The Gist
- A means to an end. The chatbots were a means to an end, as APIs are what matter in the push toward generative AI.
- Increased demand. The widespread interest in AI chatbots has led to increased demand for generative AI technology across industries.
- Broad applications? While broad and useful applications for generative AI remain challenging, early uses in customer service, gaming and marketing could prove successful.
The chatbots did their job. They inspired awe, mockery and even some fear. Most importantly, they drew attention. Front-page headlines, cover stories and word of mouth caused millions to try them, leading businesses and developers to ask how they could put the technology to use.
The Race to Build the Leading Generative AI Platform Is On
The application programming interfaces (APIs), of course, were always the point. ChatGPT and Bing’s chatbot were never the end product. They were demos meant to sell other companies on tools they could use to build their own. And it worked. Now, the war to build the leading generative AI platform is underway.
“For OpenAI, the vast majority of the money they will ever make will come from developers,” Ben Parr, president of Octane AI, told me. “ChatGPT is just the entry road into everything else.”
Related Article: 10 Chatbot Providers You Should Know About
Tech Giants Gear up for AI Chatbot Competition
Even before this wave of AI chatbots reached the public, the companies behind them prepared APIs for developers. When ChatGPT gained momentum in January, OpenAI president Greg Brockman teased an API “coming soon.” That same week, Microsoft made OpenAI models available through Azure. On the day Google introduced its Bard chatbot, CEO Sundar Pichai promised to make some of the underlying technology available by March. And on Feb. 21, just a bit late, Amazon announced it would partner with Hugging Face to make a generative language tool available through Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“Everybody who develops software is either alerted, or shocked into alert, or actively working on something that is like ChatGPT to be integrated into their application, or integrated into their service,” NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said during his company’s earnings call recently. NVIDIA provides the chips the tech runs on, so it stands to benefit, too. Its stock jumped 14% recently.
Related Article: 6 Ways ChatGPT May Change Digital Customer Experience
Generative AI Offers Customer Service, Gaming and Marketing Opportunities
Finding broad, useful applications for generative AI will be challenging, but some obvious early applications stand out. Customer service departments, for instance, could use chatbots that can hold a conversation. Gaming companies could build intelligent characters and make non-player characters (NPCs) a thing of the past. And marketers could attempt to use generative language models to forge deeper bonds with customers.
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This is all moving fast. OpenAI just announced it has partnered with Bain to help clients build on its API. Zack Kass, OpenAI’s chief customer officer, said in a launch video that OpenAI couldn’t keep up with the interest in its technology. “We are inundated at this point with enterprise demand that we sort of waited for, for a long time, and here it is,” he said. “Now we just need to figure out how we field it.”
Later in the video, Coca-Cola Company executives said they planned to use the tech in their marketing efforts “to deliver creative content at speed.” Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey also mentioned he believed the tech would change knowledge work, but without going into specifics.
Coca-Cola is a fitting launch partner. In a recent presentation, investor Chamath Palihapitiya mentioned that Coke succeeded thanks to another invention: refrigeration. Coca-Cola made more money than the people who invented the refrigerator, he said, and that could happen here, too. “If AI/LLMs [artificial intelligence/large language models] are the refrigeration,” he asked. “Who will be the next Coca-Cola?”
The Companies Behind the Technology Are Fighting for Dominance
The companies that enable successful AI applications — the refrigeration, in Palihapitiya’s analogy — still stand to benefit tremendously though. And so those developing the underlying technology are doing what they can to help launch the next big thing on their platforms, and perhaps take a chunk of it, too. OpenAI, for instance, has a $100 million startup fund meant to work with AI companies in healthcare, climate, education and elsewhere. “Look at some of the companies that OpenAI’s invested in,” said Parr. “There are real use cases.”
The APIs, amid the commotion, are what matter. They’re why Microsoft was willing to release an unproven chatbot into Bing, even when it knew it was a bit crazy. And why the company didn’t seem to mind when the bot's flaws exploded into public view.
It was never about Bing or ChatGPT, but about the potential future they previewed. And now, given the demos’ success, the race to enable that future is underway.