Detailing Quora's vision for it’s AI Model: Poe

With over 400 million monthly users globally and 100 million in India alone, Quora has established itself as a significant player in the world of the internet. The site is mainly used as a question-and-answer portal where people can share their opinions, thoughts and ideas to form strong communities.

While the platform was launched in 2009, Vinay Pandey, who is the chief revenue officer at Quora says that the Q&A platform’s core mission has always been about sharing and growing the world’s knowledge. Over the years, this mission has remained unchanged.

Despite that, as per Pandey, Quora has amassed a vast amount of content and user feedback, which has been instrumental in optimising the user experience. The focus has been on making the browser and navigation easier and ensuring both new and existing users can connect, ask questions, and find answers in a safe space.

Quora’s AI: Poe

In February 2023, Quora introduced the Platform for Open Exploration (Poe), which lets users engage with multiple large language models (LLMs) from a single place. In fact, Poe users can now engage with multiple AI models within the same chat window.

The multi-bot chat feature lets you input a query into the chat box and select one of the many recommended bots Poe offers to get a response.

Speaking about the new AI platform, Pandey says, “We are not creating a foundation model. Rather, we are trying to make sure that all of the leading models are available on one platform. It's essentially like a web browser. Just like Chrome or Safari allows you to access different apps and sites, we want all of this good work (AI models) being developed across the world to be accessible to everyone on one platform, at one single cost.”

Poe users can access OpenAI's GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, Anthropic's Claude 2 and Claude 3, Stability AI's StableDiffusion XL, and Google's Gemini Pro.

“People can use it for free. But if they want the latest models, they can subscribe. For example, instead of paying $20 to ChatGPT or $20 to other AI tools, here you can have access to all of them on a single platform,” explains Pandey.

He also points out that a user can also compare the responses of different AI models on Poe.

“In many ways, it works like a human-technology interaction. Just like how humans like to take multiple opinions on an issue, Poe helps you do exactly, but in a seamless manner.”

Creator Monetisation

Previously, Quora spaces enabled users to monetise their content predicated on the upvotes and downvotes they received. With Poe, the platform is offering other monetisation facilities to its creators.

“There are millions of user-created bots on this platform. So people can just make their own bots on top of an existing model and when others use them, they get monetised,” explains Pandey.

“While there are official bots from platforms like OpenAI, Google, and others on Poe, you can have users create props on these base models very easily,” he adds.

Moreover, Poe’s creator monetisation platform also lets users have a share in Poe's overall revenue when other users subscribe to, and chat with the created bots.

According to Pandey, while Poe does not currently host advertisements, it offers benefits for advertisers through advanced targeting and personalisation capabilities.

“By leveraging AI to parse information and understand user signals, Poe can enhance marketing efficiency. Additionally, Poe's ability to create content, design assets, and its ability to moderate at scale provides valuable tools for advertisers,” he says.

Speaking about Quora’s growth, Pandey says that the platform has experienced substantial growth over the years, especially in India, which is one of the biggest markets for the company.

“It's been over a year since we introduced Poe and the response is very strong, both in India and overseas. We have seen robust user growth. We also got funding from Andreessen Horowitz. Currently, our aim is to make the technology available to everyone."

Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California.