OpenAI GPTs are customizable AI bots that anyone can create
Users don't even need to know how to code to use OpenAI's newest generative tool.
It’s been nearly a year since ChatGPT’s public debut and its evolution since then has been nothing short of extraordinary. In just over 11 months, OpenAI’s chatbot has gained the ability to write programming code, process information between multiple modalities and expand its reach across the internet with APIs. During OpenAI’s 2023 DevDay keynote address Monday, CEO Sam Altman and other executives took to the stage in San Francisco to unveil the AI chatbot’s latest iteration, ChatGPT-4 Turbo, as well as an exciting new way to bring generative AI technology to everybody, regardless of their coding capability: GPTs!
GPTs are small, task-specific iterations of ChatGPT. Think of them like the single-purpose apps and features on your phone but instead of them maintaining a timer or stop watch, or a digital assistant transcribing your voice instructions into a shopping list, GPTs will do basically anything you train them to. OpenAI offers up eight examples of what GPT’s can be used for — anything from a digital kitchen assistant that suggests recipes based on whats in your pantry to a math mentor to help your kids through their homework to a Sticker Wiz that will “turn your wildest dreams into die-cut stickers, shipped right to your door.”
The new GPTs are an expansion on the company’s existing Custom Instructions feature, which debuted in July. OpenAI notes that many of its power users were already recycling and updating their most effective prompts and instruction sets, a process which GPT-4 Turbo will now handle automatically as part of its update to seed parameters and focus on reproducible outputs. This will allow users a far greater degree of control in customizing the GPTs to their specific needs.
What users won’t need is an extensive understanding of javascript programming. With GPT-4 Turbo’s improved code interpretation, retrieval and function calling capabilities, as well as its massively increased context window size, users will be able to devise and develop their GPTs using nothing but natural language.
Any GPT created by the community will be immediately shareable. For now, that will happen directly between users but later this month, OpenAI plans to launch a centralized storefront where “verified builders” can post and share their GPTs. The most popular ones will climb a leaderboard and, potentially, eventually earn their creators money based on how many people are using the GPT.
GPTs will be available to both regular users and enterprise accounts which, like ChatGPT Enterprise that came out earlier this year, will offer institutional users the chance to create their own internal-only, admin-approved mini-chatbots. These will work with (and are trained on) the company’s specific tasks, department documentation or proprietary datasets. Enterprise GPTs arrive for those customers on Wednesday.
Privacy remains a focal point for the company with additional technical safeguards being put into place, atop existing moderation systems, to prevent people from making GPTs that go against OpenAI’s usage policies. The company is also rolling out an identity verification system for developers to help improve transparency and trust, but did not elaborate on what that process could entail.
