According to foreign media reports on October 12, citing people familiar with the matter, OpenAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) research company, plans to launch a major update for developers next month, making it cheaper and faster to build software applications based on its AI model. Currently, OpenAI is trying to attract more companies to use its technology.
The update includes additional memory storage for developer tools that use OpenAI models. In theory, this could cut application developer costs by more than 20 times, addressing a major concern for partners. The costs for these partners to use OpenAI's large models can add up quickly, but they try to build sustainable businesses by developing and selling AI software.
OpenAI also plans to introduce new tools, such as vision capabilities, which will allow developers to build applications with the ability to analyze and describe images, which may be used in entertainment, medicine and other fields.
The new features show that OpenAI is ambitiously expanding from a consumer sensation into a popular developer platform, as CEO Sam Altman envisions.
The new features are expected to be launched at OpenAI’s first developer conference in San Francisco on November 6, people familiar with the matter said. They are intended to encourage companies to use OpenAI's technology to build AI chatbots and autonomous agents that can perform tasks without human intervention. OpenAI declined to comment.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT last November, attracting hundreds of millions of people to try the chatbot that answers questions and commands in a human-like manner, making it one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in the world.
OpenAI has high hopes for sales growth. As the media first reported in December, OpenAI executives expect revenue to reach $200 million this year and $1 billion in 2024.
Recently, OpenAI has had some challenges attracting outsiders to build businesses using its technology. Making OpenAI an integral part of other companies developing applications is one of Ultraman's most important strategic goals.
Altman has met with some developers and expressed his desire to build a new ecosystem based on the OpenAI model. OpenAI's models are now incorporated into numerous applications from DoorDash to writing assistant Jasper.
OpenAI plans to release a so-called stateful API (application programming interface) that will make it cheaper for the company to create applications by remembering the conversation history of queries. This will significantly reduce the fees developers need to pay. Currently, according to pricing on the OpenAI website, processing a 1-page file using GPT-4 can cost $0.10, depending on the length and complexity of the input and output.
Another update is the Vision API, which will allow people to build software that can analyze images, just a few weeks after the feature becomes available to ChatGPT users. Making the tool available to developers also marks an important step for OpenAI to launch so-called multimodal capabilities, which can process and generate different types of content besides text, such as images, audio and video.
These versions are designed to attract more developers to pay to use OpenAI's models to build their own AI software for various purposes, such as writing assistants or customer service robots.
According to PitchBook data, investors have poured more than $20 billion into AI startups this year, many of which rely on technology from OpenAI or other foundational model companies.
But investors worry these startups are too reliant on companies like OpenAI or Google, which could leave their capabilities easily copied by competitors or larger companies through product updates.
Meanwhile, startups are also trying to diversify the types of models they use, experimenting with OpenAI competitors and open source options like Meta’s large language model Llama. This makes it important for OpenAI to differentiate itself from deep-pocketed competitors like Google.
People familiar with the matter said that satisfying developers has always been OpenAI's main focus. While ChatGPT has been a huge success with consumers, OpenAI's ambitions to outperform other companies have not gone so well.
Earlier this year, the company hastily released the ChatGPT plug-in, an add-on tool that allows developers to create applications within ChatGPT. OpenAI hopes the plug-in, like Apple's iOS App Store, will give it an edge over rivals like Google's chatbot Bard.
Developers whose plugins were in the top 30 or so described how OpenAI initially helped generate hype, followed by a sharp decline in interest. The popular ScholarAI plug-in had about 7,000 daily users as of late August, while ChatGPT attracted about 180 million monthly active users, developer Lakshya Bakshi estimated.
Ultraman has openly acknowledged that there is more work to be done. Earlier this year, Altman admitted to a group of developers in London that plug-ins haven't gained much traction yet.