Four Ways to Build Artificial Intelligence Tools Without Knowing How to Code
This post is part of Lifehacker’s “Living with AI” series. We explore the current state of AI, what it can do (and what it can’t do), and assess where this revolutionary technology will go next. Read more here .
There’s a lot of talk these days about how AI will change your life. But if you don’t know how to code and aren’t familiar with the latest advances in artificial intelligence technology, you’ll probably decide there’s no point in playing here. (I know I did.) But as it turns out, there are software companies that can help you build artificial intelligence tools without having to write code.
What is movement without code?
The idea behind “no coding” is simple: everyone should be able to create programs, tools, and other digital services, regardless of their level of programming experience. While some take a “low-code” approach, which still requires some coding knowledge, the services on this list are strictly “no code.” Specifically, these are no-code solutions for creating artificial intelligence tools.
You don’t have to be a computer scientist to create your own artificial intelligence tools . You don’t even need to know how to program. You can train a neural network to identify a specific type of plant, or create a simple chatbot that helps customers solve problems on your website.
Keep your expectations in check, though: the best AI tools will require extensive knowledge of both computer science and coding. But it’s nice to know that there are utilities ready to help you create practical AI tools from scratch, without the need to understand programming (or technology).
Free training on simple machine learning models with Lobe
If training a machine learning model seems like something reserved for artificial intelligence experts, think again. While machine learning is a truly complex practice, there is a way to create your own model for free using just a laptop and a webcam.
That’s thanks to a program called Lobe : a free app owned by Microsoft that makes it easy to create your own machine learning model to recognize whatever you want. Do you need an app to differentiate colors? You can teach him this. Want to create a program that can identify different types of plants? The train is far away.
From the example video, you can see that you can train a model to detect when someone is drinking from a cup in just a few minutes. You can add any images you may have taken previously, but you can also just take some photos of yourself drinking from a cup using your webcam. Once you have taken enough sample photos of yourself drinking and not drinking, you can use those photos to train the model.
You can then test the model to see how well (or not) it can predict whether you’re drinking from a cup. In this example, he does a great job whenever he sees a cup in his hand, but he incorrectly identifies bringing his hand to his face as drinking. You can use feedback buttons to tell the model when it’s doing something wrong so it can quickly retrain based on that information and hopefully make more accurate predictions in the future.
Google also has a similar tool for training simple machine learning models called Teachable Machine , if you want to compare its offering to Microsoft’s.
Create your own AI chatbot using Juji Studio.
Artificial intelligence chatbots have been all the rage lately. ChatGPT certainly started the modern AI craze with its accessible yet powerful chat features, but everyone from Facebook Messenger to healthcare sites have been using chatbots for years. Even though OpenAI built ChatGPT based on years of experience, you can create your own chatbot without typing a single line of code.
Juji Studio wants to make creating a lightweight version of ChatGPT as easy as creating PowerPoint slides, according to the company. The program gives you the tools to create a working chatbot that you can embed on your website or Facebook Messenger. This involves managing the chatbot’s flow, customizing its personality, and providing it with a list of questions and answers so that it can accurately answer specific questions that users may have.
Juji allows you to start from scratch or create your own chatbot based on one of the existing templates. Templates include customer service bots, interview bots, teaching assistant bots, and bots that can conduct user experience surveys. No matter what you choose, you’ll see the brains of your bot in a column on the left side of the screen.
It’s really similar to PowerPoint slides: each “slide” corresponds to a different task that the chatbot needs to complete. For example, with a customer service chatbot, you have a “ask user questions until ready” slide that is pre-programmed to listen to the user’s questions until the user signals “done.” You can go in and set up prompts that the chatbot will ask the user, such as asking for an account number or email address, or even more personal questions, such as asking about a bad experience the user had or the best part of their day.
Of course, you can customize the entire process to suit your needs. You can create a bot that changes its approach depending on whether the user answers positively or negatively to an opinion-based question:
Create your own versions of Copilot or ChatGPT.
Chatbots like Copilot and ChatGPT can be useful for a variety of tasks, but if you want to use AI for a specific function, you should turn to GPT. GPTs, not to be confused with OpenAI’s GPT AI models, are custom chatbots that can be created for almost any purpose. The best part is that no coding is required. Instead, you simply tell the bot what you want, and the service will guide you through the entire GPT setup process.
You can create a GPT that helps the user learn a language, plan a meal and teach you how to cook it, or create logos for various purposes. Indeed, whatever you want from your chatbot, you can create a GPT to do it. (Or at least create a chatbot that is more focused on your task than ChatGPT or Copilot in general.)
You can access Copilot GPT if you subscribe to Copilot Pro . OpenAI used to charge a subscription for its GPTs, but the company is making them free for all users. In addition, OpenAI allows users to host their own GPTs in the GPT Store . If you don’t want to create your own, you can browse other users’ creations and try them out yourself.
Create anything you want with Bubble
For the ultimate no-code experience, you’ll need a tool like Bubble . You use a Photoshop-like interface to build your application or service, dragging and dropping new UI elements and features as needed.
But while Bubble makes it easy for us code illiterates to create things, it’s also integrated with artificial intelligence . There are many AI applications that you can incorporate into your programs using Bubble: you can connect your builds to OpenAI products like GPT and DALL-E, while taking advantage of plugins created by other Bubble contributors. All of these tools allow you to create a useful AI program yourself – something that takes advantage of GPT’s capabilities, without having to know how it works at all.
One of the best ways to start here is to take advantage ofthe OpenAI Playground . Playground is similar to ChatGPT in that it is based on OpenAI’s large language models, but is not a chatbot. So you can use Playground to create different kinds of products and features, which you can then easily move into your Bubble project using the View Code button.