Mistral, the French startup considered to be at the forefront of AI development in Europe, has launched an AI chatbot app called Le Chat for iOS and Android devices.
The Le Chat app is the mobile version of Mistral’s AI assistant with the same name. It features the usual chatbot interface which allows users to input prompts or queries and receive AI-generated outputs in a conversational format.
However, Mistral is yet to roll out voice mode on Le Chat, which means that users are not able to make spoken queries to the AI assistant. The web version of Le Chat has also been upgraded.
Mistral’s announcement comes weeks after DeepSeek’s AI chatbot app rode to the top of app store charts in several countries, and overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT to become the No. 1 app on Apple’s App Store in the US. The French AI startup is looking to position itself as a domestic alternative to AI models developed by US-based tech companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Instead of relying on other foundational AI models to power its AI chatbot services, Mistral has developed its own large language model (LLM) to take on the likes of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. While the company’s foundational LLM may not outperform its American rivals on various fronts, Mistral hopes to attract more users and upstage competitors by building a better AI product.
Le Chat lets users generate images and provides search results with citations. Recently, the French startup signed a deal with news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) to give users updated, reliable information on current events. Generating images is said to be one of Mistral AI’s strengths as it relies on Black Forest Labs’ Flux Ultra text-to-image generator.
On Thursday, Mistral also announced a new Pro subscription plan for €14.99 per month (Rs 1,360 approx.).
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The company revealed that Le Chat Pro subscribers will have access to Mistral’s “highest-performing model” but did specify exactly which models are accessible via the paid tier and for free users.
Mistral’s flagship AI models include Mistral Large and Pixtral Large (a multimodal LLM) that are accessible for developers through an API or cloud service providers such as Azure AI Studio, Amazon Bedrock, and Google’s Vertex AI.
The Le Chat Pro subscription also comes with other benefits such as higher token limits and the choice to opt out of sharing user data with Mistral.
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