AI assistant

An AI assistant is a general-purpose conversational interface to one or more large language models. Users interact via a chat UI — asking questions, drafting content, analyzing documents, writing and debugging code — without needing to access the underlying model directly.

Most AI assistants are front-ends to frontier models developed by the same company. Some AI assistants support multiple models and allow the user to choose between them. Many are expanding beyond pure text chat to support file uploads, image generation, voice interaction, and web search.

See also AI coding assistants for assistants specialized in programming tasks, and AI agents, which are assistants with a high degree of autonomous multi-step reasoning capabilities.

General-purpose AI assistants

  • ChatGPT — OpenAI’s flagship assistant, built on its GPT model family. The most widely adopted AI assistant as of 2026. Available via web, mobile, and desktop apps, with free and paid tiers.

  • Claude — Anthropic’s assistant, built on its Claude model family. Known for its long context window, nuanced reasoning, and strong writing capabilities. Available via web and mobile.

  • Gemini — Google’s assistant, built on its Gemini model family. Integrated with Google Workspace (Docs, Gmail, Sheets) and Google Search.

  • Copilot — Microsoft’s assistant, powered by OpenAI models. Integrated into Windows, Microsoft 365, and the Edge browser.

  • Grok — xAI’s assistant, which is integrated into the X (formerly Twitter) platform.

  • Meta AI — Meta’s assistant, built on its open-weight Llama model family. Integrated into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, and distributed freely.

AI search assistants

AI search assistants combine LLM reasoning with real-time web retrieval to answer questions with cited sources. This is an example of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), see large language models for an explanation of this.

Well-known AI search assistants include:

  • Perplexity — AI-native search engine that answers questions using live web search with cited sources. Increasingly resembles a general-purpose assistant in its interface and capabilities.

  • You.com — AI search engine with support for multiple models and personalization features.

Traditional web search engines have also been extended with AI search capabilities: Microsoft Bing via Copilot, and Google Search via AI Overviews (which is powered by the Gemini models), and even DuckDuckGo now has Duck.ai.

See also