3 AI Search Engines You Need To Try
AI is here to make our lives easier, why are you not using it to search more efficiently
When ChatGPT was launched it was said to be the Google-killer. There is some merit to this claim given that ChatGPT has been growing by leaps and bounds with more than 100 million people using it monthly. That number is surely going to grow with the release of ChatGPT 4 which is incredibly advanced, with a number of insane features. I however disagree with the claim made in the beginning of this post, I think Google’s end is going to come at the hands of the AI-based browsers or those browsers with AI features. Granted Google did recently released Bard, but it is not as powerful nor as convenient as these three browsers that I am going to show you in this post. These browsers have the potential to be Google killers. First up is,
YouChat or You.com:
Image credit: You.com
I first found this search engine on a Discord server I am on. From the moment I tried I have been enthralled by it. ChatGPT has rapidly become a popular AI chatbot especially with its incredibly useful abilities to program, write, and answer almost everything question thrown at it. However it has the downfall of not being able to answer more recent question (if you are using GPT 3.5)or cite sources for the claims it makes. In short ChatGPT can’t access the internet. This is where You.com comes in.
First developed in 2020 by two former Salesforce employees Bryan McCann and Richard Socher. This search engine allows you to generate art, chat with an assistant, program, write, all while connected to the internet, unlike ChatGPT. Taking all the best features of ChatGPT and adding in a few more. For example scrolling through a social media but in the search engine rather than browsing each site individually. If you are a student go to the study tab where you can get sources that are mostly of the academic variety.
Second here is Phind:
Phind is another AI browser but it is very different from You.com. In order to demonstrate the ability of Phind I asked it, “What is Phind?” Here is the first paragraph of its answer, “Phind is a search engine optimized for developers and technical questions that uses large, proprietary generative AI language models to instantly answer questions with simple explanations and relevant code snippets from the web. It is powered by AI language models that generate answers based on information from multiple sources. Phind works best when you ask full and detailed questions, starting with "what is.." or "how to.." and indicating the topic of interest, such as "..in python" or "..using nextjs".”
This answer is almost as if ChatGPT gave it, but there are two significant difference between this and ChatGPT. First off, Phind has access to the internet, so every time you make a search in Phind it won’t just give you the text answer it will give you a list of websites on the side. Second is that Phind cites sources for everything it outputs. When you ask ChatGPT a question about anything it will never cite a single source, even when asking questions about scientific, legal, or technical information.
All in all Phind is a great browser. Perfect for the minimalist who wishes for simple experience with few distractions.
Number 3 Andi:
Created by Jed White and Angela Hoover in 2021 and made public in 2022, Andi is a search engine but with a chatbot base. Searching on Andi is in credibly pleasant. Phind’s homepage is simplistic and easy to use but Andi’s homepage is, as far as websites go, almost beautiful. When running the search Andi will give you an answer with a citation just like Phind and Youchat. However like most times when we are using the search engine we are going to want to see some other websites so that we can read some more sources, or in the case of programmers and hackers, view programs and code files.
A useful feature of Andi is the ability to rearrange the way websites are shown. Most search engines are going to display a long list of links for you to choose from. While you can do that on Andi you can change it up to have the websites appear in a list with 2 sites side by side all the way down, in a markdown appearance, etc.
These browsers are only going to get more advanced. If the long established search engines of Google, DuckDuckGo, etc, don’t step up their game they are going to be left behind in the dust. Adding in chatbot or summarizer is soon going to become a minimum requirement in order to survive. In order to pull ahead those browsers are going to need the features that You.com has.