When OpenAI, the San Francisco-based company known for developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools, unveiled ChatGPT in November 2022, it sparked a whirlwind of creativity. Former Facebook and Oculus employee Daniel Habib wasted no time in harnessing ChatGPT’s capabilities.
Within just four days of ChatGPT’s launch, Habib utilized the chatbot to create QuickVid AI, a platform that automates the creative process of generating ideas for YouTube videos. Content creators simply input their video’s topic and desired category, and QuickVid AI collaborates with ChatGPT to produce a script. Additional generative AI tools then lend their voices to the script and generate visuals.
QuickVid AI quickly gained tens of thousands of daily users. However, Habib had been relying on unofficial access points to ChatGPT, limiting his ability to promote the service and charge for it officially. This all changed on March 1, when OpenAI introduced API access to ChatGPT and Whisper, their speech recognition AI. Within an hour, Habib seamlessly integrated QuickVid with the official ChatGPT API.
Habib remarks, “All of these unofficial tools that were once like toys, essentially confined to your personal sandbox, can now reach a vast user base.”
OpenAI’s announcement heralded the dawn of a new AI gold rush. What was previously a cottage industry of hobbyists operating in a licensing gray area can now transform their tinkering into full-fledged businesses.
Hassan El Mghari, the creator of TwitterBio, which leverages ChatGPT’s computational power to generate Twitter profile text, explains, “What this release means for companies is that adding AI capabilities to applications is much more accessible and affordable.”
OpenAI has also revamped its data retention policy, a move designed to reassure businesses considering experimentation with ChatGPT. The company now commits to retaining users’ data for only 30 days and pledges not to use this data to train its models.
David Foster, a partner at Applied Data Science Partners, a London-based data science and AI consultancy, sees this as “critical” for encouraging companies to embrace the API. Fear of sensitive client information or vital business data being absorbed into ChatGPT’s training models had been a major hindrance to adoption. Foster emphasizes that OpenAI’s policy change empowers companies to maintain control over their data, eliminating the need to rely on a third party to manage its usage and distribution.
This shift, coupled with the decreasing cost of accessing large language models, foreshadows an imminent proliferation of AI chatbots.
API access to ChatGPT, officially known as GPT3.5, is ten times more cost-effective than OpenAI’s lower-powered GPT3 API, launched in June 2020. The new API offers enhanced conversational capabilities, making it both cheaper and faster.
Alex Volkov, founder of the Targum language translator for videos, which emerged unofficially from ChatGPT at a December 2022 hackathon, notes, “It’s much cheaper and much faster. That doesn’t usually happen in the world of APIs, where prices typically rise.”
This economic shift is poised to drive AI innovation across various industries, heralding a new era of possibilities.
Daniel Habib of QuickVid remarks, “It’s an amazing time to be a founder. Due to its affordability and ease of integration, every app will incorporate some form of chat interface or large language model integration… People will need to become accustomed to interacting with AI.
Leave a comment