As soon as the iPhone was unveiled in 2007, its transformative potential was clear. But it took the launch a year later of the App Store, a marketplace for applications built by third-party developers, to unleash the smartphone’s full power to change how people work, interact, shop and amuse themselves. Evangelists of AI are hoping something similar can happen with generative AI, the technology behind the ChatGPT chatbot. Its creator OpenAI this week announced plans for a “GPT Store”, enabling users to develop and market customised bots tailored for specific functions. Some rivals are doing similar things — marking a new stage in the march of Big Tech: the emergence of AI-powered “agents” that can carry out tasks on behalf of consumers.OpenAI is releasing a platform for subscribers to its ChatGPT Plus service for developing bots powered by GPT-4, its underlying AI model. Developers will be able to create “GPTs” for external use, as the company is calling these AI apps, for purposes that might range from maths tutoring to interior design to creating presentations. They can be branded and marketed via the coming GPT Store, with OpenAI eventually splitting revenues with the most popular creators.
More notably, GPTs will be able to “plug in” to other websites and services — enabling them to perform tasks such as sending emails or making payments or bookings. The ability to handle online tasks turns AI-driven apps into agents that can, over time, plan and perform more complex actions. Think of a shopping assistant that can browse online for specific products and then buy them, or a concierge that plans and books travel — and which builds up an intimate knowledge of a user’s preferences.
As when smartphone apps came along, it is unclear how big the agents market may become, what it will look like, or even if it will really take off. There is certainly no guarantee OpenAI will dominate the space. Creating its store accelerates the transformation of what was a research lab into a platform business — with at least the potential to be a disrupter of previous disrupters.