OpenAI looks to monetise ChatGPT with new API

2 Mar 2023

Image: © Natalia/Stock.adobe.com

The US-based company said several businesses are already early users of this API, such as Snapchat and Shopify which have used ChatGPT to make their own AI products.

OpenAI has announced an API to let businesses integrate ChatGPT directly into their apps, websites, products and services.

The company’s advanced chatbot has garnered a massive amount of attention since it first launched last November, with some estimates putting it as one of the fastest growing consumer applications in history.

OpenAI had already taken steps to monetise the product with the recent launch of a premium subscription service last month, giving users priority access to new features and faster response times for $20 a month.

Now, OpenAI has taken another step to profit from the chatbot with the new API offering. The company said several businesses are already early users of this offering, such as Snapchat which unveiled its own AI chatbot earlier this week.

Other early adopters include the learning platform Quizlet, the US retail company Instacart and Shopify’s consumer app, Shop.

OpenAI said it has reduced the cost of ChatGPT by 90pc since December thanks to “system-wide optimisations”, which it claims will also lead to savings for API users.

The model is currently being priced at $0.002 per 1,000 tokens, which equates to roughly 750 words according to TechCrunch. The AI company said this is 10 times cheaper than its existing GPT 3.5 models and is also the best model for “many non-chat use cases”.

OpenAI also said it is offering “dedicated instances” for developers that want more control over a specific model version and system performance. The company said these dedicated instances would make “economic sense” for businesses running more than 450m tokens per day.

“Our API runs on Azure and with dedicated instances, developers will pay by time period for an allocation of compute infrastructure that’s reserved for serving their requests,” OpenAI said in a statement.

ChatGPT has also been used by Microsoft to create its AI-powered Bing, as the tech giant seeks to challenge Google’s search engine market dominance.

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Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com