HuggingFace is an Al company founded in 2016 and is mostly comprised of volunteers. The name ‘huggingface’ to most folks especially the younger generation is quite familiar as it refers to one of the most popular emojis, the smiling emoji. Well, a great thing to note is that HuggingFace company’s name was inspired by that smiling emoji.
At its inception, HuggingFace started as a chatbot company before expanding into an open-source provider of NLP technologies. The latter has more to do with Al developers while the former aims towards standard folks, particularly the younger generation and teens. Our focus in this article will be on the former part that is, HuggingFace as a chatbox.
What HuggingFace Offers
In the early days, HuggingFace’s chatbot was geared towards the younger generation, especially teens. HuggingFace’s CEO while speaking before the chatbot went live for the very first time said they were developing a chatbot which guarantees ” fun (when) talking with it. When you’re chatting with it, you’re going to laugh and smile — it’s going to be entertaining”. The chatbot was predicted to cover a wide range of topics, detect emotions in text, and adapt its tone accordingly.
It’s safe to say that tremendous strides have been taken to make HuggingFace’s chatbot a key development in the AI industry. Perhaps a great testament to this was the revamp of the chatbot which saw it get a new name, HuggingChat. Not only did HuggingChat come with more advanced features, but it also was designed in such a way that it competes with leading Al chatboxes like ChatGPT. HuggingChat is no longer tailor-made for the younger generation. Rather, it now aims at satisfying the needs of everyone from the young to the old. It also now serves various functions – from fun causes to serious (work, school, career development) stuff.
Going into the future, this statement from Open Assistant best explains what HuggingFace aims at offering:
“We want to build the assistant of the future, able to not only write email and cover letters but do meaningful work, use APIs, dynamically research information and much more, with the ability to be personalized and extended by anyone… And we want to do this in a way that is open and accessible, which means we must not only build a great assistant but also make it small and efficient enough to run on consumer hardware.”
How HuggingFace Works
When looking to use HuggingChat, users have the option of either doing so via web interface or integrating the chatbot with existing apps and services. As HuggingChat is trained in handling many tasks such as writing code, drafting articles/blogs and creating cover letters/resumes, you can interact with it on virtually any topic. Simply click the ‘Start Chatting’ button, input your keywords and follow the prompts provided to start your chat.
HuggingFace Pricing
HuggingFace offers both a free version and subscription plans. The free version is great for those who simply want to do the basic stuff. However, for more in-depth searches and for those who want to access HuggingFace’s open-source services for developers, they can check out the different subscription plans when they load the Pricing page.
Round Up
HuggingFace through its HuggingChat chatbot is one of the very best in the industry. The chatbot handles many topics and as such, it’s perfect for all types of people from the younger generation to older folks. It can also be used for various purposes that is for fun or educative purposes.