When Facebook opened up its API to third-party developers in 2007, it was seen as a way to outsmart Myspace, which at the time was still the dominant social network at the dawn of a new era. Now, 15 years later, could OpenAI use the same playbook to compete with giants like Google?
On Wednesday, OpenAI said it start letting developers use its APIs to integrate ChatGPT into third-party applications, potentially accelerating the growth potential of how businesses adopt new AI tools. In addition to ChatGPT, the startup will also allow developers to integrate the lesser-known Whisper, a speech recognition model that enables speech synthesis through an open-source platform.
Although OpenAI’s API is only just beginning to be more widely available, notable companies such as Snap, Instacart and Shopify are among the first to use it. Now, marketers and technologists say opening up the API to third-party apps could further open the door for developers who rely on it.
The portability of large language models helps developers more easily use APIs and explore new uses, said Nicole Denman Greene, senior analyst at Gartner Marketing. While the new OpenAI integration of ChatGPT and Whisper is probably just one of many integrations to come, she also mentioned that the AI’s ability to understand the nuances of language is a tricky part of generative content – and something that will continue to be both challenging and difficult. so risky.
“In this case, text-to-speech has practical applications for marketers looking to use transcription capabilities to enhance their content and experiences,” Denman Greene said. “However, marketers should remain cautious as they need to provide human oversight to check for inherent biases that will now be embedded in training data. This will be compounded by ChatGPT and Whisper making connections to understand and generate new content.
Another way businesses could benefit from OpenAI’s API is to analyze the sentiment of customer feedback. Stephen Curial, CTO of e-commerce search and analytics platform Jungle Scout, mentioned the example of a seller who used ChatGPT to analyze dog reviews and then adjust sizes to respond. buyer expectations.
“It saves you time,” Curial said of APIs. “You don’t need to go spend time and figure out the details, [or] understand the algorithm and refine it so that you can actually implement it. You can get an already tuned version without being an expert on it.
To attract more developers, OpenAI is also cutting costs. Developers will pay $0.002 for 1,000 tokens – which equates to around 750 words – making it 10x cheaper. In some ways, the strategy could be similar to what Uber did with its early prices to cut taxi fares and what Amazon did with book prices to lure readers away from local bookstores.
May Habib, founder and CEO of generative content startup Writer — which has its own LLMs used by thousands of clients — said it’s no surprise that generative templates are quickly becoming nearly free or free. And while it’s a “good thing for society,” she said there’s still a lot of work to be done.
“While a near-free ChatGPT is a great ‘get it wet’ offer,” Habib said, “there is still a long way to go before generative AI can be used to massively improve efficiency at large ladder”.
The ways companies are already using ChatGPT differs a lot. In the case of Instacart, shoppers can ask questions about food to generate recipe ideas based on product data from the grocery platform’s more than 75,000 retail partners. And on the Shopify app, people can use ChatGPT to find products and brands with a new shopping assistant to help them find what they’re looking for or discover new products.
Since OpenAI has already implemented safeguards and refined ChatGPT, this could help marketers feel more secure using the API, according to Ryan Cottrell, chief marketing technology officer at Publicis North America.
“There was always the option to train your custom models, but having something out of the box that ensures content is safe for all users is appealing on a larger scale,” Cottrell said. “Not only will this produce safer content, but it will also speed up production time when going to market.”