OpenAI announces the launch of an API for ChatGPT, the text-generating AI developed by San Francisco-based startup OpenAI. The API will enable businesses to integrate ChatGPT into their apps, websites, products, and services. OpenAI has also launched ChatGPT Plus, a premium service to monetize the AI, which has over 100 million monthly active users
OpenAI launches ChatGPT API: An opportunity for businesses
ChatGPT has garnered major media attention and spawned countless memes on social media. It’s been used to write hundreds of e-books in Amazon’s Kindle store and credited with co-authoring at least one scientific paper. However, OpenAI needs to monetize ChatGPT to reassure investors. The ChatGPT API, powered by the GPT-3.5-turbo AI model, was launched at a price of $0.002 per 1,000 tokens, or about 750 words. The platform offers many opportunities, including “non-chat” applications. Successful use cases of companies adopting the technology, such as Snap, Quizlet, Instacart, and Shopify, have already been presented.
ChatGPT risks
However, the issues with ChatGPT cannot be ignored. In the past, users have been able to prompt ChatGPT to respond in racist or sexist ways, reflecting the AI’s initial training on biased data. Additionally, ChatGPT invents facts without disclosing that it’s doing so, a phenomenon known as ‘hallucination.’ OpenAI and similar systems are also susceptible to prompt-based attacks, where malicious adversarial prompts get them to perform tasks that weren’t part of their original objectives
OpenAI has introduced Chat Markup Language as a solution for better prompt management in ChatGPT.
To address these issues, OpenAI has introduced Chat Markup Language, or ChatML, which provides instructions for filtering the responses of the ChatGPT model, making it more robust against prompt-based attacks. Brockman, the President and Chairman of OpenAI, stated: ‘We’re moving to a higher-level API. If you have a more structured way of representing input to the system, where you say, ‘this is from the developer’ or ‘this is from the user’… I should expect that, as a developer, you actually can be more robust [using ChatML] against these kinds of prompt-based attacks’
In conclusion, the launch of the ChatGPT API by OpenAI represents a major milestone in the development and commercialization of advanced text-generating AI. With its enormous user base and broad range of applications, ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses communicate with customers, develop content, and automate a wide range of tasks. However, as with any advanced AI technology, there are risks and challenges that must be addressed, including bias, hallucination, and prompt-based attacks.
OpenAI’s approach to mitigating these risks through Chat Markup Language and frequent model updates is encouraging, and its introduction of dedicated capacity plans offers an additional level of control and customization for enterprise customers. Overall, the ChatGPT API represents a significant step forward in the evolution of AI-powered text generation, and its impact on businesses and society as a whole is likely to be profound.
