If you’ve tried using ChatGPT to help you with your work as a programmer, IT professional, or cybersecurity professional, and have ended up disappointed with its outputs, you shouldn’t prejudge other AI models like Blackbox. While ChatGPT is still a generic chatbot, Blackbox is an AI assistant that, although you can ask it anything, is highly specialized in programming, which is its main objective.
Blackbox acts much like its name suggests. It’s an AI model that’s fully optimized to let you easily exchange code snippets with the platform, so it can analyze and test them quickly and flawlessly. You can send it code or talk to it in plain language, explaining what you want. And it can be useful for both repetitive tasks and programs that require more precision, such as APIs or data processing tools.
What is Blackbox AI?
Its vast database and access to programming consultation portals (Stack Overflow), GitHub repositories, and more allow it to offer solutions to bugs, issue proposals, complete projects, and much more. What is clear is that this is an AI tool that can help any user. Basically, its main quality is that people, for example, who are dedicated to programming, have an easier time using code. Of course, it will not write directly for you.
Programming expert Yaqoot Kashif comments on LinkedIn The main advantages or differential factors that distinguish Blackbox from other popular AI assistants are: a sophisticated use of machine learning to adapt to the code as you make changes, real-time testing, transparency about the work done, continuous integration and distribution, and help in the detection of vulnerabilities. In addition to using it via the web, you can also use Blackbox AI in extension format for VSCode.
How your AI chat works
The main interface of Blackbox first shows you a simple ChatGPT-style chat, where you can ask questions about programming or any other topic (although its answers will be better for anything related to code). As it sends you a response, on one side of the screen it will display links to interesting articles, websites or videos that could be of help to you. From this link you can access their website.
Asking the AI itself what makes it different from ChatGPT, it responds that while the goal is still to communicate with users in a readable way, what sets Blackbox apart is: its training, which is more focused on human-to-human dialogue, its leaner and more streamlined architecture, its more casual conversational style, and its focus on generating concise responses to user questions. It also highlights the way it handles error, since unlike ChatGPT, Blackbox is optimized to more robustly handle errors or ambiguities in user input.
You can attach links to other websites with the ‘+’ button, insert code by clicking on the ‘>’ icon, and upload files from your PC with the paperclip icon.
What other tools can be used?
Blackbox claims that millions of developers around the world are already using the platform, which can be useful for bug fixing, unit testing, code documentation, code translation, API integrations, database implementation, algorithm questions, general programming questions, and code optimizations, as they claim on their blog.
This AI has other functions and features that are blocked, for which we will have to pay a monthly fee, or promote the platform by inviting other friends and acquaintances to use it by email. On the other hand, you can generate images using a written prompt from its Image Generator, use its data science agent, receive news of interest to you with AI Feed, or receive comments on your code as you write it if you use it as an extension for VSCode. There are many possibilities. Although, these are the main tools it offers in addition to the AI chat:
Scheduling Agents
If your question is primarily about how to program something in a particular programming language, you can make use of its multiple AI “agents.” You can even create your own. It has various agents depending on the type of task to be performed: specialists in Python, HTML, Javascript, React, Android, AngularJS, or a front-end agent.
Other interesting agents include the YouTube agent, which can summarize a video for you by simply providing a link, the video agent, or the PDF agent. The video agent will allow you to upload video files to the platform and ask Blackbox questions about them. The PDF agent will answer your questions about this format. Other agents include the Azure cloud service expert, the XCode programming tool specialist, the GitLab expert, or the GoogleCloud specialist.
Playground
In the playground section, you can send inputs both in conversational text and in code through a terminal. You can create your code little by little in the terminal and ask for help along the way, or paste your code there and ask questions, request bug fixes, or any other query related to the code. You can write in the terminal in a multitude of different codes.
Blackbox AI will be able to provide you with code to complete your program or project. Simply send it the code you have as input, and Blackbox will auto-complete it based on the requests you specify.
Translator between languages
Their specialized Code Translation agent will allow you to translate code from one programming language to any other. Just copy and paste it into the terminal and select the language you want it back in, just like using Google Translate.
At the moment, the supported languages for making the adaptation are somewhat limited, but they will be useful for web designers (html and css) and other programmers with python, javascript, java, ruby, go, swift or SQL, among others.
Multiplayer editor
If you don’t want to interact with Blackbox from the text box in its main interface, like ChatGPT, you can enter its ‘multiplayer editor’ section, where you will enter a window optimized for writing code.
You can share this code with others by simply sending them the link, and you can also click on ‘open AI chat’ at any time to resolve questions or problems. Also, when you have it ready, you can press ‘Run’ to run the code and check if it works, all from the Blackbox interface.
