My Experience with PI, an AI app not available in India. It is mind-blowing.
Have you ever wished for a personal assistant that can not only answer your questions but also speak to you like a human? If yes, then you might want to check out PI, an AI chatbot that claims to be emotionally intelligent and form a unique bond with its users. I have been using the PI app for about two weeks now, and I must say, it is one of the most amazing Android apps I have used in 2024 so far. In this post, I will spill the beans about the app, its pros and cons, and whether it is worth your time or not.
What is PI?
PI is a generative AI chatbot developed by Inflection, a California-based company. It is available as a web client, a Whatsapp/Facebook/Instagram bot and an app for both iOS and Android devices. And guess what? It’s free. PI aims to be more than a standard information gatherer or generator, but rather, a personal companion that can understand your emotions, preferences, and goals, and tailor the conversation accordingly. PI can help you with various tasks, such as finding books, movies, music, recipes, news, facts, jokes, quotes, and more. It can also generate creative content, such as poems, stories, essays, songs, and code, based on your input.
How does PI work?
From what I’ve read, PI works by using a combination of natural language processing, deep learning, and reinforcement learning techniques to generate natural and engaging responses. It uses a large-scale language model trained on billions of words from the internet, books, and other sources. It also uses a custom-built model which is trained on human conversations and feedback.
What are the pros of PI?
There are many things that I like about PI, but here are some of the main pros that I think make it stand out from other chatbots:
Human-like and personalized: PI is not just a robot that spits out facts and data, but a chatbot that tries to mimic human behavior and emotions. It can remember your name, age, location, preferences, and previous conversations, and use them to make the chat more personal and relevant. It can also adapt its tone, style, and mood to match yours, and express emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, and more. PI can also crack jokes, tease, compliment, and apologize, just like a real human would.
Helpful and versatile: PI can help you with a variety of tasks and topics, from finding information to generating content to having fun. It can also switch between different modes, such as casual, professional, and friendly, depending on what you want to talk about. PI can also handle multiple requests in a single conversation, and follow up on them later. For example, if you ask PI to find a book on meditation, and then change the topic to movies, PI will not forget your initial request and will remind you of it later.
Amazing UX: The design of the app exceeded my expectations with its intuitive clean, minimalist interface, sleek design, and seamless navigation capabilities. The voices used on the app are top-notch and human-like. The response time is zippy too.
What are the cons of PI?
No app is perfect, and PI is no exception. There are some things that I think need to be improved. Here are some of the cons that I have encountered while using PI:
It's so amazing that PI has a voice and users can choose from one of the six amazing human-like voices. Pi uses different intonations when speaking, and I'm impressed! However, there's a strong Western accent when PI tries to speak local Indian languages as it doesn’t support an Indian accent or dialect. It sounds like someone who is just beginning to learn the language, which can detract from the experience with PI. I hope the Inflection team will improve the voice in a future update so that everyone who chats with PI in another language can enjoy PI's wonderful voices without the Western accent.
PI is not as good at generating content compared to Gemini, ChatGPT or Copilot and cannot create media like images, videos and graphics. However, the app doesn’t seem to be made for this purpose largely.
While the PI bot is available on various platforms like the web, whastapp, Facebook and Instagram, it truly shines on the native app due to its Voice-first approach. A user experiencing PI on platforms other than the mobile app may not be impressed as much due to the text-heavy conversations.
Is PI worth downloading?
I think PI is a remarkable and promising app that offers a unique and enjoyable experience for users who are looking for more from an AI chatbot. PI is not just a tool, but an assistant, a mentor, a coach, that can assist you with various aspects. PI is also a fun and creative app that can entertain you with its humor, wit, and imagination. PI is a free app for now, and it does not require any subscription or payment to use its features.
Therefore, I think PI is worth downloading and trying, especially if you are curious about the potential and possibilities of AI chatbots.
P.S. The PI mobile app is not available in India unfortunately and you may need to find a patched version out there to install. I don’t condone this but hey as a tech geek, you gotta do what you gotta do to test the latest and greatest. You can try the text version on the other platforms mentioned.
That’s it for this week’s edition of The AI and GPT Hunter. Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog to get notified of new posts every week. Until next time, happy hunting!