AI21 Labs Launches Wordtune AI Writing Assistant iOS App
A GPT-3 Competitor Expands its Presence
Large language model (LLM) AI start-up AI21 Labs this week introduced an iOS app version of its popular Wordtune AI writing assistant. Wordtune’s Google Chrome extension has millions of downloads, and the move to iOS extends the platform to another channel. The new iOS app integrates with iPhone keyboards to offer editing help while using your iPhone.
Once the app is activated in the keyboard menu, users can write text for iMessages, emails, and other communications on any platform and then prompt Wordtune to offer alternative phrasing. The app doesn't incorporate all of the Chrome extension's features, such as shortening and extending text and changing tone, but Ori Goshen, AI21 Labs’ co-CEO, told Voicebot these features would be in a future app update.
A Popular AI Use Case
AI-powered writing assistants have become a popular generative AI category. Grammarly reports it has 30 million daily active users. It began as a grammar-checking tool and added suggested rephrasing as a feature. Jasper AI is reportedly generated $45 million in revenue in its first year as a writing assistant, and the 2022 figure is expected to surpass $75 million on the strength of 70,000 active users. It is best known for helping marketers write blog posts, product descriptions, sales emails, and web page content.
AI21 has its own large numbers to tout with the 1,000,000+ Wordtune downloads in the Google Chrome extension store. The move into iOS is part of AI21’s strategy to become available on any platform. These are just a few examples of generative AI applications that have moved past the lab into scaled commercial production.
A Different Business Model?
Wordtune also shows how AI21’s business model today is somewhat different than OpenAI. While OpenAI does have products that people pay for, such as GPT-3 and DALL-E, it does not package them as typical software applications. OpenAI expects its partners to build application wrappers around its API to make them more user-friendly and extend the value of the raw models.
AI21 introduced its own API for third-party developers in August 2021. Still, it is best known for its Wordtune writing assistant today and Wordtune Read, which will digest and summarize documents for users. These are consumer-ready applications, whereas OpenAI’s GPT-3 is more for developers and some DIY power users.
The pricing for the AI21 applications is similar to what you find for Jasper AI (though less expensive) with a monthly subscription. OpenAI charges you based on tokens as opposed to a flat monthly rate. So, these companies look fairly similar on the surface with LLMs, APIs, and applications. When you go a little deeper, OpenAI leans hard toward API and B2B users, while AI21 is trending more toward B2C applications with an aspiration to build its API user base.
Competition is Good
It will be good to see more API-based competition in the LLM market. OpenAI has a significant lead, but the total addressable market for LLM applications is so enormous that it needs several large and niche competitors to meet growing demand. Google and DeepMind both have tools you should expect to see commercially available for developers in 2023. Based on the success of ChatGTP, I’d expect one or both of these solutions to have consumer versions as well. Amazon also has a secret LLM that might see released through AWS next year as well.
More competition will also fuel investment and innovation as the OpenAI challenges look to create differentiation and grab market share. The LLM wars are about to heat up.
Part of this article was written by AI. Can you guess which parts and what LLM was employed?
