Leon Neal
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)- backed OpenAI intends to unveil major updates for developers next month to make it cheaper and faster to develop software applications based on its artificial intelligence, or AI, models Reuters reported citing people familiar with the matter.
The move is aimed at getting more companies to use its technology. The new features are anticipated to be introduced at OpenAI’s first-ever developer conference in San Francisco on Nov. 6.
The updates from the ChatGPT maker include, adding memory storage to its developer tools for using AI models. This could, in theory, cut costs for application makers by up to 20-times, the report added.
The potential release of the so-called stateful API (Application Program Interface) will help companies create applications at a cheaper rate by remembering the conversation history of inquiries. This could reduce the amount of usage developers need to pay for. Currently, processing a one-page document utilizing GPT-4 can cost 10 cents, based on the size and complexity of the input and output, as per pricing on OpenAI’s website.
The company also intends to introduce new tools such as vision capabilities which will allow developers to make applications with the ability to analyze images and describe them, with potential use cases in areas of entertainment to medicine.
Vision API would enable people to build software which can analyze images, weeks after the feature became available for ChatGPT users. Providing developers this tool marks a vital step for OpenAI introducing multi-modal capabilities, which process and generate several types of media other than text, like audio, video and images, according to the report.
The new features are aimed at encouraging companies to use OpenAI’s technology to make AI-powered chatbots and autonomous agents which can perform tasks without human intervention, the report added.
Making OpenAI indispensable to other companies developing applications is one of the most important strategic goals for CEO Sam Altman. The updates mark OpenAI’s ambition to expand beyond a consumer sensation — which it became after the release of ChatGPT last year in November — into a company also providing a popular developer platform.
Altman has met with developers, showing his intent to make a new ecosystem based on OpenAI’s models, which is now built into many applications, such as DoorDash and writing assistant Jasper, as per the report.
Investors have spent over $20B in 2023 into AI startups, as per data from PitchBook. Several starups depend on OpenAI or other foundation model company’s technology. Investors are concerned about these startups’ dependence on companies such OpenAI or Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) unit Google as this could make them vulnerable to being replicated by competitors or by the bigger companies themselves via product updates
However, startups are also trying to diversify the types of models they utilize, experimenting with open-source models such as Meta Platforms’ (META) Llama.
OpenAI is also aiming for sales growth. According to a Reuters’ report from December 2022, the company’s executives expected to end this year with $200M in revenue and $1B by 2024.
Last week it was reported that OpenAI is thinking of manufacturing its own AI chips to solve the shortage of expensive AI chips that it relies on.
Generative AI services have taken the world by storm, since the launch of ChatGPT. Companies have launched their own large language models, or LLMs, which can provide services such as content and image generation, to name a few. Google’s Bard, Baidu’s (BIDU) Ernie Bot, Alibaba’s (BABA) Tongyi Qianwen and Tongyi Wanxiang, OpenAI’s upcoming text-to-image AI tool DALL·E 3, Meta’s AudioCraft, SeamlessM4T, and Llama 2, and Getty Images’ (GETY) model called Generative AI by Getty Images, are some of them.