AI chatbot from France: Mistral releases new version of le Chat
Lightning-fast and with an integrated image generator: French company Mistral makes le Chat available, a chatbot with German Flux in the background.
A supposed Epiphany cake.
(Image: Erstellt mit Mistral von emw.)
Mistral AI has revised its AI chatbot le Chat. The app is now available for Android and iOS and is free of charge. It provides lightning-fast answers. The integrated image generator is based on the German model Flux Ultra from Black Forest Labs.
Of course, like all other AI chatbots and services, le Chat also wants to be a friend and helper for work and private life. However, it comes directly from France, where Mistral is based in Paris, and not from the USA. Alongside Aleph Alpha, Mistral is considered the European AI hope. The French company has teamed up with another German hopeful: according to the blog post, the image generator is "powered by Black Forest Labs". It is not entirely clear whether the Flux Ultra model is directly integrated or used in a modified form. Flux was previously also part of Elon Musk's chatbot Grok, but the image generator was apparently replaced by an in-house development from xAI.
No king cake from the chatbot
You can definitely generate photorealistic images with Flux and le Chat. However, you must at least be logged in to do so. The quality of the images varies. Apparently, le Chat can generate cats that are indistinguishable from real animals. When I asked to generate a galette des rois, the result was a kind of cake with a crown, but it bears no real resemblance to a French Epiphany cake. It is more like a round plate, with one or two figures – inside, and whoever finds them gets to put a crown on top.
(Image: Erzeugt mit Mistral von emw.)
Further attempts with instructions to find two figures in the puff pastry cake, which used to be beans, unfortunately end even more miserably. ChatGPT is not a whit more successful, by the way. Almonds end up on a puff pastry scroll instead of beans.
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But Le Chat is incredibly fast. "Fast as Flash" writes Mistral. The chatbot – can manage up to 1000 words per second, making it the fastest chatbot in the world. The chat is based on a balanced foundation of pre-trained knowledge, an up-to-date web search, robust sources from journalism, social media and other sources. Documents and images can be analyzed, and the chatbot can also code. A code interpreter is also available to test the code in a secure environment.
In principle, le Chat is free of charge, but if you want to access the chatbot a lot, you will need a subscription for just under 15 US dollars a month. There are also various business customer solutions.
(emw)
