Within four days of ChatGPT’s launch, Habib used the chatbot to build QuickVid AI, which automates much of the creative process involved in generating ideas for YouTube videos. Creators input details about the topic of their video and what kind of category they’d like it to sit in, then QuickVid interrogates ChatGPT to create a script. Other generative AI tools then voice the script and create visuals.
Tens of thousands of users used it daily—but Habib had been using unofficial access points to ChatGPT, which limited how much he could promote the service and meant he couldn’t officially charge for it. That changed on March 1, when OpenAI announced the release of API access to ChatGPT and Whisper, a speech recognition AI the company has developed. Within an hour, Habib hooked up QuickVid to the official ChatGPT API.
“All of these unofficial tools that were just toys, essentially, that would live in your own personal sandbox and were cool can now actually go out to tons of users,” he says.
OpenAI’s announcement could be the start of a new AI goldrush. What was previously a cottage industry of hobbyists operating in a licensing gray area can now turn their tinkering into fully-fledged businesses.
That, according to David Foster, partner at Applied Data Science Partners, a data science and AI consultancy based in London, will be “critical” for getting companies to use the API.