Hacker News with Generative AI: Chatbots

We were promised "Star Trek," so why did we settle for these lousy chatbots? (bigthink.com)
At some point in the first week of January, I came down with a self-diagnosed case of AI fatigue.
Ask HN: Best LLM Stack for Q&A over Internal PDFs? (ycombinator.com)
I'm looking to build an LLM-based chatbot that can answer questions using a set of internal PDF documents.
Show HN: OpenAstra – Chat based open-source alternative to Postman (github.com/srikanth235)
A chat-based open source development platform for API discovery and testing.
South Korea bans new DeepSeek AI downloads (bbc.com)
South Korea has banned new downloads of China's DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, according to the country's personal data protection watchdog.
In a showdown of psychotherapists vs. ChatGPT, the latter wins, new study finds (fortune.com)
Couples therapy can be helpful—but so can an AI chatbot, researchers found.
ChatGPT's Political Views Are Shifting Right, a New Analysis Finds (gizmodo.com)
When asked about its political perspective, OpenAI’s ChatGPT says it’s designed to be neutral and doesn’t lean one way or the other. A number of studies in recent years have challenged that claim, finding that when asked politically charged questions, the chatbot tends to respond with left-leaning viewpoints.
Doge Is Working on a Custom Chatbot Called GSAi (wired.com)
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is pushing to rapidly develop “GSAi,” a custom generative AI chatbot for the US General Services Administration, according to two people familiar with the project.
The all new le Chat: Your AI assistant for life and work (mistral.ai)
Today, we unveil the latest le Chat, a comprehensive AI assistant for your life and work.
Show HN: Bindle – Self-Organizing Folders and Chat with Your Documents (bindle.work)
Bindle is the easiest way to organize and AI chat with everything in your workspace, no matter what you do.
DeepSeek Fails Every Safety Test Researchers Throw at It (pcmag.com)
Chinese AI firm DeepSeek is making headlines with its low-cost and high-performance chatbot, but it may have an AI safety problem.
Ask HN: Please Review My Startup Chatty AI – Operator for Your Website (ycombinator.com)
Chatty AI is a custom operator for your website. Unlike generic ChatGPT operator, our widget is directly embedded into your product and knows your knowledge base, docs, and how to use your specific product.
ChatGPT Gov: OpenAI launches chatbot for US Government agencies (usatoday.com)
OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence research company behind the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, has launched a new venture specifically for use by the U.S. government, it announced Tuesday.
We tried out DeepSeek. It worked well, until we asked it about Tiananmen Square (theguardian.com)
The launch of a new chatbot by Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek triggered a plunge in US tech stocks as it appeared to perform as well as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI models, but using fewer resources.
Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek censors itself in realtime, users report (theguardian.com)
Users experimenting with DeepSeek have seen the Chinese AI chatbot reply and then censor itself in real time, providing an arresting insight into its control of information and opinion.
DeepSeek overtakes ChatGPT to top app charts (bbc.com)
Shares in major US technology firms have fallen steeply in value after the sudden emergence of a low-cost chatbot built by a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm.
Budget AI Model DeepSeek Overtakes ChatGPT on App Store (macrumors.com)
A new China-based AI chatbot challenger called DeepSeek has reached the number one position on Apple's App Store free charts in multiple countries, including the US, raising questions about Silicon Valley's perceived leadership in artificial intelligence development.
Chatbox: Cross-platform desktop client for ChatGPT, Claude and other LLMs (github.com/Bin-Huang)
Your Ultimate AI Copilot on the Desktop. Chatbox is a desktop client for ChatGPT, Claude and other LLMs, available on Windows, Mac, Linux
Show HN: Chat with multiple LLMs: o1-high-effort, Sonnet 3.5, GPT-4o, and more (polychat.co)
Observations from improving a RAG chatbot from useless to amazing (boliv.substack.com)
Everyone is building chatbots, riding the current AI wave that will undoubtedly crash if not crashing already. However, because we are in an industry where hype trumps literally everything else, if you’re not building with AI, you’re just being left behind and risk being forgotten or at least surpassed by direct competitors who do leverage it.
ELIZA Reanimated (arxiv.org)
ELIZA, created by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the early 1960s, is usually considered the world's first chatbot.
FTC Statement in the Matter of Snap, Inc.'s AI Chatbot [pdf] (ftc.gov)
She Is in Love with ChatGPT (nytimes.com)
X is testing a standalone app for Grok, its AI chatbot (twitter.com)
Kotaemon: An open-source RAG-based tool for chatting with your documents (github.com/Cinnamon)
An open-source clean & customizable RAG UI for chatting with your documents. Built with both end users and developers in mind.
Show HN: Chorus, a Mac app that lets you chat with a bunch of AIs at once (melty.sh)
Chat with a bunch of AIs at once.
DeepSeek-V3 Chat is out (deepseek.com)
Build Your Own AI-Powered Document Chatbot in Minutes with Simple RAG (ycombinator.com)
Build Your Own AI-Powered Document Chatbot in Minutes with Simple RAG!
Narrative Jailbreaking for Fun and Profit (interconnected.org)
A game I like to play with any AI chatbot is to persuade it to break its narrative frame.
You don't need to pay for OpenAI - Gemini 2.0 Free & More (github.com/EliasPereirah)
Orion is a web-based chat interface that simplifies interactions with multiple AI model providers.
Microsoft rejects documentation PR because AI chatbots can't display tables (github.com/MicrosoftDocs)