Question: Is there an open-source conversational AI platform that I can use and modify for free?

If you're looking for an open-source conversational AI platform, Open Assistant is a good option. This project from LAION and others around the world seeks to democratize conversational AI with Apache 2.0 licensed code and CC BY 4.0 licensed training data. Open Assistant is designed to run on off-the-shelf consumer hardware, so it's good for individuals and organizations that want to add conversational AI abilities without a lot of expense or hardware constraints.

Another good option is Chai AI, which crowdsources language model creation to try to reach Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). With more than 500,000 chat AI creators and 100 foundational model creators, it's a community-based approach to building large language models. Chai AI offers a free app for consumers, but there are also subscription options. It's a good option for consumers and developers.

If you want to use OpenAI's assistant technology, OpenAssistantGPT is a chatbot builder that supports several OpenAI models, including GPT-4 and GPT-3.5. It can be used in websites and offers several pricing levels, including a free tier. That makes it a good option for those who want to build chatbots but also can get access to the source code on GitHub.

ChatBotKit is another powerful platform for developers and nondevelopers to build AI chatbots. It supports multiple languages and foundational models, and it's got a lot of features like message peek, custom skillsets, and integrations with popular chat apps. With a template wizard and several pricing tiers, ChatBotKit is good for a broad range of use cases, including AI experiences, education and automation.