A new store on the block
OpenAI just opened its store. This new marketplace is open to anyone - both customers and developers - who subscribe to the ChatGPT Plus version for $20 a month. Since its launch, 3 million custom-built chatbots called GPTs have been created.
Reading the news, you get the impression that this new store could rival Apple's and Google's app stores. Typical for OpenAI, it is releasing something closer to an idea or concept than at least a beta version of a product. Aside from pocketing money from the customers and developers for just being on the platform, it is not charging for the use of any of the GPTs. It plans to do that eventually.
What kind of things can you find there? Some companies use it as a frontend for their own products. A good example is from Canva which helps you to create professional designs of documents, websites, videos, etc. Its GPT comprises a series of prompts, which should guide the user through the design process. The developers already anticipated how much this process will irritate the would-be user with prompts including this - 'If the user's input lacks detail, remain upbeat and assist by asking for more information'. Remain upbeat?? Really?
Other GPTs claim to help you do your shopping on Amazon, while others promise to generate new hypotheses, analyze text, figures, and tables from 200M+ research papers and books. That, of course, sounds wonderful, until you read an exchange between the user and the Science GPT:
It goes something like this:
user: assume an optical mode initialized in state teh (sic) Fock state superposition 1+3. this mode propagates through a channel with power transmission 90%. what is the probabilty of measuing n=1 on a photon number resolving detector?
GPTs: <several paragraphs of reasoning and step-by-step instructions>
user: wrong
GPTs: Let's revisit the problem and correct the calculation. <several new paragraphs of reasoning and step-by-step instructions>
user: no, the answer is .9*.5+.9*.1^23.5 . can you see why?
…and it goes on and on...
Finally, we can find GPTs with titles like 'Your Boyfriend Alex' (downloaded 800+ times) or ‘My Boyfriend’ (downloaded 100+ times). Of course, girlfriendsare there too. Why would anyone put anything like this into the GPTs store? Because it is explicitly encouraged by OpenAI in its usage policies (#chokingonirony) - 'We also don’t allow GPTs dedicated to fostering romantic companionship or performing regulated activities.'
All that is just to have fun, get some entertainment and see what possibilities the new tech can bring us.
However, nothing changes the fact that OpenAI is building various Large Language Models (LLMs) which should not be used when one expects accurate answers.
Still, the other question remains - is this new store the new rival to Apple’s or Google’s stores?
One might argue that OpenAI’s user growth was the fastest, and because of that, the same thing will happen to its store. Having 3 million GPTs after being in business for a week is not bad either.
But like everything, a little bit of perspective helps. OpenAI doesn't charge anything (except the monthly Plus charge), but it was hinting that it would pay the developers based on how much the user will utilize its technology running the GPTs. That would suggest that the ChatGPT Plus will become $20+ per plugin usage for the end user. Suddenly, the monthly bill from OpenAI will become a similar surprise to when you get your credit card statement - 'I bought all this?' People don't like surprises. If you have an Apple or Android phone, you are paying nothing extra to try new apps, and unless you play Candy Crush, you don't have to pay more.
Also don't forget the competition from Google's Gemini, Apple's Ferret and Meta's (Facebook) FAIR. Not only are these companies building teams that rival the size of OpenAI's by orders of magnitude, but they are also building these models as an open source, i.e.: anyone will be able to use them. On top of that, add Amazon with its AI AWS services, and the picture is changing further. How much better and for how much longer can ChatGPT remain when competing with free?
The only company that might try to benefit from the OpenAI store is Microsoft. For Microsoft, It would be another attempt to become relevant. Considering what it did to Skype and then to Nokia, it is unlikely that Microsoft would build any store as remotely successful as Apple or Google. It is true that Microsoft still dominates the PC desktop market, but that would mean that Bing would have to be significantly improved to provide the support for OpenAI to meaningfully compete with Google. After a decade, Microsoft still has not much to show for itself.
That's desktop, and if you are not relevant on mobile, you are not relevant at all. And that's the problem for OpenAI. It doesn't control the distribution platform that its competition owns and dominates.
The OpenAI store is a test, it is an attempt to bring in more revenue, it is a playground for ideas. It is not the third option. So far, no recurrent pattern here. Hopefully the team there will remain upbeat.