ChatGPT rival Pi launches on Android

Inflection AI, the Palo Alto-based startup founded by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, just announced that its AI chatbot ‘Pi’ is now available as a dedicated app on Android.

The move, which is expected to give billions of users access to Pi, comes as the latest effort from the year-old startup to take on OpenAI’s widely popular ChatGPT and other new AI assistants coming on the block, including xAI’s now-rolling Grok and Anthropic’s Claude.

The company also said it has enhanced the look and feel of the app branding with slight changes in terms of colors, illustrations and the Pi logo.

“Users have always loved the sleek, clean aesthetic and the new brand on iOS and Android apps continues that identity while adding a little extra flair,” it said in a blog post.

What to expect from the Pi Android app?

Available in 35 countries, including the U.S., to begin with, the Pi Android app strives to deliver an experience similar to the one users have had on the iOS-specific version of the chatbot.

Essentially, they can ask any question about any topic to get instant answers, suggestions or tips from the assistant.

More interestingly, just like ChatGPT, the Pi chatbot also supports voice interactions. Users can simply speak their minds and it can reply back, leading to a back-and-forth conversation. Currently, Inflection AI gives users six Pi voice options to choose from and compares the experience to chatting on a phone call.

The company launched Pi in May and has since been running it on the Inflection-1 language model. However, a major upgrade is on the cards with Inflection-2, which is said to be substantially more capable, demonstrating much improved factual knowledge, better stylistic control and dramatically improved reasoning. 

For Inflection, the ultimate goal with Pi, which is short for personal intelligence, is to give people an “empathetic, useful and safe” companion that acts more personally and colloquially than OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing or Google’s Bard. It’s this approach of personal and emotion AI that separates it from other players in the category.

“With the capacity to provide 24/7 emotional support and guidance in a range of situations, Pi’s there to talk to you at midnight when the rest of the world is asleep, when you want to practice another language, or when you need insightful thoughts about a potential career change,” the blog post reads.

Growing competition

Since Android has over 3 billion global users, the move to make Pi available on the platform is expected to expand Inflection AI’s reach and give the company access to a bigger user base. However, it remains to be seen how well it fares against ChatGPT, which is already available on Android and iOS and has a user base of nearly 200 million. In October 2023 alone, the OpenAI chatbot saw nearly 1.7 billion cumulative visits across mobile and web, with a total of 193 million unique users.

Beyond ChatGPT, Pi also has to compete with Google’s search-backed Bard, Anthropic’s constitutional AI assistant Claude and Elon Musk-founded xAI’s Grok, which also has a distinct, sarcastic personality. 

Notably, the latter also has the advantage of real-time X data and direct integration with the platform – which also boosts its reach.