OpenAI’s Growing Ecosystem Play

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on a podcast last week that he wanted ChatGPT to become “people’s personal AI subscription.” The company last week made moves toward that goal with “apps in ChatGPT,” which lets people use the chatbot to search for homes on Zillow or make Spotify playlists, for instance.

In another example, OpenAI has pitched companies on allowing visitors to sign into their websites using their ChatGPT credentials, just as how people can sign in to websites using their Google or Facebook accounts, said a person involved in conversations. The offering may be of particular interest to startups offering AI-powered features built on OpenAI’s models.

That’s because OpenAI has a novel idea for tying the sign-in arrangement to how startups that use OpenAI’s models would pay for that usage. 

It’s complicated, so bear with me. Essentially, OpenAI’s idea is that companies that adopt the sign-in feature could transfer the cost of using OpenAI’s models to the customers.