The artificial intelligence (AI) platform ChatGPT now allows users to create their own generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs), according to a November 6 blog post from developer Open AI. This means that users can now create custom ChatGPT applications that handle a variety of tasks, rather than having to enter long strings of commands into the chat window to perform these tasks.
GPTs are a new way for anyone to create a customized version of ChatGPT to be more useful in their daily life, on specific tasks, at work, or at home — and then share that creation with others. No code required. https://t.co/SPV4TcMiQw pic.twitter.com/PcmorZwtMF
– OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 6, 2023
According to the OpenAI post, they found that many users were storing text files that they used to frame how ChatGPT responded to prompts. Every time these “power users” opened ChatGPT, they had to cut and paste these text fields into the program’s chat box before performing any tasks. The team launched GPTs as a way to mitigate this problem, stating:
“Many power users keep a list of carefully designed prompts and instruction sets, and manually copy them into ChatGPT. Now GPTs do it all for you.
The new feature is available to subscribers of the ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscription tiers. There is no free version available at this time.
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OpenAI also reported that a new GPT store will open “later this month.” The store will allow developers to create GPTs and offer them for sale, similar to how a mobile app store works. Only “verified builders” will be allowed to deploy GPTs to the store, and the team claims to have created “new systems” to help protect users’ privacy and safety as the store goes live.
Users can also share their GPT points publicly if they want others to be able to use them, the post stated. Organizations can create “internal-only” GPT nodes that can only be used within specific departments or by employees specifically authorized to use them.
According to the post, biotech company Amgen, management consulting firm Bain, and payments processor Square have already begun using GPTs to create marketing materials, assist customer support staff, or help onboard new engineers.
ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI-powered chatbots, with more than 180 million users, according to SimilarWeb data cited by Reuters. But it faces increasing competition from Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Cloud 2. On November 5, Elon Musk announced that he had created his own AI-powered chatbot, called “Grok.”