Introduction

Imagine accessing premium ChatGPT features — Canvas, internet search, and PDF analysis — completely free of charge. Thanks to Mistral AI’s latest updates to their platform, Le Chat, this is now a reality. Not only does Le Chat offer cutting-edge functionality that rivals ChatGPT, but it also integrates advanced image generation capabilities through a collaboration with Flux, bringing all these tools into a single, cost-free platform.

In this article, we dive into how Mistral’s Le Chat stacks up against competitors, explore its breakthrough multimodal model Pixtral Large, and uncover its strengths and limitations. Whether you’re curious about leveraging these tools for business or research or just exploring alternatives to paid AI platforms, this is your definitive guide to the future of AI accessibility. Try it now at chat.mistral.ai/chat.

Main Content

Mistral AI has introduced new features to its Le Chat platform, including Canvas, internet search, and PDF uploads, all mirroring ChatGPT’s capabilities — and they are completely free!

Now, you can access the features of three major AI models all in one place.

How le Chat compares to leading chat and search assistants in the market today

They also announced a partnership with the renowned image generation model Flux, offering online image creation capabilities on the Le Chat platform, again at no cost.

Mistral’s CEO, Arthur Mensch, stated that the new version of Le Chat is a milestone, marking the platform as a “more mature animal.”

ChatGPT-Like Features Available for Free

On Mistral’s official platform, Le Chat (which may sound like “chat” but actually means “cat” in French), a new series of ChatGPT-like features have been launched for free.

According to a table released by Mistral, aside from o1 and voice conversations, most other features are included.

This also encompasses OpenAI’s newly launched advanced interface, Canvas, which is currently exclusive to ChatGPT subscribers.

Access to the latest frontier model
Web search with citations
Canvas for ideation, in-line editing, and export
Image generation
Image/document analysis
Task agents
Single platform from models to outputs

In Le Chat’s Canvas, generated documents can be displayed separately, eliminating the need to manually extract them from conversations.

Code can also be handled in the same way, with support for real-time previews and the ability to select specific sections for modification.

Next is the internet search capability. Like ChatGPT, Le Chat can perform online searches to summarise information and provide source citations, all at a very fast speed.

Additionally, the current version of Le Chat can process complex PDF documents and images, performing analysis and summarisation of tables, charts, text, formulas, equations, and more.

In the following example, Le Chat extracted information, summarised, and semantically understood the famous quantum entanglement paper written by Einstein and others in 1935.

In addition to image analysis, the latest version of Le Chat also supports text-to-image generation. However, Mistral has not developed these models independently and has instead partnered with Flux to integrate their models.

It is also possible to create and @Agent in conversations to intelligently perform certain tasks, but currently, the creation page is only available in French.

However, the models released by Mistral so far have not extended to voice modalities, so Le Chat does not have the advanced voice interaction features available in ChatGPT. Additionally, there is no desktop client.

Therefore, although Mistral’s efforts are seen as an attempt to catch up with ChatGPT in terms of features, there is still some distance to go before they truly match it. However, Mistral does have the advantage of being free.

Open-Source Multimodal Model: Pixtral Large

Pixtral Large can be used for research and educational purposes under the Mistral Research License (MRL), and for experimental, testing, and production purposes in commercial settings under the Mistral Commercial License.

Pixtral Large is an evolution of Mistral Large 2, released in the summer of 2024, and the first multimodal model Pixtral 12-B, released in September. Regarding the expansion of the multimodal model to 124 billion parameters, Mistral AI’s CEO stated: “We increasingly recognize that creating the best AI experience requires co-designing the model and the product interface. Pixtral was trained with high-impact front-end applications in mind, making it a great example.”

Pixtral Large includes a 123 billion parameter decoder and a 1 billion parameter visual encoder, excelling in both text and visual data processing.

With a context window of 128K, Pixtral Large can handle at least 30 high-resolution images or approximately a 300-page book, comparable to the capabilities of leading models in the OpenAI GPT series.

In terms of performance, the model demonstrates state-of-the-art results on various benchmarks, including MathVista, DocVQA, and VQAv2, making it highly suitable for tasks such as chart interpretation, document analysis, and image understanding.

Comparison of performance on various benchmarks

Specifically, on the MathVista benchmark, Pixtral Large achieved an accuracy of 69.4%, outperforming all other models. In the ChartQA and DocVQA benchmarks, Pixtral Large surpassed GPT-4o and Gemini-1.5 Pro.

Pixtral Large also demonstrated strong competitiveness on the MM-MT-Bench, outperforming Claude-3.5 Sonnet (the new version), Gemini-1.5 Pro, and GPT-4o (the latest version).

In terms of image understanding, Pixtral Large also performs exceptionally well. For instance, when you upload a bill and ask the model, “I bought coffee and sausage, plus an 18% tip. How much should I pay?” it can accurately calculate the total amount.

Pixtral Large will provide the total amount in an organised manner, first calculating the cost of the coffee and sausage — such as two lattes and one sausage — then computing the 18% tip, and finally providing the total amount.

Pixtral Large can also accurately understand and analyse charts. For instance, when asked about the point at which the “dark dragon” model starts experiencing issues based on a training loss curve, Pixtral Large accurately analyses: “At 10,000 steps, the training loss begins to show instability… Subsequently, this instability persists, with another significant peak occurring around 20,000 steps…”

In the next example, when you upload an image and ask Pixtral Large which companies use Mistral AI models, it can provide an accurate response based on the information presented in the image.

Pixtral Large can provide accurate results based on the information in the image, and its response process is as follows.

However, on Reddit, some have questioned whether Pixtral truly achieves state-of-the-art performance. They point out that Mistral’s official comparisons were limited to a few models, including only the open-source Llama-3.2 90B.

In reality, on multiple datasets, Qwen2-VL (with a maximum parameter size of 72B) performs better than Pixtral. Additionally, on certain datasets, Pixtral’s test scores are also lower than those of Molmo, developed by a non-profit research organisation called Ai2 based in Seattle.

Moreover, some users have reported that in their tests involving images with Japanese text, Pixtral Large’s recognition capabilities were inferior to the 7B version of Qwen.

In addition to Pixtral Large, Mistral AI’s most advanced text model, Mistral Large, has also received an update. This model is available via the API as pixtral-large-latest and on Hugging Face as Mistral Large 24.11.

Mistral Large 24.11 will first be rolled out on Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, with availability expected within a week.

Model and weights download link: https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Pixtral-Large-Instruct-2411/tree/main
Trial link: https://chat.mistral.ai/chat

Conclusion

Mistral AI is reshaping the AI landscape with its accessible and innovative platform, Le Chat. By offering premium features like Canvas, internet search, and PDF analysis for free, and integrating advanced capabilities like image generation through partnerships, Mistral is positioning itself as a strong competitor in the AI assistant market. The launch of its multimodal model, Pixtral Large, further highlights its commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI performance.

While there are still areas where Mistral lags behind competitors like ChatGPT — such as voice interactions and desktop clients — the platform’s affordability and feature set make it a compelling option for both casual and professional users. Whether you’re exploring AI for research, productivity, or creative endeavours, Mistral’s Le Chat and Pixtral Large offer a glimpse into a future where advanced AI tools are accessible to all.

Explore Mistral’s innovations firsthand at chat.mistral.ai/chat and experience the growing potential of open AI ecosystems.