This AI Office App is Trending: Short Prompts Generate PPTs, Packaged GPTs Work for You
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Suddenly, a newly launched AI app is gaining popularity in small overseas circles.
Named PopAi, it's an all-in-one personal AI workspace that seamlessly integrates chatting, reading, writing, and creative work needs.
Just 2 days after its launch, it soared to the second spot on the hot list of the well-known new product discovery platform ProductHunt. What is the main feature of this tool?
Simply put, with PopAi, there's no need to frequently switch windows. It integrates workflows, enabling people to reserve their energy for higher-level thinking.
Sounds like an essential tool for office workers.
But does it really deliver? To find out, we gave it a hands-on test. In summary, PopAi has four main functions.
The first and most basic one is that PopAi can be used as a chatbot.
Simply asking PopAi questions reveals that its chat tool directly utilizes OpenAI's API. In the upper right corner of the chat interface, you can choose between GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 as the chatbot version.
Beyond simple conversations, secondly, PopAi can also summarize and process documents.
This includes academic papers, educational materials, or training resources—which aligns with the tool's official user profile positioning, "designed specifically for knowledge workers, researchers, and students." This feature has become indispensable for AI users in their daily work routines.
For example, when given the classic paper "Attention is All You Need," it can quickly provide an outline summary and list key terms.
After completing these tasks, it can also generate multiple document-related questions to facilitate your next steps in inquiry.
When answering these questions, the responses will include source references at the end and highlight them in the original text display box on the left: Not only text documents, but PopAI can also handle chart content processing.
Not everything will be displayed here. If you're interested, you can try it out yourself～
The third, and somewhat impressive feature is slide generation functionality. If you have a speech draft or even just an idea for a PPT, you can select "AI presentation" in the leftmost sidebar to create your own template or choose from existing templates, then make minor adjustments to specific parameters.
Using the official demo better illustrates the underlying workflow:
After entering the prompt, PopAi will first search online for relevant information, then generate a well-structured text version of the presentation. Users can make adjustments based on the specific content.
Then just click confirm, and the PPT appears before your eyes. The typesetting and overall appearance seem quite satisfactory.
After generating the PPT, you can click on any text box to have PopAI help you "expand" or "simplify" the content with just one click.
No more worries about delaying presentations...?
Some users have commented in reviews that PopAI handles general theme PPT generation effortlessly. However, when dealing with more abstract designs or topics requiring strong analysis, the layout of PPT slides could still be improved.
The fourth feature is the AI drawing capability based on DALL·E 3.
Looking at its showcased examples, it's not just about generating images from text, but also creating text from images and interpreting chart content.
This feature can also support analyzing diagnostic reports, identifying complex instruments, determining locations, and assisting with coursework (huh?!). Currently, in addition to using PopAi on PC and the official website, you can also add it as a Chrome extension.
iOS users have it even better, as they can directly download the app.
However, based on our current understanding, PopAi's primary target market is still overseas, so downloading the app requires a US Apple ID (take note).
With practical use cases and trending popularity, PopAi currently seems to be receiving mostly positive reviews online. One netizen mentioned that she primarily uses PopAi's image analysis feature, such as uploading a picture and asking PopAi to identify which items in the image are lace fabrics and which are not, along with explanations for why they aren't.
Typically, it's AI that presents image captchas for humans to solve, but with PopAi, the roles are reversed—which is quite amusing.
Another user stated that PopAi has already been listed as one of her 'best AI product applications.'
'I love (PopAi's) all-in-one functionality—it's super useful for my daily work!' PopAi's introduction clearly states, "Let users offload low-skill tasks to AI assistants and focus on work that requires higher-level thinking."
To achieve this functionality, team members commented in the ProductHunt forum, stating that PopAi is primarily supported by top-tier models including GPT-4, GPT-4V, and DALLE·3.
Currently, the GPT-3.5 version is available under a free trial plan with access to basic features. The pro version integrated with GPT-4, of course, requires a small fee to access more advanced features, such as deeper and more thorough analysis of various documents. The most exciting part is the ability to exceed 2000 messages in a single chat session.
Moreover, the team has addressed the issues of hallucinations and accuracy associated with large language models by integrating Web access and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) technology.
Overall, PopAi bundles many AI features needed by office workers and students, eliminating the need to search for multiple AI assistants elsewhere—everything is available in one place. Does it have a taste of concentrated GPTs applications? Then some clever ideas from the team itself were added.
Following the clues, we learned about the background identity of the PopAi team.
There are traces to follow. PopAi was launched in August last year and upgraded 20 versions in 5 months. In January this year, PopAi's user base reached 1.5 million, with over 300,000 being student users.
Additionally, two members of PopAi's team have appeared on ProductHunt.
One is named Ken Cao. LinkedIn shows his most recent resume position as "Product Lead of ByteDance's Lark overseas version". Previously, Cao was the Product VP at the funny video community ZuiYou, and earlier had work experience as a product manager at Baidu.
Another individual named Fischer Lam currently has no more detailed personal information available through internet searches.
Does anyone know the background of this team?