There is a long and growing list of generative AI chatbots that might be relevant to our students. ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing are among the best-known AI chatbots, but they are not the only ones. Lexis-Nexis, Westlaw, and Casetext are developing chatbots that integrate ChatGPT (and other large language models) with a specific corpus of text.

Right now, ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing do not have access to anything that is behind a paywall (like most cases, law review articles, and many statutes and regulations). They can answer questions about legal issues very well because the issues are sometimes discussed on lawyers’ websites or other places, but the training corpus does not include much of what we would cite.

Training these programs takes enormous computing power, and they are not searching the Internet in real time for the most part. ChatGPT says that its information is valid as of September 2021. Other programs use search engines in addition to their large language models to provide more updated information.

General

ChatGPT

To use ChatGPT, you must create an account with OpenAI. The free account lets you use GPT-3. You’ll haver to pay to use the most advanced version. ChatGPT is trained on an enormous corpus of data, including basically all of Wikipedia and Reddit and millions of other websites. Its training cut-off was September 2021, so its responses will not include the most recent information.

Bard

Bard is Google’s AI chatbot. It is free to use with a Google account. It is trained and functions like ChatGPT.

Bing chat

Bing is Microsoft’s search tool, and the chat function in Bing is its AI chatbot. It is trained and functions like ChatGPT. You must use the Edge browser and sign into Microsoft to use the Bing chat feature at this point.

Law-specific

Bloomberg

Bloomberg has integrated AI tools into its existing products and is developing more.

CoCounsel

Casetext is developing CoCounsel, which promises to do legal research and analysis.

Lexis + AI

Lexis is developing a specialized AI chatbot that will function like ChatGPT. The key difference is that it is trained on the materials that is behind Lexis’s paywall. Our Lexis representative indicated that this should be available by July.

Westlaw

Westlaw is integrating AI chatbots into many of its products. It is partnering with Microsoft, which has integrated AI into many of its Office products.

Other materials

Artificial Intelligence Glossary, New York Times
ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education, UNESCO
Teaching with AI, Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, UIUC
Faculty, AI, and Teaching, Inside Higher Education