Meet Your Personal Plotly “Ask AI” Chatbot for Easier Data App Development

Downloaded over two million times monthly, Dash is one of the most popular open-source Python frameworks. Every day, data scientists and analysts from all over the world rely on it to transform their models and static reports into interactive, customizable data apps. Our open-source documentation acts as a step-by-step guide throughout the process, taking Python developers through package installation, data connection, adding controls, and more.

Last week, you might have noticed a small change in the bottom right corner of our Python docs — a button that reads, “Ask AI”. Clicking on that button initiates a chatbot that will answer technical questions based on LLM models trained on over 2,000 pages of our documentation. This blog post will share some additional context behind this recent change, and the value we hope it will provide to your developer experience.

The Power of AI in Knowledge Accessibility

For Python developers, ChatGPT can be useful in providing some technical guidance (hey, we like it too!). But, sometimes the answers are outdated and not always accurate. That’s why we wanted to create our own version. The Plotly “Ask AI” chatbot has been rigorously trained, tested, and fine-tuned by Plotly engineers. Here’s a brief summary of some of the key features:

Real-time code suggestions: Not sure how to write a callback or need a template to start writing an app? The Plotly “Ask AI” chatbot can give you a ready-to-use code snippet that you can directly paste into your dev environment.

Error Identification: Syntax errors, incorrect references, or missing dependencies – these can be a nightmare to resolve. The “Ask AI” chatbot highlights all errors and provides the corrected code instantly, drastically streamlining the debugging process.

Up-to-Date Information: Unlike static documentation that can quickly become outdated, Plotly’s “Ask AI” chatbot always provides the most up-to-date information by thoroughly scanning our entire documentation for accurate answers. As soon as our engineers push changes to the documentation, you will see updated code and instructions.

Guided Discovery: If you’re unsure how to phrase your question, the “Ask AI” chatbot will extract relevant keywords from your input query and compare them with the patterns it has learned from training data. For example: If you want to create a Dash app that identifies user sentiment based on the music played, the chatbot can easily help you get started: 

Personalized Solutions: From adding multiple elements to implementing complex machine learning visualizations, the Plotly “Ask AI” chatbot is well-equipped to provide you with tailored solutions. It generates highly efficient code for any custom requirements.

Layout and Design Assistance: The visual appearance of an app is essential to making it feel professional. The Plotly “Ask AI” Chatbot provides suggestions for enhancing user-experience. These include recommendations for Dash HTML Components and Dash Core components like Markdown, Input, and Checklist.

AI Chatbot for ease of data app development

Without a doubt, AI is taking the world by the storm. In fact, recent reports share that consumers often expect chatbots to be as instantaneous as face-to-face communication, and only 14% of customers prefer filling out forms over using a chatbot to obtain answers.

AI-powered conversational agents are redefining the way we seek information, assistance, and solutions. Application developers and data scientists are especially well placed to increase their efficiency and speed of delivering complex projects with these new AI tools.

So what’s next?

We invite you to try out the Plotly “Ask AI” Chatbot on dash.plotly.com. Comments or suggestions? Please share your feedback by emailing info@plotly.com  — we’re constantly improving our chatbot and your inputs will help us deliver a better developer experience. (Added bonus? Our chatbot can respond in the 100+ languages! We want to make sure our documentation is even more accessible to our global audience.)

In the coming weeks, we will extend the chatbot to Dash Enterprise. Our customers will have a custom bot based on which software version they have installed. Stay tuned for more product updates coming this Fall by signing up for our newsletter!