How to create a Chatbot Interface with Gradio in Python: A Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

Building an interactive chatbot interface is easier than ever with tools like Gradio. Gradio is an open-source Python library that allows you to create user-friendly interfaces for machine learning models and other Python functions with minimal effort. In this post, we'll walk through the steps of creating a chatbot interface using Gradio.

Prerequisites

Before we dive in, make sure you have the following:

• Python installed (version 3.8 or higher) ☑️
• Python virtual environment created ☑️

Step 1: Install Gradio

To begin, you’ll need to install the Gradio library on the virtual environment. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal or command prompt:

pip install gradio

This will install the latest version of Gradio and its dependencies.

Step 2: Create Python File

Create a new Python file in your preferred IDE or text editor. For this example, we’ll create a simple demo where a user can input text, and our application will return it in uppercase.

Let’s name the file app.py.

Step 2: Import Packages

Import the following Python packages:

import gradio as gr

Step 3: Define Function

For simplicity, let's use a very basic rule-based chatbot. You can replace this logic with an advanced chatbot model like GPT or any pre-trained transformer-based chatbot in the future.

Here’s a simple chatbot function:

def chatbot_response(user_input):
    if "hello" in user_input.lower():
        return "Hi there! How can I help you today?"
    elif "bye" in user_input.lower():
        return "Goodbye! Have a great day!"
    else:
        return "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Can you try again?"

Step 4: Create Chatbot Interface

Now, let’s create a simple Gradio chatbot interface using gr.ChatInterface. This allows you to automatically handle user input and display responses in a neat chat-style format.

Here’s the code to set up the Gradio interface: