OpenAI is an unconventional company in many ways, but last November it borrowed a page from the standard tech industry playbook: It held a developer conference where CEO Sam Altman urged software makers to build on top of ChatGPT. The company said it would soon launch a marketplace where developers and non-techies alike could create custom functions for the chatbot and make money by sharing them with the world.
The reaction to that news was mixed, with some hailing the birth of a new platform and others turning a laundry app demoed onstage into a meme. But whether meme-worthy or momentous, OpenAI’s app store is part of a broader strategy to maintain its edge in the competitive AI landscape. Like Apple and Google’s YouTube have done so well, OpenAI now wants to incentivize developers and creators to supply fresh content for its platform, so that it can keep offering new experiences that draw in users.
Today OpenAI’s app store is here. The GPT Store, as it’s called, is available to those with a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 per month, and users of the business plans ChatGPT Team and Enterprise, which cost anywhere from $25 to thousands of dollars per user per month. Users of free ChatGPT won’t be able to access the “apps” for now.
OpenAI calls these apps GPTs. By some measures they are already popular: OpenAI claims that more than 3 million users have created custom versions of ChatGPT since it became possible in November. They are likely to multiply even faster now that pretty much anyone can create and publish a GPT on the web, after verifying their profile by making their name visible or linking it to a legitimate website.
Just like on the iPhone or a platform like YouTube, OpenAI’s platform is meant to add new and compelling features and experiences to a familiar interface. OpenAI’s marketplace has a search function to help people discover new GPT apps, like established mobile app stores. It will also promote some GPTs the company considers notable and publish leaderboards of the most popular.
But OpenAI’s plans for paying app makers are less developed. That means developers both large and small working on GPT apps are taking a leap of faith that the terms will be favorable. With no clear monetary payoff on offer, OpenAI is for now relying on the incredible hype around ChatGPT to lure builders onto its platform.
Eric Olson, cofounder and chief executive of startup Consensus, a search engine for research papers, describes his GPT app as “Google Scholar on steroids.” He says that launching it will help him both draw in new customers and maintain the loyalty of existing paying customers. “We have customers who are already using ChatGPT Plus and Consensus separately, and they’ve asked, ‘Hey, why don’t you do something that lets us stay in one place?’” Olson says.
Despite the term GPT stripping away the “chat,” OpenAI’s app model is all about making ChatGPT’s text interface that one place you can stay to get all kinds of things done. Information from GPT apps like that of Consensus is packaged in the same conversational back-and-forth that would typically happen in ChatGPT, albeit with an app-specific logo. The way it works is a user goes into an app-specific GPT, such as hiking guide AllTrails, design tool Canva, or Khan Academy’s Code Tutor and makes a query just like they would to the original ChatGPT.
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