Is GigaChat Russia’s answer to ChatGPT? All indicators point to da, tovarishch. That’s about all the Russian we know. GigaChat could rise to rival the capabilities of the internet’s AI presence. It isn’t going to happen yet, not when the machine learning model powering the chatbot is in its infancy. Still, the potential is there, ready to be fine-tuned over time.
If this is a new player in the competitive AI industry, curious minds want to know how it measures up to existing conversational AI platforms. Questions include whether GigaChat can chat with human-like fluency. Can it adapt to answer complex queries? Users want to know if Russia is building aChatGPTkiller app or a dud that’ll fizzle out the first time it’s asked the meaning of life.
First, GigaChat facts and figures
While still in its early stages, GigaChat has intriguing features that showcase its potential. Stories and jokes come naturally to the AI platform, although they’re given in Russian. Freshly minted by Sberbank, one of Russia’s largest state-owned financial institutions, technological independence from foreign investors is an important consideration for the development team. That’s understandable, given the crisis in Ukraine.
Like OpenAI and its influential neural network, complete withLLM (Large Language Model)natural intelligence, GigaChat performs like a digital persona. It answers questions in Russian, gives answers again in Russian, and writes code. This latter feature relies on English syntax and coding elements, so it’s equipped to seep into Western technology circles. Although it’s still experimental, the AI platform is making waves in the West.
Multimodal interactions are built into the artificial intelligence powerhouse that is GigaChat, meaning it works intuitively with text, images, and sound. ChatGPT has this feature in the form ofDall-E 3, although a subscription is required to access this visually-oriented AI talent.
GigaChat, Google Bard, and a (very) brief political standpoint
Believing all Western AI platforms are tainted by bias, the Russian government and businesses have little interest inBardor ChatGPT. That’s whySberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution,and the government are plowing money and resources into GigaChat and other Russian-made generative AI.
In a nearly two-hour speech at the AI Journey conference in November 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin said “[M]any modern systems based on Western data are designed for the Western market. They fully reflect the aspects of Western ethics, norms of conduct and government policy to which we object.” (Kremlin Transcript via BBC Monitoring)
GigaChat aims to provide unbiased responses and information and a deep understanding of Russian culture and values. By investing in their own AI, Russians hope to reduce dependence on Western-developed machine learning platforms.
Could this herald a new and potentially disruptive AI Cold War? Without being overly dramatic, that’s a possibility that cannot be ignored.
How to access GigaChat’s natural language assistant
The first hurdle is the language barrier. The chats are entered and responded to in Russian, at least for now. English is in the works, as is Turkish and Spanish. However, a bigger obstacle looms, and that’s geolocation. GigChat is a Russian product and is only available for sign-up from within its borders. However, adding international languages hints at a desire to break out of this large territorial space.
This desire for independence from the West could backfire on the developers. Electronics titans like Nvidia and Intel are responsible for most of the world’s computing power. GPU tensor chips deliver the parallel processing muscle required to crunch large language model data in a way that few CPUs can match. Given the current political climate, those samecompanies aren’t about to sell their wares to Russia. The reality of this situation puts a dent in the AI scaling plans of GigaChat’s developers.
Even if users can access GigaChat’s capabilities, there’s no guarantee that GigaChat can tap into the power of the required GPU processing power, the kind of power that AI models train on and rely on for optimal performance. Those who tried running a ChatGPT-like platform on a regular computer know how slow an unoptimized LLM can become when it’s starved of GPU processors. It’ll be interesting to see how the developers of GigaChat handle this issue.
Exploring the features of GigaChat
Western AI models are ahead of Russia’s LLM entrance with their user-friendly assistants. Bart played catchup, and it’s now as easy to converse with Bard as it is with ChatGPT. GigaChat is seen as a scientific aid that helps students, teachers, research grads, and academic types in their fields of study.
The platform has an edge as a multimodal tool. It allows users to engage in text-based conversations and communicate through generative images and audio. Music generation from a short prompt outputs a downloadable song or a MIDI file based on the user’s desired style and genre. It’s a rare and engaging feature that sets GigaChat apart from its competitors and makes it a valuable tool for creative audio professionals and would-be music composers.
Russia’s generative AI beyond politically charged eastern borders
Russia has positioned GigaChat as a scientific aid that has the potential to break out of its box and become a creative powerhouse. The machine learning platform is trained in Russian, but it’s learning to speak English and Spanish. At that point, it’ll draw the attention of OpenAI, Google, and other developing LLMs that are on the horizon.
Hopefully, it’ll be used to develop peer-reviewed scientific papers and to solve chess problems, not to createdeep fakesthat’ll confound and deceive Western nations. By adding music generation into the multimodal mix, GigaChat has established itself as a multilingual tool with a flair for generating text, images, and music.
If you want to compare the platform against ChatGPT, you’ll need aVPNand a few years of conversational Russian behind you until GigaChat, more likely the Russian state, opens up to the world and adds English language support.
