Ever wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with me? Meet JannikGPT — my experiment in building an AI version of myself that you can talk to anytime, right here on my portfolio website.
This project began as a curiosity: How close can I get to creating a chatbot that doesn’t just answer questions generally, but actually talks and thinks a bit like me?
The first prototype (Ask Jannik) ran on a separate website using OpenAI’s API. For every message you sent, the app forwarded your text as a prompt and received a reply from GPT-4o-mini. To make it feel more like me, I prepended each conversation with an input script: it included facts about who I am, how I typically talk, and guidelines for my sense of humor and tone.
After testing the standalone version, I decided to make the experience smoother by embedding it directly into my website under the /chat route. Now you can talk to my digital twin right here on my website and ask me about my projects and experiences.
To take it a step further, I added text-to-speech using the ElevenLabs API. I cloned my voice with audio samples and integrated the voice clone into the chatbot, so that the answers are being read by me. Since generating realistic speech can get costly fast, I implemented a play button, so you can choose which responses you want to hear out loud.