Messenger themed AI chatbot lets you chat with Albert Einstein or Cleopatra

There have been many attempts to enable people to speak to the deceased. Since the development of artificial intelligence, one is no longer dependent on a human medium, as Character.AI shows.

Developed by two ex-Google employees, the platform allows you to chat with famous people of the present and the past, as well as with fictional characters. To do this, you simply enter your questions in a corresponding window.

When answering, the AI ​​tries to imitate the typical views and postures of the selected character. Something similar is also possible directly with the chatbot ChatGPT from OpenAI and the Bing-Bot – in the so-called celebrity mode.

After opening up the ChatGPT API to other developers, app developers are now daring too Gorilla Technologies to an implementation of the topic. The Italian company has introduced Superchat, an app for iPhone and Mac that allows users to chat with historical and fictional characters as well as useful helpers.

Superchat is designed in the style of a messenger app, which makes it possible to have multiple chats at the same time. The selection of interlocutors imitated by the AI ​​is large.

It ranges from historical personalities such as Albert Einstein, Shakespeare or Cleopatra to fictional characters from books and comics such as Sherlock Holmes and Cinderella to figures from mythology such as Zeus.

You can also consult AI support in the form of a personal assistant (Aria), a lawyer, a programmer or a gardener for specific questions.

Aria, for example, can help users compose emails or plan the next marketing campaign, like Techcrunch writes. According to Gorilla Technologies CEO Guglielmo Faglioni, Superchat will make AI chatbot technology easier to access.

According to Faglioni, the topic should not be limited to people who are familiar with prompts. The app is also a great tool to enable children to come into contact with historical figures such as Shakespeare.

However, using the app is not cheap. If you don’t just want to be limited to a few selected characters, but want to use them all, you have to after download take out a premium subscription. That costs 7.99 euros per week if you pay weekly. If you pay the annual price right away, you can reduce the weekly price to 1.54 euros.

In our short test, however, the app could not convince us to use it regularly and for a fee. The characters’ answers are too reminiscent of those that would have generated a – free – standard request to ChatGPT.

The AI ​​version of Ludwig van Beethoven (“I’m listening”), for example, only “remembered” when asked that the musician and composer was deaf at the end of his life. Even Albert Einstein as an AI interlocutor only knows how to score points by pointing out in some places that he has set up the corresponding theory.

But it’s entertaining to watch the AI ​​slip into different roles. The chats with historical personalities or book characters are quite fun. However, we will not extend the trial subscription.