Highlights:

  • POE, ’Quora’s new AI chatbot, uses natural language processing to understand and respond to user questions with accuracy and relevance.
  • It is intended to assist human moderators on the Quora platform rather than replace them and will be continuously improved through machine learning and user feedback.

On December 21, 2022, Quora’s CEO, Adam D’Angelo, announced a new product – Poe. It will let users ask queries, get instant answers, and have back-and-forth conversations with AI. The Platform for Open Exploration (Poe) is currently available as a beta app for iOS and iPadOS devices.

D’Angelo said, “Poe will initially be available on iOS, and it will be invite-only until we work out scalability, get feedback from beta testers, and address any other issues that come up. After we get through this phase, we will open up to everyone and add support for all platforms.

The details about how Poe works are limited but based on the available screenshots, the AI seems to function similarly to ChatGPT, which is an immensely popular chatbot that is a machine learning model trained with internet data to generate text; and built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5. POE is intended to provide users with quick and accurate answers to their questions and suggest related topics and information. According to Quora, POE is able to understand the context of a question and provide more accurate responses as a result.

POE is available to users on the Quora website and mobile app and can be accessed if you have the invite and later by typing a question into the search bar. Quora plans to continuously improve ’POE’s capabilities through machine learning and user feedback.

Many users are already praising POE for its speed and accuracy, with some calling it a “game-changer” for the platform. However, some critics have raised concerns about the potential for AI chatbots like POE to replace human moderators and moderators on ’Quora’s platform.

“We think this will be a fun way for people to interact with and explore different language models. Poe is designed to be the best way for someone to get an instant answer to any question they have, using natural conversation,” the spokesperson said. “There is an incredible amount of research and development going into advancing the capabilities of these models, but in order to bring all that value to people around the world, there is a need for good interfaces that are easy to use. We hope we can provide that interface so that as all of this development happens over the years ahead, everyone around the world can share as much as possible in the benefits.”

Not sure whether it can address ChatGPT’s most significant shortcomings, i.e., misinformation. Though it has the power to create human-like responses, it still generates effective responses and articles with misinformation. Therefore, Quora needs to be careful as it is a question-and-answer platform from which users will take a lot of information.

Quora has assured users that POE is not intended to replace human moderators but to supplement their work and improve the user experience.

“The model providers have put in a lot of effort to prevent the bots from generating unsafe responses,” the spokesperson said.

Overall, the launch of POE has been met with excitement and anticipation from Quora users, and it remains to be seen how the AI chatbot will impact the platform in the long term.