OpenAI expected personalized chatbots to boost its business, but recent data shows that few people are interested in them.
Since November, the startup that created ChatGPT has allowed paid users to create their own versions of chatbots — while the rest of us can use them through a separate online store launched in January 2024
According to Financial Times analysis some of the most popular versions of GPT are used for educational purposes, generating images, predicting future stock prices, and helping to «cheat» plagiarism detectors used in schools and universities (these tools have been viewed at least 3 million times, despite the fact that OpenAI bans applications that engage in or promote educational dishonesty).
Similarly, there are other chatbots that violate the company’s policy of providing financial, legal, or medical advice that has not been verified by qualified professionals.
In general, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s vision is that customized versions of ChatGPT (a chatbot with 100 million weekly users) will accelerate the business and become something like Apple’s iPhone app store. He announced that leading GPT creators will start receiving a portion of the revenue from their apps later this year in an effort to attract more developers.
At the same time, the data on the popularity of chatbots is currently disappointing — SimilarWeb statistics show that subscriber-generated GPTs accounted for only 1.5% of visits to the ChatGPT website in February (although this is a limited figure as it does not include views on the mobile app).
OpenAI claimed that millions of people have interacted with GPT since the store’s launch. Some well-known companies, including hiking app AllTrails and travel search engine Kayak, have created their own versions. Canva was also one of the first to launch a specialized GPT, which has received over 4.4 million views.