OpenAI’s GPT Store, a marketplace for customized versions of ChatGPT, is expected to become available next week.

The Information and TechCrunch reported the platform’s launch time frame today, citing a memo distributed by OpenAI to users. The artificial intelligence company first previewed the GPT Store in early November. It planned to launch the marketplace later that month, but reportedly delayed the move because of Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman’s ouster by the board of directors and subsequent return.

The GPT Store will enable OpenAI users to share customized versions of ChatGPT with other customers. Those customized chatbots, which are known simply as GPTs, can be built using a tool called GPT Builder that debuted in November alongside the marketplace.

The tool doesn’t require customers to write code. Instead, they can simply write a series of natural language instructions to specify what tasks a custom GPT should perform and how. A developer, for example, could create a version of ChatGPT optimized to debug programs written in the Java programming language.

Users can provide a GPT with proprietary datasets to extend the range of tasks it’s capable of performing. Moreover, custom chatbots may be equipped with the ability to browse the web and interact with third-party services through their application programming interfaces. A marketing team could create a GPT that analyzes sales logs stored in a cloud-based database to predict future demand.

According to OpenAI, custom versions of ChatGPT can also generate images. The capability is powered by the chatbot’s integration with DALL-E 3, the company’s latest image generation model. DALL-E 3 interprets user instructions more accurately than its predecessors and includes an expanded set of safety features. 

The GPT Store will enable OpenAI customers to not only share the chatbots they build but also monetize them. According to the company, developers are set to generate revenue “based on how many people are using your GPT.”

For end-users, in turn, the marketplace will provide a search bar to ease the task of finding relevant chatbots. In another section of the GPT Store’s interface, a leaderboard will highlight popular GPTs. For added measure, OpenAI staffers plan to spotlight user-created chatbots that are deemed particularly useful.

The GPT Store is one element of a broader effort on OpenAI’s part to let customers customize ChatGPT for specific use cases. 

Last June, the company introduced support for so-called custom instructions. The capability enables users to tailor the responses ChatGPT generates based on their requirements. A software team working on a Java application, for example, could configure ChatGPT to generate Java-specific programming advice in response to team members’ prompts.

For organizations that require more extensive customization, OpenAI offers a program called Custom Models. It provides the ability to train a version of GPT-4, the large language model that underpins ChatGPT, on a company’s internal datasets. OpenAI researchers can modify “every step of the model training process” for enterprises that participate in the program. 

Image: OpenAI