OpenAI has announced that they are opening up their ChatGPT-API to developers, giving them direct access to the model which was previously only available through the company’s web interface. This is a significant move for OpenAI, as it allows developers to use the ChatGPT model in addition to the GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and Codex models. The cost of ChatGPT has also dropped by 90% since its initial release in December, and these savings are now being passed on to API users.
The new model that is now available is called gpt-3.5-turbo and is ten times cheaper than existing GPT-3.5 models. According to OpenAI, gpt-3.5-turbo is also the best model even outside of chat applications. Early testers migrated from text-davinci-003 to gpt-3.5-turbo with only minor changes to their prompts. Early companies like Snap and Shopify are already using the model.
Unlike older GPT models, ChatGPT models like gpt-3.5-turbo process “a sequence of messages with metadata” instead of unstructured text. In examples provided by OpenAI, input can include role assignments or content categories, for example, in addition to a request to translate a sentence.
The new ChatGPT model and Whisper API are available now, making ChatGPT more privacy-friendly. OpenAI also offers other ChatGPT models besides the stable gpt-3.5-turbo. Gpt-3.5-turbo-0301 was released, and a new stable release is expected in April. All requests are handled by Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and developers can also book dedicated instances. According to OpenAI, this starts making economic sense past 450 million tokens per day.
In addition to the ChatGPT model, OpenAI is also opening API access to the Whisper speech-to-text model for transcriptions. The large-v2 model costs $0.006 per minute and accepts m4a, mp3, mp4, mpeg, mpga, wav, and webm formats.
With the updated models comes another innovation that will be of particular interest to users or organizations with privacy concerns. Data submitted through the API is no longer used for service improvements (including model training) unless the organization opts in.
Overall, this move by OpenAI is significant because it allows developers to access the ChatGPT model directly and at a significantly reduced cost. It also provides additional features and functionality that were previously unavailable, making ChatGPT a more attractive option for developers looking to build chat applications or integrate chat functionality into existing applications. Additionally, the privacy-focused updates are likely to be well-received by users and organizations with privacy concerns.