WriterZen is unable to generate long-form, structured content. As WriterZen was created with the purpose to function as an AI SEO assistant, it is better to see this chatbot as a means to optimise your content for search engines, instead of a tool that creates content from scratch. The chatbot offers a free trial of 7 days, with the cheapest membership tier priced at $19 a month.

Become your best self by learning to use AI tools

Tempting as it may be to fully depend on ever-developing AI tools, it’s important to recognise their inherent flaws in order to play around them and fully extract their advantage. Ultimately, it’s still up to us, the individuals, to gain the necessary industrial expertise so that these tools can enhance instead of replace us. 

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