Even the idea of AI has had many implications for every single industry, everywhere; even before it actually came into existence. But what everyone really has had an eye out for is the development of a little pocket companion AI to accompany us on our life’s journey. Today, it seems as if the universal call has finally been answered—the AI assistants we all have on our phones don’t count.
OpenAI, on 10th January, announced that they will be opening up an app store for the customised versions of ChatGPT developed by Premium subscribers. OpenAI launched a service that allows people to develop their own custom chatbots last November. Subscribers—who are the OpenAI users who spend $20 dollars to use the paid version of ChatGPT—can browse the store for versions that provide specialised services. The announcement was made on OpenAI’s official blog and marks the AI development company’s decision to turn its flagship technology into a financial success.
This is of course good news to Microsoft: The Big Tech heavyweight has been backing OpenAI to the tune of $13 billion over the past four years. According to media reports, OpenAI is also discussing a deal that would triple its current value to over $80 billion. Along with the app store, OpenAI is also rolling out ChatGPT Team, which is a way for business teams to use GPT while keeping their data private. OpenAI assures the public that ChatGPT Teams data will not be used to train their models.
The tool is currently available for between $25 and $30 per month. ChatGPT Team is also cheaper than ChatGPT Enterprise, another feature that rolled out in August last year. OpenAI is also developing ChatGPT as a product in other ways. ChatGPT has had DALL-E, the company’s image generator AI, integrated into it since last September. One version of the chatbot can now interact with speech: like Bixby, or Siri. The app store had actually been in development for quite some time but had been put on hold since the ousting and the subsequent reinstatement of Sam Altman. It had been planned to open in November, before being delayed to December and subsequently to January. The Altman incident effectively removed many of the barriers that OpenAI had in commercialising these products.
These different tools expand OpenAI’s product portfolio, which at one level, democratises access to AI. On the contrary, this also means that it fosters a creative ecosystem that gives rise to more applications of the product—as well as innovation. With increased access (read democratised access) also comes the wider adoption of ChatGPT, incidentally, leading to more profits. According to Open AI, users have developed over three million custom versions of ChatGPT. Users can browse for the most popular or trending versions on the app store’s community leaderboard. The leaderboard features different sections for specialist sections such as lifestyle, education, DALL-E, writing, research, and programming. The app store will also “feature” a select few GPTs on a weekly basis; as of now, the featured GPTs include:
- AllTrails, which offers personalised trail recommendations for hiking, running, and riding
- Consensus, that searches and synthesises results from 200 million research and academic papers
- CK-12 Flexi, an AI tutor that teaches mathematics and science
- Books, a GPT for book recommendations
- Code Tutor, by Khan Academy, to teach coding
- And Canva for designing presentations and social posts
Users can even develop and share their own GPTs—even earn money off of them. A revenue program is scheduled to be launched in the first quarter of this year for US builders. OpenAI expects to pay out revenue based on user engagement, although specifics are yet to be announced. In the meantime, those of you who have yet to take part in developing your own version will be pleased to know that it requires no coding skills to do so. To share it with others, all you have to do is save it under the “everyone” option (which is important because “anyone with a link” will not allow the GPT to be displayed in the store) and verify your builder profile on the app settings.
There are already reviews flooding the comments sections on websites reporting the launch; some of them cynical. “Currently the top writing GPT is from plagiarism-remover.com. The site has step-by-step instructions to copy someone else’s content and mask it. AI future looking bright,” writes one user. “Unless these have local storage or complex and effective instructions, I don’t see how these will be valuable. Only one way to find out,” writes another. But there are those who have already found use cases. “My use of GPTs has been to save me repeating boilerplate instructions when starting a new chat to use ChatGPT in a different ‘mode’. For example, I often use it for learning Web Dev tech and have a set of instructions to make it effective at that. Putting that into a GPT makes using it super easy and switching between ‘modes’ quick and simple.” Overall, the consensus seems to be that ultimately the GPTs people create will be more beneficial personally rather than commercially. While that may be true nine times out of ten, there will ultimately be people who find that one chance in ten.
OpenAI has already formulated a review system in order to ensure that the GPTs users share meet their brand and usage policies, including a way of reporting GPTs that users find are either harmful or unsafe. This will help set the tone and clear expectations for developers and users alike, contributing to the overall creation of a positive and secure ecosystem. And it’s reasonable to expect that there will be an ecosystem—the idea of an AI app store is one that will be likely to hang around for some time to come. Other AI companies could be even now working on their own versions of a centralised platform for distributing and sharing customisable models in anticipation of the success of OpenAI’s version. The only potential obstacle going forward is the possible regulatory considerations and public perception going forward.
(Theruni Liyanage)