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The co-founders of Google DeepMind and LinkedIn have created a new AI chatbot. The announcement comes amid a surge of interest in AI from consumers and investors worldwide.

The co-founders of Google DeepMind and LinkedIn have launched an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. The launch has been reported in the Financial Times this week. The ‘Pi’ chatbot joins an already crowded field of generative AI-powered platforms, from providers such as Microsoft’s OpenAI, Google and Snap. Pi is the first product from Inflection AI, a year-old startup. It arrives on the scene right as the subject of generative AI has sparked the interest – and imagination – of the world’s consumers and investors alike.

Users of Pi can have personal conversations with the chatbot. This can be accomplished either directly via an app, or through text, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, according to the FT.

Pi provides “supportive, informative conversation”

Mustafa Suleyman, Inflection AI’s CEO, “described the chatbot as having the persona of a sympathetic sounding board”. The product has been beta-tested by users for several months and has a limited use case. This makes it safer and easier to control, Suleyman told FT in an interview.

“There’s lots of things Pi cannot do. It doesn’t do lists, or coding, it doesn’t do travel plans, it won’t write your marketing strategy, or your essay for school,” Suleyman said. “It’s purely designed for relaxed, supportive, informative conversation”. Eventually, the personal AI tool would also assist in various ways, such as helping users perform online tasks, FT said. But for now, the platform is geared more toward “mundane, trivial and banal” conversations, suggests Suleyman.

Inflection AI provided FT with a live demo of the chatbot. In it, Pi differentiated itself from the likes of ChatGPT and Bard in that it often ended its responses with a question for the user. This modality seemed to aim at encouraging dialogue. “That’s what Pi does really well, it helps facilitate your own line of inquiry,” Suleyman said.

The race is on for “nextgen” AI platforms

Inflection AI, which was founded by Suleyman, Karén Simonyan and LinkedIn creator Reid Hoffman, is one of a group of consumer AI start-ups that are “racing to build sophisticated computer programs that can write scripts and create art in seconds” according to the FT.

Such capabilities, however, have raised fears among lawmakers and civil society groups alike and have prompted calls for legislation to control the development of generative AI technology.