Quora, the popular Q&A site, has introduced Poe, a new feature on its app that allows users to create their own chatbots using prompts combined with existing bots as a foundation. Poe initially supported a handful of general knowledge chatbots, including Sage and Dragonfly, powered by OpenAI technology, and Claude, powered by Anthropic. Poe introduced subscriptions last month, allowing users to pay for access to more powerful bots based on new language models, such as GPT-4 from OpenAI and Claude+ from Anthropic. Users can now build their own bots by using prompts to direct a chatbot to perform highly specific tasks.
Users can now create their own bots based on Claude or ChatGPT using the new feature. The bot will have its own unique URL once created, which will open the bot directly in Poe. Users can access the bots through Poe’s iOS or Android mobile web apps, as well as its desktop web interface. When users find a bot they like, they can follow it by clicking a button so they can easily return to it later.
For the time being, Quora intends to cover all costs associated with operating this feature, including LLM fees, which it warns could become prohibitively expensive if any bots become popular. The company also intends to provide bot creators with feedback on how people are using their bot so that they can iterate on improvement, as well as to create an API that will allow anyone to host a bot from a server that they operate.
Users have already used the feature to create bots for both practical purposes, such as trip planning or math learning, and for fun, such as flirting. Poe’s platform guidelines restrict a variety of potentially problematic use cases, but it remains to be seen whether any bots will break the rules.
Poe isn’t the only mobile app geared towards mobile users. Other AI startups, such as Perplexity, have also recently launched mobile apps. Consumer demand for Poe has been strong. According to app intelligence firm data.ai, the mobile app version of Poe has 1.17 million installs and has generated $520,000 in gross revenue. On the App Store, the app is currently ranked No. 32 in the Productivity category.
Because chatbots are expected to power the future of web search and Q&A, Poe’s new feature allows users to experiment with AI technologies from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic through a simple mobile interface.
