This private Perplexity-like AI platform is transforming enterprise search

EDITOR’S NOTE

Hello Nanobiters!

Welcome to another edition of Nanobits Product Spotlight!
This is a special one ✨ 

In our last edition, we learned about tools that let you chat with your PDFs. One such tool was Subtl.ai.

Our preliminary experience with Subtl AI was exciting. So, we went ahead and spoke to the creator who built the platform, Vishnu Ramesh, CEO and Co-founder of Subtl AI.

And, I think this is the right time to also announce that we have launched our podcast, The Third Eye of AI. 👁️ 

We created this podcast to pull back the curtain on India's AI scene and give you unfiltered access to the visionaries behind it all. Each episode is your ticket to the front lines of innovation.

In our debut episode, Vishnu shares his inspiring story of building a 'Private Perplexity-like AI Platform' right here in India.

We also explore:

→ The story behind Subtl AI and its mission to tackle enterprise search challenges

→ The hurdles and triumphs of conducting core AI research in India

→ How Subtl AI is revolutionizing internal support systems, like at SBI

→ The battle against AI "hallucinations" and the importance of accuracy

→ The future of AI in India and the role of startups like Subtl AI

Since some of you requested we do a product teardown, after watching the episode, we'll be testing out the platform and sharing our firsthand experience in this newsletter.

NANOBITS EXPERIMENTS

The best part about Subtl.ai is that you can either upload a PDF, a website link, or a YouTube link as the input file.

This means you can talk to a website and a YouTube video apart from PDFs.

Since I have been following the ongoing discussions about the new broadcasting bill, I selected a recent CNBC video that features policymakers and media leaders expressing their concerns about the proposed legislation, for this experiment.

You have to log into Subtl AI and create your personal workspace where you can upload your documents and links.

If you want to just fool around and try things out, Subtl AI has some pre-uploaded documents and links in the demo workspace.

In the previous newsletter, we experimented with one such document - the Indian Budget 2024. Feel free to try out some other documents and links.

Back to our personal workspace.

Click on the "Documents" tab at the top right and select "YouTube Link" to paste the link to your video.

It took some time to upload even though my video was about 11 minutes long. There was no progress bar so I could not know what’s the approximate time taken. I waited for 5 minutes but I had some other work so I left the page and continued working.

After a couple of hours, it was still loading, so I refreshed the page to find that the link had been uploaded.

I think the customer experience needs some tweaking.

Now, let’s look at a more interesting part of the process.

I asked a series of questions about the video and let’s look at how the responses varied across Subtl AI, ChatGPT 4o, and Gemini Advanced.

Question 1: What are the primary concerns over the draft broadcasting bill?

Subtl.ai 

I like how the response was cited with relevant parts of the source.

ChatGPT 4o

One interesting point to note here is that ChatGPT can not read links. Although there are some custom GPT bots like Voxscript which can transcribe YouTube videos.

I used YouTube's auto-generated transcript as the starting point in ChatGPT to ask further questions and get more refined information.

The response, in my opinion, is detailed with bullet points for better readability. There are no citations, however. Bummer!

It identified several nuances that Subtl AI overlooked, such as how the proposed legislation would impact international celebrities who want to perform or distribute content in India.

Gemini Advanced

The response is more nuanced than Subtl AI.

Clearly, ChatGPT is the winner here.

I asked another question: What does Rohit Kumar from the Quantum Hub has to say about the bill?

Since I had gone through the entire video before testing, I realized that Subtl had missed out on a crucial point that the speaker [Rohit Kumar] had mentioned — the increased burden of governance on individual content and small companies.

I had to specifically ask Subtl: According to Rohit Kumar from the quantum hub what are the implications of this bill for individual content creators and small businesses?

Now let’s look at what ChatGPT has to say:

ChatGPT has mentioned compliance burden and speed to market which were missed by Subtl.ai.

Although not as detailed as ChatGPT, Gemini Advanced also mentioned the crucial points around the compliance burden and speed to market.

You can read the whole discussion here [for ChatGPT] and here [for Gemini]. Although my workspace on Subtl is public, I could not figure out how to share the chat link.

These results suggest that Subtl.ai might function primarily as an answering tool, unlike ChatGPT or Gemini Advanced, which have a wider range of applications.

Think of a conversation with a friend: you'd likely give concise answers like Subtl.ai, rather than the more detailed responses you'd get from ChatGPT or Gemini Advanced.

In my previous newsletter, I focused on using PDFs as input. This time, I wanted to demonstrate how Subtl.ai handles website links, but unfortunately, I encountered repeated errors when Subtl’s platform tried to process the links I provided. The error messages were unclear, and I couldn't determine the cause of the issue. This might be due to some transient bug.

Nevertheless, I also tinkered around with the Y-Combinator resource in the demo workspace:

My question: How to determine if my start-up has achieved product market fit?

Here’s how Subtl, ChatGPT-4o, and Gemini Advanced performed:

This is some great advice. Then I tried asking the same question for a specific type of company: advanced all-in-one chargers.

This is alright but there is no nuanced advice. If you want to understand more about PMF (especially for D2C products), I would suggest reading the thread shared by Arindam Paul of Atomberg. It’s gold!

Now let’s see what answers ChatGPT gave to my initial question.

This is a similar response but more elaborated.

Now, let’s look at Gemini’s response:

I like how this response mentioned the most important thing about PMF: it’s not an achieve-and-forget goal, not a one-time event—something Chat-GPT and Subtl AI missed.

This marks the end of my experiments with Subtl.ai.

NANOBITS VERDICT

🥇 ChatGPT-4o
🥈 Gemini Advanced
🥉 Subtl.ai

The verdict is based on specific types of questions and input which are YouTube videos. Since the output generated by AI platforms is probabilistic and not deterministic, you might have a different experience.

Things that worked well:

1. Demo workspace

2. Different input types — PDFs, websites, and YouTube links

3. Citations in responses

Things that can be improved:

1. User experience

2. Website link as input

3. Nuances in the output

4. More context awareness

Subtl.ai's moat is its focus on providing private, secure AI solutions for enterprises. Unlike competitors that rely on public endpoints and internet connectivity, Subtl.ai's solution is designed to work offline, ensuring the privacy and security of sensitive data.

Additionally, Subtl.ai's ability to provide precise answers with citations from documents, rather than just links or page numbers, sets it apart in terms of user experience and reduces hallucinations.

It’s still a work in progress but the team is developing interesting features which will change the way enterprises interact with their data layer.

Subtl.ai is catching up with the big techs in the AI world.

You can try out their product: https://chat.subtl.ai/

I am sure Vishnu would love to hear your feedback. Write to us about your experience with Subtl.ai.