OpenAI will allow developers to embed ChatGPT into their applications

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, announced several important changes. It launches APIs for developers of ChatGPT and the Whisper speech transcription model.

ChatGPT’s new API will use the same AI model (“gpt-3.5-turbo”) as the popular chatbot, allowing developers to add to their applications either unchanged or flavored versions of ChatGPT to their apps. However, the API will not be limited to bots imitating ChatGPT; it can also form the basis for “non-chat” software products that can benefit from the use of AI.

ChatGPT API price is $0.002 for 1000 tokens (about 750 words). Additionally, it’s offering a dedicated-capacity option for deep-pocketed developers who expect to use more tokens than the standard API allows. The new developer capabilities complement the consumer-focused ChatGPT Plus service, which launched in February for $20 per month.

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Whisper API is a hosted version of the open-source Whisper speech-to-text model it launched in September.

“We released a model, but that actually was not enough to cause the whole developer ecosystem to build around it,” said OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman. “The Whisper API is the same large model that you can get open source, but we’ve optimized to the extreme. It’s much, much faster and extremely convenient.”

The transcription API will cost developers $0.006 per minute, providing reliable multi-language transcription and English translation.

Finally, OpenAI has published changes to its developer terms based on customer feedback about privacy and security. Unless a developer opts in, the company will no longer use the data provided through the “service improvement” API to train its AI models.

In addition, the company adds a 30-day data retention period, providing stricter retention conditions “depending on user needs” (presumably referring to companies with high data usage and appropriate budget). Finally, the company is simplifying data ownership by specifying that users own the input and output data of the models.

The company will also replace its pre-launch review process for developers with a mostly automated system. OpenAI justified the change by pointing out that “the overwhelming majority of apps were approved during the vetting process,” claiming its monitoring has “significantly improved.”