OpenAI Prepares GPT Store, Adds ‘Turbo’ GPT-4

OpenAI is set to enable custom versions of ChatGPT that can be tailored for specific tasks and made available on a GPT Store, as it seeks to monetise the hugely popular service exactly a year on from its public launch.

The Microsoft-backed firm, which said ChatGPT now has 100 million weekly active users, also launched a more powerful GPT-4 Turbo model for developers that can analyse more than 300 pages of text in a single prompt, at half the price of its previous offering.

While earlier versions of the model limited users to inputs of up to 3,000 words, the new model could be asked, for instance, to summarise an entire book.

OpenAI has now brought support for its multiple offerings together in one place, so that using ChatGPT now offers access to the firm’s DALL-E image generation, browsing, data analysis, document upload and PDF search.

Anthropic’s Claude was previously the only competing chatbot to allow PDF search.

Customised AI agents

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said at the company’s first in-person event on Monday that the firm would “step in and defend our customers” and pay legal costs incurred around copyright infringement, similar to statements from Google, Microsoft and Adobe.

The company’s move toward customised GPTs is similar to Apple’s introduction of the App Store a year after the iPhone’s launch, bringing it into the services business.

Similarly, Altman said it plans to share revenues with the most popular GPTs on the store, based on the number of active users, and may later support subscriptions for specific GPTs later.

“What OpenAI is really in the business of selling is intelligence – and that, and intelligent agents, is really where it will trend over time,” Altman said.

‘Something magical’

GPTs can be built using plain English for use cases such as tutoring a child in maths, creating a travel concierge or designing a website, OpenAI said.

“Creating one is as easy as starting a conversation, giving it instructions and extra knowledge, and picking what it can do, like searching the web, making images or analysing data,” the firm stated.

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella made a surprise appearance at the event, saying OpenAI had “built something magical” and that the firms’ partnership was about “getting benefits of AI broadly disseminated to everyone”.

OpenAI has been aggressively raising capital for infrastructure and computing costs, and is reportedly in talks with investors including Thrive Capital to sell shares at a valuation of more than $80 billion (£65bn), which would make it one of the world’s most valuable private companies.