Pi AI assistant developer Inflection AI, after experiencing a major team overhaul following the hiring of one of its co-founders by Microsoft, is now betting on data portability. The company has announced a partnership with the non-profit organization Data Transfer Initiative (DTI) to help existing Pi users export their data from the platform.

While this is not a new development in the broader tech industry (many internet services allow users to export and import data), it is a significant step forward in the AI field, which has gained much attention in recent years. The field has seen the emergence of many vendors. Inflection hopes that its collaboration with DTI will enable users to have flexible control over their personal AI data, allowing them to move their personal and professional conversation history as they wish. DTI is a non-profit organization formed by Apple, Meta, and Google, aiming to develop tools that facilitate direct data transfer between services.

This move also signifies the company's shift in focus from the consumer-oriented Pi to enterprise products. However, the company also emphasizes that this does not mean Pi will be phased out. The service will continue to operate for free, but with some limitations on message quantity.

"This allows us to continue serving the vast majority of Pi users without diverting important resources needed for our upcoming enterprise products," the company wrote in a blog post.

How will Inflection AI's data portability efforts unfold?

Founded in 2022, Inflection AI focuses on building an AI that is "understanding, useful, and safe," with a more personalized and conversational performance compared to other models, including the GPT series. The company uses unique emotion fine-tuning techniques to give its Pi chatbot models a distinct personality and exceptional emotional intelligence. It has released this assistant on various platforms, but these efforts have not been sufficient for sustainable growth.

In March of this year, when Mustafa Suleyman and several employees of Inflection AI were recruited by Microsoft, the company announced a strategic shift. Leveraging its AI studio business, the company will create, test, and fine-tune general AI models (such as the one behind Pi) for commercial clients.

Now, several months later, as the company gets closer to launching its enterprise products, it is providing an exit strategy for existing Pi users. Through its collaboration with DTI, Inflection will allow users to export their chat history with the assistant to their archives or export it to another product based on a large-scale language model, including Inflection's own enterprise products.

"The exported format will be clear, well-documented, searchable plain text, with no restrictive licenses, so you can easily use it in the future. You can import the data into any large language model (LLM) that supports this feature, and we have built-in secure digital signatures so that you can confidently rely on the LLM of your choice to support the interoperability framework defined in collaboration with DTI," the company added in the blog post.

Inflection AI points out that allowing exports is part of its efforts to provide users with flexibility, enabling them to stay on their preferred AI service or retain additional copies of their interactions with AI. The Pi chatbot will continue to operate for free, but free users will be subject to message quantity limitations similar to ChatGPT.

Will AI data portability become the norm?

While data portability has become commonplace for many online services, AI data portability is still a nascent topic, possibly due to the relatively short history of most current tools. The amount of data they hold is not as extensive as popular internet services like Gmail.

However, as adoption rates grow and more people interact with these AI services, these tools will possess 10 to 20 years' worth of user information. In such cases, if a user is dissatisfied with a service or if it is about to shut down, they may need the option to migrate their data to another service in order to continue their experience uninterrupted.

DTI and Inflection AI have already begun this work. However, it remains to be seen whether other industry participants will join in and go beyond traditional chat history downloads to achieve end-to-end data portability, allowing users to freely export and import their personal AI conversations on platforms they prefer.