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Configure a GPT-driven chatbot and add it to the site
Overview
Name of explainer: Configure a GPT-driven chatbot and add it to the site
Creative theme: Beginning AI with WordPress and AI Engine
Software / platforms used (for this explainer):
WordPress, AI Engine (plugin)
User level: BEGINNER
This is explainer 5 of 8 in this series
This series includes:
- Get tooled up!
- Install the AI Engine WordPress plugin and explore the interface
- Use AI Engine to generate WordPress page content and images
- Create and refine text using AI Engine’s ‘copilot’ and ‘magic wand’
- Configure a GPT-driven chatbot and add it to the site
- Configure a context-sensitive chatbot to discuss page content
- Use a Pinecone index to create and test embeddings to improve the chatbot
- Where to next? Additional AI Engine functions and other generative AI apps
The software and apps used in this series
This series of explainers uses the following platforms/apps:
1: WordPress
We use WordPress throughout this series. To follow along you’ll need your own WordPress installation/site. If you’ve never installed WordPress see these guides to get up and running:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/guides/
https://www.wpbeginner.com/start-a-wordpress-blog/
You don’t need to choose a theme or add plug-ins to your installation – You just need a working, ‘blank’ installation.
2: AI Engine (WordPress plugin)
AI Engine is one of the most popular AI plug-ins for WordPress. It offers an intuitive interface for performing AI tasks including generating text content for your site, generating images, and creating chatbots. We use the FREE version of the plug-in in explainers one through four. To complete the processes in explainers five and six you will need the paid, PRO version of the plug-in.
3: OpenAI account
OpenAI is the company behind the famous GPT-3 generative AI model that was made public in late 2022. You’ll need a FREE OpenAI account to link AI Engine to their AI models to generate content and offer a chatbot. Note a free account includes a limited amount of usage credits – If you go on to deploy bots on live / commercial sites you’ll need to pay for your ongoing usage.
4: Pinecone vector database account
We introduce and use Pinecone in explainers five and six, when we use a Pinecone index to store information about our arcade gaming event (embeddings) to improve the quality of the responses from our chatbot. A FREE Pinecone account will work for this series, and if you go on to use it in a business context you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
The pre-requisities
This is a BEGINNER explainer series. You need a basic knowledge of Windows, WordPress and downloading and installing software to follow along. We’re keeping it simple and do not go into the technical complexities of interacting with AI models. YOU are responsible for your websites and their data – We cannot be held responsible for issues arising from your use (or inability to use) any of the platforms, apps or plug-ins used in this series.
AI Engine in action in this series:
Throughout this series we use a fictional website for an Arcade Festival event and use AI Engine to generate content and offer helpbots to our visitors:
Creating AI images for the event site using AI Engine
Creating a site helpbot using AI Engine
Asking the helpbot to discuss content on a page
Creating embeddings to tailor helpbot responses
Why would I do this?
At the heart of AI Engine is its ability to create chatbots for a site! These are driven by Open AI so our visitors can be sure of an interesting conversation!
Not only can we add chatbots and determine their personas, but later in this series we’ll go on to create context-sensitive bots that can discuss specific page content with our visitors!
Let’s do it!
Click the play icon to watch this explainer video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right:
Good to know
As indicated in the explainer, AI Engine’s Chatbot functionality is constantly evolving – You may find the screen looks a little different to that shown.
It’s easy to copy and paste shortcodes, but you can also add a chatbot block to your page just like any other block by selecting the ‘AI chatbot’ block:
You can select an individual chatbot to add from the block properties panel:
Chatbot conversations take place between your site visitors and Open AI models. Once the free ‘credits’ that come with your Open AI account are used up you’ll need to move to a paid plan in order to continue using these features.
Where to next?
In the next explainer we’ll switch to the paid, PRO version of AI Engine in order to make our chatbot ‘content aware’. This will mean it can discuss the information on the Arcadefest site with our visitors!
At time of writing the PRO version starts at under 50 dollars:
Remember, this is part of a series of explainers – Join us again for the other explainers in the series 🙂
Notes and updates
There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in May 2023. This page was last updated in May 2023.
We are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. You should NOT deploy AI Engine directly to production / live sites without testing it in a staging / development environment first. We recommend using a blank/clean WordPress install for learning purposes. Generative AI is constantly evolving and we cannot guarantee the content in this series is up-to-date past the date specified above. All links are included in good faith at the time of writing. Modern apps offer users many ways to accomplish a single task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to refer to multiple options. All computer users must run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise the risk of data loss.
This is number 5 of 8 explainer videos in this series. Make sure you join us for the others!
