Quora's AI Chatbot Could Conflict with Contributors
The AI Chatbot could help the Q&A platform evolve, but how will contributors respond?
The Gist
Q&A platform Quora released a new AI chatbot app called Poe
The app allows users to ask questions and get answers from a range of AI chatbots, including those from OpenAI and other companies.
Poe's content will help to evolve Quora itself if and when it meets a high enough quality standard.
Users can switch between three different AI chatbots available at launch - Sage, Claude, and Dragonfly.
Sage and Dragonfly are powered by OpenAI
Claude is powered by Anthropic technology.
The app is free to download and includes social components, allowing users to create a profile, follow others, and publish model output on their profiles.
More Detail
We haven’t heard much from Quora since raising their Series D in 2017 at a $1.8 billion valuation, but they may have found new growth opportunities through the magic of AI.
The Q&A platform launched their new AI chatbot app in early February. Poe, the chatbot, provides users with the ability to ask questions and receive answers from a range of AI chatbots, including OpenAI (the maker of ChatGPT), and other firms such as Anthropic.
Poe users the chance to explore new AI technologies and will also aid in the evolution of Quora, according to the company. Quora announced the release of Poe's mobile app in December, which was previously only available by invite. The app is currently available on iOS, and Quora company promises a multi-platform release within a few months.
Quora launched Poe as a standalone product to keep up with the speed of AI development, as well asto provide a platform for open exploration. Users to create an account verified with a phone number and email address, then switch between three AI chatbots currently available on the platform. While there will be some connections between Poe and the Q&A site, Quora will only integrate Poe's content into its site when the content has reached a high enough quality standard.
The chatbots available at launch include Sage, Claude, and Dragonfly. Sage and Dragonfly are powered by OpenAI, while Claude is powered by Anthropic technology. The chatbots have their own limitations, with Sage and Claude lacking knowledge of events after 2021, and Dragonfly refusing to answer certain questions. All three have been known to make incorrect statements, which is why Quora is not yet integrating Poe into its service.
Quora sees Poe as a way to help AI developers create user-friendly interfaces for their models, making them more accessible to the public. The app will also offer an API for AI developers to plug their models into to reach a larger audience.
Poe also offers social components, allowing users to create profiles, follow others, and publish model output on their profiles for followers to access. The best examples will be distributed to all users of Poe through the app's feed, where others can Like or Repost the chatbot Q&A session.
Quora’s Conflict with Contributors
The big question is how contributors will respond to this addition. Once Quora integrates Poe and mines their data, Poe can effectively bypass creators.
Similar to how people are asking ChatGPT questions, users can ask Poe questions directly as well. The top contributor’s answer may be surfaced to the user, without that contributor getting any recognition.
Microsoft is already being sued by Github users, because it was trained on public repositories of code scraped from the web. Clearly, this product has created bad blood with their users. Let’s see how Quora threads this needle.