From Bard to ChatGPT to Google's new search, AI chatbots are becoming increasingly prevalent. Our sister site, Tom's Hardware, is also dipping its proverbial toe into the water with its own chatbot — HammerBot — which will help its visitors search for articles on its site and find answers to questions they may have about PCs, peripherals, components and anything else that Tom's Hardware covers.
So how does it work?
HammerBot was developed using OpenAI’s text-davinci-003 model, otherwise known as GPT-3, trained on a custom dataset of Tom's Hardware stories. When you ask HammerBot a question, the server queries its dataset to get you the results.
If you want to try it out, here's a link to the Tom's Hardware Hammerbot.
Unlike more general chatbots such as Bard — which try and get you any sort of information you request — Hammerbot is limited to what it's learned from Tom's Hardware. So, if you try and ask it how many types of cats there are in the world, or who was the better lead singer for Van Halen, it may say it doesn’t know or it can’t answer your question.
When you ask it a question — such as "what's the best raspberry Pi"?, Hammerbot will respond with an answer, as well as a few links to relevant stories on Tom's Guide and, if applicable, a link to purchase that product.
Bear in mind that, like all chatbots, Hammerbot is still very much in its infancy, so the answers it gives may not be entirely accurate. But, Tom's Hardware is working to improve its responses, so that it can become a more useful tool for readers in the future. Eventually, the hope is that it will be able to provide the best recommendations as you shop for a new computer, or look to upgrade your existing setup. So, keep trying it out, and let them know what you think.
