OpenAI plans major updates to attract low-cost developers.

OpenAI plans to introduce major updates next month for developers to make it cheaper and faster to build software applications based on its artificial intelligence models, such as the one that makes ChatGPT. The company also seeks to court more companies to use its technology, sources told Reuters of the plans.

Updates include the addition of memory storage to its developer tools for using AI models. This could theoretically reduce costs for application developers by up to 20 times, which addresses a major concern for partners whose use of OpenAI’s powerful models can quickly add up, as they Trying to build a sustainable business by developing and selling AI software.

The company also plans to unveil new tools such as vision capabilities that will provide developers with the ability to analyze and describe images with potential use cases in fields ranging from entertainment to medicine. will enable the formation of cations.

The new features mark the company’s ambitions to go beyond consumer perception to offer a hit developer platform, as envisioned by its chief executive Sam Altman. The company toiled in relative obscurity outside the tech industry as a nonprofit co-founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and Altman.

The new features are expected to be introduced at OpenAI’s first developer conference in San Francisco on November 6, sources said. They are designed to encourage companies to use OpenAI’s technology to build AI-powered chatbots and autonomous agents that can perform tasks without human intervention, said the sources, who are familiar with the company. Asked to remain anonymous to discuss private projects.

OpenAI declined to comment.

The company burst onto the scene last November when it launched ChatGPT, which enticed millions of people to try out a chatbot that responds to questions and commands like a human, and made it among them. Converts from to one. The world’s fastest growing consumer applications.

OpenAI has high hopes for increased sales. As Reuters first reported last December, OpenAI executives expect to close this year with $200 million in revenue and 1 billion by 2024.

More recently, the company has faced some challenges in pitching outsiders to build businesses using its technology. Making OpenAI indispensable to other companies building apps is one of Altman’s most important strategic goals.

It has met with developers, who have expressed their desire to create a new ecosystem based on OpenAI’s models, which are now embedded in a number of applications, from DoorDash to the assistant Jasper.

The planned release of a so-called stateful API (application program interface) will make it cheaper for companies to build applications by remembering the history of query interactions. This can dramatically reduce the amount of usage developers need to pay. Currently, processing a one-page document using GPT-4 can cost 10 cents, depending on the length and complexity of the input and output, according to pricing on OpenAI’s website.

Another update, the Vision API, will allow people to build software that can analyze images weeks after the feature becomes available to ChatGPT users. Giving developers this tool marks an important step in introducing OpenAI’s so-called multimodal capabilities, which process and create different types of media such as images, audio and video in addition to text.

Keeping developers happy

These releases are designed to attract more developers to pay to access OpenAI’s model to build their own AI software for various uses, such as writing assistants or customer service bots.

According to data from PitchBook, investors have poured more than $20 billion into AI startups this year, many of which rely on technology from OpenAI or another foundation model company.

But investors are concerned about these startups’ reliance on companies like OpenAI or Google because it could put them at risk of being copied by competitors or the big companies themselves through product updates.

Meanwhile, startups are also trying to diversify the types of models they use, experimenting with OpenAI competitors and open-source options like Meta’s Llama. This makes it important for OpenAI to differentiate itself from deep-pocketed competitors like Google.

Keeping developers happy has been a key focus for OpenAI, these sources told Reuters. While ChatGPT has been wildly successful among users, OpenAI’s desire to win over other companies has been less smooth.

Earlier this year, the company was quick to release ChatGPT plugins, add-on tools that allow developers to build applications within ChatGPT. OpenAI hopes the plugins will be on par with Apple’s iOS app store, giving it an advantage over rival chatbots like Google’s Bard.

Developers whose plugins are in the top 30 or so in the “popular” category describe an initial burst of hype, followed by a sharp decline in interest. The popular Scholar AI plugin had about 7,000 daily users as of the end of August, according to its developer Lakshya Bakshi. ChatGPT attracts around 180 million monthly active users.

Altman has publicly acknowledged that there is still more work to be done. Earlier this year, Altman admitted to a group of developers in London that plugins have not gained traction in the market.