AI assistant
In short
An AI assistant is a program you talk to in everyday language that answers questions, writes, summarises and helps with tasks. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot are well-known examples.
- Also called
- Virtual assistant, General-purpose AI assistant
- Topic
- Using AI tools
- Level
- Beginner
- First described
- Anthropic's December 2021 paper "A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment" set out the aim of a general-purpose, text-based assistant that is helpful, honest and harmless2. OpenAI's ChatGPT, released as a free research preview in November 2022, brought the idea to the public1.
Today's AI assistants are built on large language models trained to hold a conversation and follow instructions. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, it said the dialogue format let it "answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests"1.
The assistant behaviour comes from training, not just size. For ChatGPT, human trainers wrote conversations in which they played both the user and the AI assistant, and the model was then refined with reinforcement learning from human feedback1. Anthropic researchers set out the goal in 2021 as an assistant that is "helpful, honest, and harmless"2.
Assistants increasingly sit inside other software and draw on your own data. Microsoft 365 Copilot works in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, and can use your calendar, emails, chats and documents3.
The term overlaps with chatbot and AI agent. An assistant mostly responds to what you ask. An agent is given a goal and takes several steps on its own to reach it.
Assistants can be wrong. OpenAI warned at launch that ChatGPT "sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers"1.
Example
After a Teams meeting, Copilot can summarise the main discussion points, including who said what and where people disagreed, and suggest action items3.
Why it matters
It is the form of AI most people deal with directly. Knowing what an assistant can see, such as your emails or files, helps you decide what to trust it with.
Questions people ask
Is an AI assistant the same as a chatbot?
Mostly. A chatbot is any program that chats. An AI assistant is a chatbot built to help with tasks, often connected to your files, email or calendar. Microsoft 365 Copilot, for example, can draw on your emails and documents3.
Can AI assistants make mistakes?
Yes. OpenAI's own launch post said ChatGPT sometimes gives plausible-sounding but incorrect answers1. Check anything important against a reliable source.
How are AI assistants trained to be helpful?
They start as language models and are then fine-tuned on example conversations and human ratings of answers. ChatGPT used supervised fine-tuning followed by reinforcement learning from human feedback1.
Related terms
Tools that use it
- ChatGPTOpenAI's general chatbot, the most used AI app in the UK and worldwide.
- ClaudeAnthropic's chatbot, strong on writing and on pointing out holes in an argument, with a tight free allowance.
- Google GeminiGoogle's chatbot, built into Android, Gmail and Docs, with a generous free plan.
- Microsoft CopilotMicrosoft's free chatbot, now merged with the Microsoft 365 app and bundled into Office subscriptions.