Hugging Face shuts down its AI chatbot HuggingChat to make way for new AI service

Julien Chaumond, co-founder and CTO of Hugging Face, has announced they're shutting down HuggingChat, their free and open source AI-powered chatbot. This move affects users who relied on the platform for AI conversations and models. HuggingChat was launched in April 2023 and positioned itself as an open source alternative to ChatGPT, building on top of community-driven models and other collaborative building blocks.

While the service has always been free and experimental, Hugging Face is now closing HuggingChat to focus on releasing a new and more fully integrated offering within its ecosystem. This shift reflects a change in direction as the company adapts to evolving user needs and seeks to incorporate tighter platform integration.

For those who have used HuggingChat, there is an option to export past conversations as a Zip file. These exported conversations can then be imported into other interfaces supporting compatible formats. For users looking for replacements, alternatives such as LibreChat and others listed here may serve as destinations.