QuillBot

New Here? Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I 'test drive' Generative AI products and share what's on my mind as I learn, analyze and make sense of Generative AI. If you're looking to start with the intro stuff, Check out? E13: Demystifying AI: What you need to know about the technology that's everywhere.

In Issue 18, we introduced a16z's list of the top 50 Generative AI products- and mentioned my personal challenge -- running through the list and profiling the products here on the Generative Drive.

I've covered a few so far- ChatGPT, issue 1, Character.AI, a free library of pre-designed chatbots, Issue 19 and Poe by Quora, Issue 10.

Today- we're going to look at QuillBot, ranked #5!

Whats the tl;dr on QuillBot?

• Quillbot was founded in 2017 by Anil Jason, Rohit Gupta, and David Silin
• Acquired in 2021 and now part of the Learneo (formerly Course Hero) suite of learning + productivity businesses. [more on learneo's businesses]
• "Founded on the belief that learning and applying knowledge is more important than the mechanical aspects of writing, QuillBot seeks to automate these necessary tasks intending to augment your language."
• More than 60 percent of current QuillBot users are non-native speakers
• 150+ Million Users, and the top 5 countries by user count: 1) Philippines, 2) United States, 3) India, 4) United Kingdom, 5) Canada [Source, 2022]
• The largest age group of visitors are 18 - 24 year olds [source]

"QuillBot, and in particular, our translator, grew out of our own personal experiences and challenges of needing accessible help to understand how to write well, while preserving original intent," said Rohan Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of QuillBot. "We are committed to helping bridge cultural gaps and facilitating a deeper and more relatable understanding of text, as well as, coaching users through the most challenging facets of writing and helping them develop their skills."

Product Features

In reading about the product's evolution, I find it really interesting that QuillBot was originally created as a full-sentence thesaurus. Given the advancements in AI, they have quickly added more features, like translation, in 2023. QuillBot is NOT a full generation engine, but more a VERY useful toolbox to assist with your writing.

Currently, the product features:

1- Paraphraser: (Free!) The bread & butter of this product. Rephrase text with the vocabulary, tone, and style you're looking for. What's really cool is that you can review alternative options and have control over suggestions (and choose from additional layers of options). the more I play with this, the more I like it.

Standard modes are available, but you can also work on creating a custom voice, so changes are more in the style and direction that matches your needs.

2- Grammar Checker: Scan for issues with punctuation and word choice and fix them with one click. Honestly, this is incredibly useful.

3- Summarizer: Identify the main points from text or an uploaded document, either in a paragraph or key sentence mode. Easily switch over to paraphraser from the summary. I tested this out with some text from a news article that was very long - and found it extremely useful and on-point.

4- Citation Generator: Craft full and in-text citations in APA, MLA, or Chicago style.

5- Plagiarism Checker: Scan a document and highlight any unintentional plagiarism.

6- Translator: (Free!) Translations in over 45 different languages-

7- Co-Writer: Access and utilize QuillBot’s paraphrasing, summarizing, citation generation, and essay writing tools in one convenient writing environment.

Takeaways

Quillbot Provides a Strong Toolbox of Features for Writers. I can't imagine a better tool for students and anyone who writes consistently than QuillBot—the speed and efficiency of being able to quickly summarize text or provide alternative writing options, plus ethical features like creating citations and double checking for any unintended plagiarism. I'm starting to see why it's ranked so highly on this list (and it's for good reason). The product doesn't replace writing- it's more about supplementing.

No AI Knowledge or Prompt Engineering Required! The QuillBot team created a product that doesn't require the user to know anything about how AI works (or prompting) in order to use it. Fixing your problems (and writing) is the main goal. Sure, you could use ChatGPT to assist you in some of these tasks, but you'd need to do some layers of prompting in order to do so -- likely more frustrating for anyone who isn't interested in prompting, or may find it distracting when they're in a writing flow.

Integrated: The Chrome plugin popped up to help out wherever I was writing. Even helped with some punctuation changes for parts of this article :)

tl;dr Quillbot is an AI product where the AI part feels seamless- it's less about helping you start, or write the content itself - but about supporting you to finish your work and feel confident about it.

I'll be back soon with another test drive.

Until then, keep prompting, my friends (+ consider sharing and subscribing!)