Today, Gorilla Technologies, the company behind the popular iPhone customization app, Brass, sticker maker StickerHub and others, launched a new AI chat application, SuperChat. It allows iOS users to communicate with virtual characters powered by OpenAI’s technologies. The application seeks to make AI technology more accessible to users than what is currently available, such as creating prompts or writing scripts.
The characters are based on famous historical figures, public domain works, classic stories, fairy tales, and even some of the company’s own characters. Some examples include Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Cleopatra, Snow White, and Medusa. Users will also be able to choose from some of the professions like gardeners, chefs, or therapists. They can also use the standard ChatGPT assistant, Aria, to help with tasks like email writing and providing marketing expertise.
The application itself is structured as a messaging style app, allowing users to chat with multiple AI chatbots at once. It is also powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-turbo and the artwork is from Midjourney. While some characters come free with the download, some still require a premium subscription. However, the subscription charges are not tailored towards this target market of kids, as it starts from $1.35 per week, to $6.99 per week for those who just want to try it out for an evening.
The characters themselves don’t quite invoke the personalities of their respective historical figures as you would expect; they instead use more generic AI style speech patterns. Though they may be aware of the history of their characters and use that information in their conversations.
SuperChat may not be the first company to think of combining AI with a character or avatar, such as Google acquiring Alter for $100 million and Neosapience raising $12.5 million for its Typecast platform. There are also apps like Poe, which enables users to make their own bots using prompts, or meta experimenting with AI chats on WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. But Superchat has its own unique approach, giving both a face and a voice to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Gorilla Technologies CEO, Guglielmo Faglioni, is setting out to make AI technology accessible for everyone and serve as a tool for children to learn more about historical figures by virtually interacting with them through SuperChat. The app is currently a free download for iOS users and contains in-app purchases.
