There’s a sort of unspoken attraction for anything “vintage” these days – things, ideas, or behaviors that have stood the test of time and are still relevant (or at least of interest) today. One such example of a vintage (or, let’s say, legacy) entity in personal computers is Microsoft’s original Clippy – the good-natured, charming, anthropomorphized paper clip conquered more than a few hearts since its original inception as a (glorified) assistant, way back in 1997.

Unfortunately, Clippy was left for dead in Microsoft’s hands around 2005, with the company only recently revisiting it as a system-level sticker back in 2021. But software company FireCube wanted more, and it’s done more in a way that makes Microsoft look as if it missed an oportunity: FireCube is now introducing its own open-source rendition of Clippy as a digital personal assistant, one that’s finally been given a deep-dive course on actual assisting through its integration with OpenAI’s Chat GPT (version 3.5). Being open-source, the code repository is available on GitHub.

Being ChatGPT-powered, this particular version of Clippy is now actually able to produce work for you, instead of only providing tooltips. Its conversational abilities are the same as what you’ve come to expect from OpenAI’s fledgling Large Language Model (LLM). It’ll be interesting to know how Clippy feels about his different versions through the years.