OpenAI is pushing the adoption of GPTs, third-party applications powered by its AI models, allowing ChatGPT users to invoke them in any conversation.
Starting today, paid users of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI chat interface, can bring GPTs into a chat by typing “@” and selecting a GPT from the list. The selected GPT will understand the full conversation, and different GPTs can be “tagged” for different use cases and needs — going into the conversation with the context of what was said previously.
“This allows you to add relative GPTs to the full context of the conversation,” OpenAI said in a tweet.
The move to make GPTs more discoverable comes weeks after the launch of the GPT Store, a marketplace for GPTs accessible through the ChatGPT dashboard. Creating GPTs requires no coding experience, and GPTs can be as simple or complex as a developer desires. Some available today include a recommended trail from AllTrails, a code tutor from Khan Academy, and a content designer from Canva.
OpenAI plans to eventually introduce monetization for developers who wish to sell access to their GPTs. But the company may need to increase traffic first. According data from Similarweb, the web analytics company, custom GPTs make up only about 2.7% of ChatGPT’s global web traffic so far — and custom GPT traffic has been declining every month since November.
Moderation proves to be another challenge. In its first week of release, the GPT Store was flooded with “romantic” chatbot apps, some of which were sexually suggestive – a clear violation of OpenAI’s terms. Developers also rushed to create political campaign bots — such as a chatbot that impersonated US presidential candidate Dean Phillips — another apparent breach.
OpenAI, which claims to use a combination of human and automated review for GPT labeling, has since removed some of the offending apps. But if the volume of GPTs increases as the company clearly hopes, one imagines the problem will become more acute.
