The Stardock Object Desktop suite now includes DesktopGPT, a chatbot interface that’s primed for AI power users. With full keyboard navigability and access to multiple OpenAI LLMs, DesktopGPT could be a strong alternative to Windows Copilot and other chatbot clients.
DesktopGPT is designed for quick, frequent interaction. While the Copilot sidebar is somewhat intrusive, the DesktopGPT interface is comparable to macOS’ Spotlight search—a small rectangle that appears in the center of your screen when you hit a keyboard command (CTRL + SHIFT + F). You can type a query into the DesktopGPT interface or press the forward-slash key to bring up a collection of preset templates (you might use the /writeastory template before typing in a prompt, for example).
A small button on the side of DesktopGPT allows you to swap between the GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4, and GPT-4 Turbo models. Of course, this interface is optimized for keyboard input, so you can hit the F9 key to quickly flip between LLMs.
“With DesktopGPT, Stardock is bringing the power of AI to desktop with unique features that makes it easy to jump in-and-out of interacting with multiple large language models (LLM) with a keyboard-first experience. With access to GPT-3.5 Turbo, GPT-4, and GPT-4 Turbo, users have flexibility to easily move between models to find the right tool for their interactions.”
Ideally, users will “dip in and out of” DesktopGPT. This app doesn’t eat up a quarter of your screen, it just pops up when you need it. Stardock expects customers to make ample use of its preset templates, though you’ll need to build your own templates if you need DesktopGPT to fulfill unique recurring tasks (though I assume that community members may share their templates).
Note that DesktopGPT does not give you free access to OpenAI’s LLMs. The software comes with 75,000 OpenAI tokens, which you’ll need to replenish at some point. I hope that Stardock adds support for open-source local LLMs (kind of like NVIDIA ChatRTX), and I should point out that DesktopGPT currently lacks a dark mode. It’s also exclusive to Windows.
DesktopGPT is available today in beta. It’s included for free with Object Desktop, the premiere personalization suite for Windows. A year of Object Desktop costs $40 at the time of writing.
Soource: Stardock