Centralizing AI: Open AI’s Bid with the GPT Store / Centralizing the AI Marketplace

The world often observes continuous pendulum swings of thought, adapting as cultural, societal and economic expectations fluctuate. In the world of high tech and AI, decentralization has been a continuous topic as many have pushed for Bitcoin, Web3, and various other modes of unlocalized architectures. With that said, Open AI’s November 6, 2023 announcement on the GPT Marketplace may mark the beginning of the field’s start to centralization, reigning-in on and monetizing additional benefits to the free AI platforms.

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Recent Developments of Open AI’s ChatGPT

Often the trusted public LLM chatbot, ChatGPT has continued to garner media attention since its November 2022 release. Alongside the announcement of the GPT Store, recent developments include:

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- ChatGPT Enterprise: Released in August 2023 and offering unique offers for corporate clients, ChatGPT Enterprise is tailored to each firm’s needs. Apart from its GPT 4 monetization efforts, Open AI’s Enterprise offer was one of the first steps towards increased monetization of the platform given the wide release success;

- DALL·E 3: Announced October 2023, DALL·E 3 is built now natively into ChatGPT’s interface, allowing users to conversate with the LLM to create uniquely generated images based on prompts;

- Data Partnerships: Announced November 9th 2023, OpenAI Data Partnerships was introduced in a bid to create open-source and private data sets for AI training. With several recent backlashes from firms over web-scraping, this call for collaboration looks to involve community participants in the development of its software.

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The GPT Store

Open AI’s November 6th release revolves around the creation of GPTs — functioning as specialized versions of ChatGPT with a specific purpose. With no coding needed, a user can upload documentation to train the model to particular specifications; the resulting GPT can be used for personal, company, or general use within the GPT Store, with the latter-most hosting monetization features.

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Open AI holds their belief in the fact that the market creators will build the most useful GPTs, and thus looks to foster this creativity through revenue sharing and promotion of the most useful developments. As Open AI affirms GPTs’ robust privacy system, they also highlight the integration abilities for developers, stating, “Connect GPTs to databases, plug them into emails…integrate a travel listings database, connect a user’s email inbox, or facilitate e-commerce orders.” For those using ChatGPT Enterprise, internal-only GPTs can be created and securely implemented within business functions. In fact, early customers of Amgen, Bain, and Square have already signed on to using GPTs in several operational functions.

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The Centralization of ChatGPT

With wide-spanning architectural abilities, GPTs pose a wide range of possibilities and opportunities for the Open AI stakeholder community as it continues gaining credible traction in corporate use. Gartner Research Analyst, Arun Chandrasekara, confirms these developments for the market, stating, “The price and performance improvements, model customization and legal indemnification will have more immediate impact as these capabilities have been sought by developers for a while now.”

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Resultantly, the move to centralize the use of GPT-powered solutions comes in line with Open AI’s move to consolidate its own product line with the DALL·E 3 integration; startups and scaleups having such outputs and plugins as a main driver of revenue and product line may have to consider easily accessible and integrable contenders on the upcoming marketplace — deciding whether to innovate or instead migrate to the Open AI platform.

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Implications and the Future

In Open AI’s GPT announcement, it is stated, “We think it’s important to move incrementally towards this future, as it will require careful technical and safety work—and time for society to adapt. We have been thinking deeply about the societal implications and will have more analysis to share soon”. Coupled with Gartner’s recent acknowledgement of AI Trust, Risk, and Safety Management being a Top Strategic Tech Trend in 2024, Calvin looks forward to guiding this momentum of Responsible AI developments in enterprise. Our bookings for our quantitative Calvin Software and EU AI Act Consultations are both open — book a demo with us today!