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AI chatbots have become increasingly relevant in professional, academic, and entertainment spaces. With so many AI chatbot services available, it’s hard to know which one is right for you. To help, we’ve put together a list of the best AI chatbots, testing the most popular services and reviewing analyses from industry experts.
Anyone can benefit from using a quality AI chatbot, whether you need a customer service system, social entertainment, or creative stimulation. Knowing which AI chatbots work best will prevent you from having to deal with a clunky, poorly designed AI that doesn’t have the intelligence or skills to meet your needs. After reading this guide, you’ll know all about the best AI chatbots on the market for both professional and personal uses.
Table of Contents
Things to Consider When Choosing an AI Chatbot
1. Purpose
You can use a chatbot for lots of activities, so identifying the special features you need will help narrow your chatbot options.
2. Budget
Some AI chatbots are free, but others cost money. Determine your spending budget and check prices before choosing a chatbot.
3. Ethics
AI is a new element of ethics, so make sure you use the technology appropriately. Check whether a chatbot plagiarizes human work before using it.
4. Intelligence Level
AI chatbots are not all equally intelligent. Understanding the intelligence of a chatbot will help you decide if it’s capable of the job you need.
Best AI Chatbots
Here are the best AI chatbots worth checking out.
1. ChatGPT – our top pick
ChatGPT, released in November of 2022, is an advanced AI chatbot that has impressed audiences. This free chatbot is highly versatile, and you can use it for a wide range of entertainment and educational purposes. ChatGPT is highly intelligent, and in addition to making conversation, it can compose songs, write computer code, and play games, as well as a litany of other neat tricks. This system also has great ethical potential: ChatGPT doesn’t plagiarize human work and can detect when a user is being dishonest.
Best Features:
- Conversational memory: ChatGPT can remember past conversations.
- Deceit detection: ChatGPT can detect inaccurate or deceitful statements.
Pricing: Free
2. Tidio – best for customer service
Tidio is an excellent AI chatbot software for customer service. This chatbot is talented at guiding a customer through a retail website, similar to how a salesperson would provide customer service in a brick-and-mortar store. In this regard, Tidio stands out from other retail chatbots that act more as glorified FAQ sections. In terms of your budget needs, small businesses can sign up for a free monthly plan, while larger businesses can pay a subscription fee for a more comprehensive service.
Best Features:
- Live chat: Tidio will serve customers immediately, never missing a sales opportunity.
- Shopping tips: Tidio monitors a customer’s shopping cart and provides product recommendations.
Pricing: Free plans for small businesses and paid plans starting at $15.83 per month
3. FreshChat – best for customization
Freshchat is easy for businesses to use, requiring no code for customization. For this reason, Freshchat is the best AI chatbot for businesses that don’t have extensive tech skills. This system is also great for live customer service chats tailored to a business’ unique needs, allowing you to seamlessly connect various messaging channels, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. As with other popular business AI chatbots, FreshChat offers a free plan for small businesses.
Best Features:
- Messaging integration: use FreshChat on any major messaging app.
- Conversation management: FreshChat intelligently auto-assigns conversations based on a team member’s skill set and availability.
Pricing: Free plan or paid plan starting at $15 per month
4. Chai – best for creating characters
Chai is an amazing creative tool for developing characters and seeing what they do. You start with five default characters, but you can invent your own AI personalities and let them learn and grow through conversations. This AI is quite intelligent when it comes to personality development, taking your initial character concept and evolving it over time.
You can use Chai for free as long as you cap your messages at 100 per day. As with other conversational chatbots, Chai has the potential to produce offensive characters. However, the app moderators can delete any troubling chatbot personalities.
Best Features:
- Large character selection: You can interact with a wide range of characters and personalities with Chai.
- Create a chatbot: Chai stands out for allowing users to create extremely original chatbot characters, including personality traits and starting dialogue lines.
Pricing: free for the first 100 messages, $13.99 per month for unlimited messages
5. Hubspot Chatbot – best for small businesses
Hubspot Chatbot is one of the more popular customer service chatbot systems. This chatbot is a nice option for small businesses since the platform offers an inexpensive chatbot model for home offices. The Hubspot chatbot has a relatively simple intelligence level, focusing more on basic conversation templates and short message sequences. That said, the chatbot is a great match for small businesses that need a free and reliable chatbot service.
Best Features:
- Templates: Hubspot’s conversation templates make it easy and quick to design a chatbot.
- Contacts integration: The Hubspot chatbot coordinates with your contacts database to personalize interactions.
Pricing: Free plan or paid plan starting at $45 per month
6. SimSimi – best for casual chats
SimSimi is a cute AI chatbot that is delightful for casual conversations. The main attractor is the chatbot’s ability to sustain social conversations with an impressive level of emotional intelligence. You can’t use SimSimi for intellectual stimulation the way you can with ChatGPT, but the service is quite popular for social experiences. Unlike certain other conversational chatbots, SimSimi costs money to use.
Best Features:
- Multilingual: SimSimi can chat in 81 languages.
- Emotional intelligence: SimSimi answers questions with a thoughtful, human-like tone.
Pricing: $1.99 per 100 messages
7. Salesforce – best for sales
Naturally, Salesforce, the iconic customer relationship management platform, has decent AI chatbots for sales, called Einstein Bots. The Salesforce chatbot system is particularly good at facilitating customer digital engagement and intelligently answering frequently asked questions. The Salesforce chatbot is ideal if you already use the Salesforce platform since the bot coordinates with the Salesforce database.
Best Features:
- Analytics: Salesforce excels at providing performance analytics, including for Einstein Bots.
- Connect to external systems: you can also integrate Einstein Bots with databases outside of Salesforce.
Pricing: Get Einstein bots with the Digital Engagement package, starting at $75 per month
8. Chirpy Cardinal – best for unique conversations
Designed by Stanford University, Chirpy Cardinal’s key feature is its ability to ask questions and take initiative in conversations. When you chat with the Chirpy Cardinal, you may end up on some unexpected and interesting topics. Keep in mind that Chirpy Cardinal is more of an experimental AI chatbot and can have glitches and conversational errors. Chirpy Cardinal is best for free, casual entertainment.
Best Features:
- Conversational initiative: Chirpy Cardinal loves to ask questions to keep the conversation going.
Pricing: Free
9. Amplify – best for comment moderation
If you manage any kind of comment section, especially on social media, you’ll love Amplify. This smart chatbot will screen and respond to comments, making it easy to flag inappropriate content, highlight a valuable comment, or respond to a question. Amplify is an intelligent chatbot and doesn’t just screen for bad words—it can evaluate comments in real time to encourage quality discourse and enhance audience engagement.
Best Features:
- Conversational ads: you can use Amplify to create interactive ads for direct audience engagement.
- Comment replies: Amplify can directly respond to comments.
Pricing: Amplify offers custom pricing models, although you can get a two-week free trial
10. Roo – best for health education
Roo demonstrates the incredible potential of AI chatbots for healthcare access. Made by Planned Parenthood, this amazing chatbot answers any questions about sexual health or puberty that an adolescent might have.
This chatbot is quite clever and will tailor responses based on your age and gender. The service is completely free and works great for both educators and individuals in need. Roo pulls resources from Planned Parenthood and can also direct you to a healthcare professional.
Best Features:
- Anonymity: you can ask Roo intimate questions without giving any identifying information.
- Suggested questions: if you don’t know where to start, Roo offers a large selection of frequently asked questions.
Pricing: Free
AI chatbots that still have a lot to learn are fun to play with, but a more advanced chatbot is necessary for complex tasks and conversations.
11. Watson Assistant – best for platform integration
Watson Assistant works well for businesses that use multiple messaging platforms for client communication. You can use this famous IBM chatbot on popular platforms such as Facebook Messenger or Slack. Watson Assistant can also access customer relationship management platforms and other database systems. Watson is one of the older AI systems on the market and has had a lot of time to grow and learn, making it one of the smartest virtual assistants available.
Best Features:
- Natural language understanding: Watson can easily understand conversational language and won’t struggle to interpret client messages.
- Platform Integration: Watson can work with most external databases and messaging apps, streamlining your processes.
Pricing: Free plans or paid plans starting at $140 per month
12. BlenderBot – best for experimenting
BlenderBot is the conversational AI from Meta (also known as Facebook). BlenderBot is still in its early learning stages, so it’s a fun opportunity to teach an AI chatbot and watch it develop over time. Don’t expect this chatbot to provide you with the most stimulating conversation, but it will still entertain you and give you a chance to experience new technology for free. Note that BlenderBot is still learning about moral standards and may engage in hateful or offensive behavior.
Best Features:
- Blending: BlenderBot combines knowledge, personality traits, and empathy skills to form questions and responses.
- Conversational memory: although BlenderBot is still working on interpreting empathy, the chatbot can recall information from prior conversations.
Pricing: Free
13. Replika – best for friendship
Replika has a fascinating premise: the chatbot gets to know you and develops a personality that mirrors you. People who use Replika enjoy the companionship of a realistic and like-minded pal (some users even develop a more flirtatious dynamic with their chatbot). Replika is highly skilled at picking up on your personality traits and values, so if you want a conversation that feels customized, this is the chatbot for you.
Best Features:
- Natural conversations: Replika uses the information it learns about you to provide genuine, empathetic questions and responses.
- Customizable appearance: Replika has an animated avatar that you can customize.
Pricing: free plan or paid plan starting at $6.81 per month
14. Anima – best for social anxiety
Anima is a customizable social chatbot, meaning that you can adjust the chatbot’s personality traits and gender. Although the chatbot won’t copy your personality, it will store memories about your preferences and opinions to get to know you better. This advanced chatbot is well-suited for addressing issues of loneliness and social anxiety: you can play games, practice conversations, and build your social confidence. Note that most of the interesting features require a paid subscription.
Best Features:
- Games: Anima doesn’t just chat with you. It can also play games, adding a new layer of interaction.
- Input topics: you can tell Anima your interests and preferred topics, and Anima will use the information to guide the conversation.
Pricing: free plan or paid plan starting at $12.56 per month
Things to Consider When Choosing an AI Chatbot
The best chatbot for you depends entirely on why you are looking for a chatbot.
1. Identify Your Needs
Identifying your needs will help you determine whether you should prioritize elements such as informational knowledge, relationship memory, and conversational initiative.
2. Set a Budget
Once you know what you need out of a chatbot, you can narrow your options more by setting a budget. Many conversational chatbots are free, but more advanced systems usually cost money. For customer service chatbots, you’ll probably have to pay a monthly subscription fee.
3. Ethics
When you use AI, you should always consider ethical issues. Make sure that the AI you use doesn’t steal content from human workers, such as artists or writers, and has filters in place to prevent hate speech and bullying.
4. Learning Ability
Finally, you’ll want to understand the extent of a chatbot’s intelligence and learning ability. AI chatbots that still have a lot to learn are fun to play with, but a more advanced chatbot is necessary for complex tasks and conversations.
Main Takeaways
Overall, ChatGPT is the most advanced chatbot in terms of conversational memory and broad intellectual abilities. For customer service purposes, you can’t go wrong with a comprehensive chatbot system like Tidio. In terms of creative experimentation, a character-building chatbot such as Chai is an excellent way to explore the technology’s potential.
AI chatbots are useful as professional tools, creative inspiration, and personal entertainment. This technology is evolving every day, and the potential is limitless when it comes to dynamic and talented AI chatbots.
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