AI21

This Israeli company announced their models in 2021. They also have a successful product in Wordtune which is a rephraser and one of the best on the market competing primarily with quillbot. AI21 and their Jurassic models are a similar size to OpenAI’s davinci and curie. AI21 are the new kids on the block and have significant backing. They launched with a focus on fine-tuning and a comfy Discord for users.

The interface on the website in the studio is very similar to the OpenAI playground so you can create and play with the models here. The API is easy to use and the pricing is relatively simple. One of the major advantages of AI21 over any of the other models on the market is that AI21 only charges for output tokens. This monetization policy is positive for a few use cases; prompt engineering becomes easier as you don’t have to balance out examples and cost. You can fill up the tokens with examples as you only pay for the output. This monetization policy is also incredibly good for tools which have a ‘Write for Me’ function as you are not paying for the text in the prompt every single time the end-user hits generate.

Fine-tuning with AI21 can be a slower process due to the fact that you have to provide their team with your files and information and they do it manually on their side. They are working on a way to make this self-serve which will be an incredible breakthrough but for the moment, this is a bit of a downside.

There is no filter on the AI21 models which is great for creating content that might get censored with other technology. The process for going live is also incredibly simple. Competition is always great at driving down prices and forcing companies to innovate and AI21’s introduction to the market has definitely had an impact on some of the more dominant players.