AI Chat Tools
Conversational AI has split into two distinct camps: general-purpose assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) that handle anything from writing to coding, and purpose-built chatbots designed for a specific job like customer support or lead qualification.
If you're evaluating tools, the first question is which camp you need. A general assistant is great for personal productivity and brainstorming. A purpose-built bot is what you want when the conversation needs to stay on-topic, pull from your own data, and hand off to a human when it's stuck.
Key differences that matter
- Context window : Longer context means the bot can reference more of the conversation history. Matters a lot for complex support tickets.
- Knowledge grounding : Can it pull answers from your docs, or does it rely entirely on its training data? RAG-based tools are far more reliable for business use.
- Latency : For live chat, response time under 2 seconds is the baseline users expect.
- Pricing model : Per-seat, per-conversation, or per-token. The cost structure affects which tool makes sense at your scale.
Browse the AI chat tools below to compare recently launched platforms.