Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup X.AI’s Grok, have all seen plenty of hype as potential rivals to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which of all the gen A.I. chatbots in the market is the one most likely to have household-name recognition.
However, none of these touted rivals have quite managed to generate the interest, or impress users, enough to draw people away from using ChatGPT. At least not entirely–there are certainly users who take advantage of the services of multiple gen A.I. platforms, which can come with plenty of perks as each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses.
For a business owner, however, IBM has finally announced its next-gen version of Watson, watsonx.
IBM Watson was the more traditional-sounding name of IBM’s A.I. platform(s). However, it had been available with that name for over a decade, and so by the time ChatGPT rolled around the IBM Watson brand, no matter how advanced the tech was the name “IBM Watson” ran the risk of seeming last-gen to some in today’s fast-moving will make implementing A.I. into your business operations much more efficient.
Hence, rebranding with the more decidedly this-gen name in trendily all-lowercase (haven’t u ever seen an ariana grande song title???) letters. Also, the tacking-on of the vaguely next-gen (or just this-gen?) “x”, which for reasons this writer finds oddly difficult to articulate also has a vague futuristic resonance to it as well.
IBM and A.I.
Here is a general rule of thumb to follow in the A.I. race: If a major (=has sufficient funding and other resources for the forbiddingly high-priced development of A.I.), tech company does not seem to have an A.I. rival platform compete with what OpenAI is doing, that is because it is still developing such an A.I. platform.
IBM has not been without an A.I. platform at any time since the launch of ChatGPT in November of 2022. As a matter of fact, this storied company had made IBM Watson available to business owners several years before ChatGPT was even a gleam in the eyes of idealistic Silicon Valley stalwarts looking to develop “safe” A.I.
Though there have been plenty of IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT articles written, along with other Chatbot vs. Chatbot blogs, it was hard to draw the general public’s attention away from the bright, shiny new thing that was ChatGPT.
While Google rolled out Bard (remember when it was called Bard? Now we’re calling it Gemini. Again, the power of rebranding) within a couple months of ChatGPT’s debut, IBM stayed relatively silent.
Ditto Apple, which some people (including this writer, admittedly) thought was developing some truly mind-blowing industry-changing killer-app A.I. rival in the patient confident silence that Apple is known for during the product-development phase. Turns out, Apple was not really doing that, and made a huge bet on OpenAI in summer 2024 to integrate that company’s A.I. on the next generations of Apple products.
Of course, IBM’s silence did not speak to inactivity. Far from it, in fact, as IBM was actually working on beefing up Watson to compete with this latest generation of generative A.I. platforms.
The result was watsonx.ai.
The Next Generation
watsonx.ai places a lot of power in a business’ figurative hands. This power comes in the form of allowing for the customization of watsonx.ai to that business’ own ends. That customization can involve a fairly comprehensive data integration.
What this largely involves is training A.I. models, such as customer-service chatbots, on your company’s data. From there you can set your own boundaries for the model’s behavior and goals.
So if you never want the custom chatbot to mention a particular competitor’s rival products in any content—such as chats with customers—, you could set that boundary.
Being able to give an A.I. a particular set of yes-please’s and no-no’s that you set forth can be empowering for a company. That is because the A.I. will enable the business to make a more individualized use of a powerful technology.
Is watsonx.ai Really Better Than ChatGPT?
The major draw of watsonx.ai as an A.I. rival to ChatGPTis that it is a user-friendly “build your own A.I.” tool that allows you to personalize generative A.I. to your particular business.
What this means is that you can basically train Watsonx.ai to become knowledgeable about the specific aspects of your unique business.
ChatGPT also offers customization, to be fair. But the fact of the matter is that OpenAI has only relatively recently set its sights on being a primarily commercially oriented endeavor. Yes, it is quick to access so just about anyone with an Internet connection can use it, but IBM’s B2B focus makes watsonx the better bet.
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