OpenAI offers cheaper models, unveils customised bots

The news: Artificial intelligence lab OpenAI will enable ChatGPT users to build customised AI bots called GPTs to handle specific tasks, and has slashed costs on more powerful models for developers.

The numbers: ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, now has 100 million weekly active users, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at its first developer conference in San Francisco, which attracted 900 developers from around the world.

The context: The company wants more enterprises and developers to build models to rival those developed by Anthropic and Alphabet's Google, and open source models such as Meta Platforms' Llama. OpenAI announced a new GPT-4 Turbo model for its 2 million developers and slashed the cost by over 50%. It unveiled assistant application programming interfaces (APIs) with vision and image modalities, and has launched a beta program for developers to fine-tune GPT-4 models. It is also launching a marketplace for GPTs, which are AI agents that will allow ChatGPT to book flights and perform other tasks when commanded by a human without close supervision and will launch a GPT Store later this month where people can share their GPTs and earn money based on the number of users.