Hugging Face Launches Open Source AI Assistant Maker To Rival OpenAI's Custom GPTs (venturebeat.com) 11
Carl Franzen reports via VentureBeat: Hugging Face, the New York City-based startup that offers a popular, developer-focused repository for open source AI code and frameworks (and hosted last year's "Woodstock of AI"), today announced the launch of third-party, customizable Hugging Chat Assistants. The new, free product offering allows users of Hugging Chat, the startup's open source alternative to OpenAI's ChatGPT, to easily create their own customized AI chatbots with specific capabilities, similar both in functionality and intention to OpenAI's custom GPT Builder â" though that requires a paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus ($20 per month), Team ($25 per user per month paid annually), and Enterprise (variable pricing depending on the needs).
Phillip Schmid, Hugging Face's Technical Lead & LLMs Director, posted the news on the social network X (formerly known as Twitter), explaining that users could build a new personal Hugging Face Chat Assistant "in 2 clicks!" Schmid also openly compared the new capabilities to OpenAI's custom GPTs. However, in addition to being free, the other big difference between Hugging Chat Assistant and the GPT Builder and GPT Store is that the latter tools depend entirely on OpenAI's proprietary large language models (LLM) GPT-4 and GPT-4 Vision/Turbo. Users of Hugging Chat Assistant, by contrast, can choose which of several open source LLMs they wish to use to power the intelligence of their AI Assistant on the backend, including everything from Mistral's Mixtral to Meta's Llama 2. That's in keeping with Hugging Face's overarching approach to AI -- offering a broad swath of different models and frameworks for users to choose between -- as well as the same approach it takes with Hugging Chat itself, where users can select between several different open source models to power it.
Phillip Schmid, Hugging Face's Technical Lead & LLMs Director, posted the news on the social network X (formerly known as Twitter), explaining that users could build a new personal Hugging Face Chat Assistant "in 2 clicks!" Schmid also openly compared the new capabilities to OpenAI's custom GPTs. However, in addition to being free, the other big difference between Hugging Chat Assistant and the GPT Builder and GPT Store is that the latter tools depend entirely on OpenAI's proprietary large language models (LLM) GPT-4 and GPT-4 Vision/Turbo. Users of Hugging Chat Assistant, by contrast, can choose which of several open source LLMs they wish to use to power the intelligence of their AI Assistant on the backend, including everything from Mistral's Mixtral to Meta's Llama 2. That's in keeping with Hugging Face's overarching approach to AI -- offering a broad swath of different models and frameworks for users to choose between -- as well as the same approach it takes with Hugging Chat itself, where users can select between several different open source models to power it.
The Smuckers of AI (Score:2)
With a name like that, it has to be good. Remember that?
Same thing with these guys. How they managed to get seed funding then do a $235M corporate round is beyond me.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, I immediately think of the face hugger from Alien when I see the name, and imagine that is what this company does.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm looking forward to the very exciting phase 2 of their business model, it's called Bursting Chest.
Phase 1: Hugging Face
Phase 2: Bursting Chest
Phase 3: Profit
...to "rival" OpenAI's custom GPTs (Score:2)
This is their goal, to compete with OpenAI. This by definition makes them a rival. It does not indicate that they are in the same actual league with OpenAI. The difference? Money. OpenAI has received, and spent, billions developing and training its AI. The results are clear, they wouldn't have taken the world by storm if it was crap. I wish Hugging Face the best. But they're up against a very strong, well-funded competitor.
In this regard, Anthropic and Google stand a better chance. We have yet to see how co
Re:...to "rival" OpenAI's custom GPTs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:...to "rival" OpenAI's custom GPTs (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't doubt you are right.
But let's examine Wikipedia's success a bit. Wikipedia succeeded because of two factors:
1. They spend a LOT of money. Their annual budget is $175 million. https://www.business-standard.... [business-standard.com]
2. They got a LOT of volunteers to spend time helping them build their site. Currently, Wikipedia has about 32 million editors. https://blog.reputationx.com/w... [reputationx.com].
Now, I realize that Wikipedia didn't have these kinds of numbers early on. But they *did* spend a lot of money and get a lot of help to make it what it is.
A great idea that is not backed by money, is just a dead great idea. There may be an exception or two to this rule, but not very many.
OpenAI was by no means the first LLM, the first of which started to appear around 2013. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse... [linkedin.com] What set it apart from the others was financial backing.
So It's A Xenomorph. (Score:1)
I will pass, thank you.
Woodstock? (Score:1)
They're as good at rationalising their behaviour & portraying themselves as "good" as psychopaths.
Not terrible. (Score:2)
Having played with each of the contenders a bit here or there in conversational ways, this one is at least on par with any of them. Granted, I was "chatting" with them about creative ways to use current pop-culture themes. Some of them fell apart relatively quickly. This one at least held the thread together, while discussing everything from George Burns to Mark Pelligrino (God (Oh God, You Devil) and Lucifer (Supernatural) and even managed to get what I was hinting at, though not really seeming to get the