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OpenAI: What is It and How To Use It for Free in 2024

Posted: by Charisse Flores | Last updated:



What is OpenAI?
OpenAI is a private AI research and deployment company whose primary goal is to develop a general artificial intelligence that contributes to the betterment of humanity. Elon Musk and Sam Altman, along with other Silicon Valley notables, founded OpenAI in 2015 and built the company with $1 billion. OpenAI is the genius behind DALL-E and ChatGPT.

Today, we can find a lot of artificial intelligence tools that benefit multiple industries, and OpenAI is behind many of these AI tools. So, if you want to know what OpenAI is, its technological developments, and whether you can use it for free, this read is for you.

For centuries, humans have always wondered what a world full of robots is like. Today, artificial intelligence is rising, with OpenAI as a major player. It continues to develop revolutionary technology and conduct thorough research to push the boundaries of what artificial intelligence can do. It is the genius behind DALL-E, the AI tool that produces realistic art with a single prompt. It also created ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that can sustain conversations and respond to questions.

Discover the transformative potential of OpenAI’s chat feature in enhancing your language experience within this intriguing domain. OpenAI recognized for its groundbreaking research, stands as a pioneering research laboratory devoted to the exploration of artificial intelligence, creating significant ripples in the tech sphere. It transcends the conventional notion of a mere corporation, functioning as an innovation hub ceaselessly pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with advanced language models like GPT. If you’ve ever wondered how to become a part of this cutting-edge landscape, the good news is that OpenAI invites everyone to acquaint themselves with and utilize its technology at no cost, including access to Chat OpenAI. In this post, we’ll guide you through the enthralling landscape of OpenAI, showcasing how you can leverage its capabilities without depleting your resources.

Firstly, let’s delve into the core essence of OpenAI. Picture it as a powerhouse in the field of artificial intelligence, where some of the brightest minds collaborate to construct language models surpassing contemporary standards, such as the innovative OpenAI Chat. Recognize that this goes beyond a simple compilation of code; it embodies a collective societal aspiration to redefine our boundaries of artificial intelligence. OpenAI is strongly committed to ensuring that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits society as a whole, distinguishing itself through its unwavering dedication to openness and collaboration.

If the idea of exploring state-of-the-art technology, exemplified by Chat OpenAI, ignites your enthusiasm, you’ll be pleased to know that OpenAI has thrown its doors open to the public, allowing free access to its models. Whether you’re a developer, a student, or simply someone intrigued by the capabilities of AI, OpenAI provides resources and tools that empower you to tap into the prowess of GPT without burning a hole in your pocket. Furthermore, for those with a keen interest in investment opportunities, the mention of OpenAI Stock adds another layer to the dynamic landscape of this innovative powerhouse.

Discover more about the company by reading until the end of this article.

What is OpenAI and its history?

OpenAI is a private AI research and deployment company whose primary goal is to develop a general artificial intelligence that contributes to the betterment of humanity. As a result of the founders’ concern regarding the potential destruction that could result from the misuse of general AI, they started the company. Its technological advancements made big waves that popular companies like Amazon hope to develop their own AI bot.

Was Elon Musk a founder of OpenAI? We all know how vocal Elon Musk is about his concern for humanity’s future, particularly concerning technology and artificial intelligence. So, he co-founded the company along with Sam Altman and other Silicon Valley notables in 2015. They started to build the company with $1 billion.

OpenAI statistics
Condensed infographic on OpenAI. Source: ThinkImpact

Timeline

In 2016, shortly after the company’s founding, it released, to the public, its first-ever AI offering– OpenAI Gym. The said tool is an open-source toolkit used to develop reinforcement learning algorithms. It, then, became a ground for training AI agents. That was only the first of what the company had in mind.

From 2017 through 2019, the company shifted its focus to doing more AI-related research and developments. In 2018, the company published a paper that introduced the concept of a Generative Pre-Trained Transformer or GPT. A GPT, in a nutshell, refers to a neural network or machine model modeled after the functions and structure of the human brain. GPTs are trained on large datasets of human-generated manuscripts. It can perform tasks and functions, such as generating questions and answers.

The GPT-1 was its first language model and was trained on the BookCorpus. Then, GPT-1 eventually evolved into GPT-2, a more powerful version of the AI that received training on 8 million web pages with 1.5 billion parameters. However, GPT-2 was not released to the public due to the fear that people could use it to generate fake news or write scam emails.

Come 2018, Elon Musk left the board of AI due to time constraints and conflicts. So, is Elon Musk still part of OpenAI? Not anymore. At the time of his leaving, the business mogul expressed concern over the notion that the company didn’t focus enough on AI-associated risks and prioritized the technology’s commercial applications instead.

In March 2019, the company made a decision that spurred controversies in cyberspace. It transitioned from being a nonprofit company to being a capped-profit organization. It became formally known as OpenAI LP, a for-profit and nonprofit hybrid. OpenAI LP is now controlled by its parent company OpenAI Inc.

Following the transition in 2020, the company released another AI with similar components to GPT-2 called DALL-E. However, instead of generating written words, DALL-E can create photorealistic images.

Then, in 2022, OpenAI released GPT-3 — a faster and keener iteration of the previous two models. It fed GPT-3 45TB text data that translated into 175B parameters. GPT-3 spawned ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a language model developed above GPT-3. ChatGPT can understand the context and generate responses based on the conversation’s history. As a result, you can train ChatGPT within your chat to get more accurate replies.

Can I use OpenAI for free?

OpenAI is not free, and it is understandable because it took billions of dollars to start the research lab. As a consolation, it claims that its pricing is simple and flexible, wherein users only pay for what they use. The only way you could use OpenAI for free is right after you sign up, where you receive $5 worth of free credit for the API and 15 free credits on DALL-E that you need to use within your first three months. Once you consume your free credits, you must purchase more credits to continue using the tools.

What can you do with OpenAI?

The OpenAI API is packed with multiple utilities for developers and programmers. For programmers who want to deliver in-app AI, the company will make their lives easy with the following functions:

Text Completion

OpenAI’s text completion API provides text insertion, text completion, and conversational functionalities based on its advanced GPT-3.5 model. The best model in this feature is text-davinci-003 — a generally more intuitive model than the language models of GPT-3. The text completion endpoint accepts a prompt, making the model respond naturally and composing complex, simple sentences humans can understand.

Speech-to-Text

You can translate and transcribe audio into text with its translation and transcription endpoints. The usage of this endpoint is simple because all you have to do is to provide an audio file to the model and call the openai.Audio.translate or openai.Audio.transcribe endpoint. Then, you get your transcription or translation. The speech-to-text endpoint supports a maximum of 25MB mp3, mp4, MPEG, MPGA, m4a, webm, and wav files.

Code Completion

Code completion is another endpoint of OpenAI API built on the OpenAI Codex. The Codex refers to a set of models trained via natural language and billions of code lines from a public reservoir. However, the company deprecated the Codex models in March 2023, and you can complete the code completion endpoint and other coding tasks on the newer chat models.

Image Generation

Image generation is one of the endpoints that made the company famous. It is intuitive and fun to use. This endpoint is based on the DALL-E image model, where the API’s image functionality has endpoints for editing, creating, and generating images through language prompts. To design a realistic photo, you only have to give a prompt, image size, and image count.

The more specific your prompts are, the closer the output will be to your desired image. For example, giving a prompt that says “three colorful birds inside a gold square cage” will yield a more detailed result compared to just typing in “three birds inside a cage.”

Chat Completion

The API’s chat completion endpoint allows you to experience a natural and human-like interactive conversation with a virtual assistant through the GPT3.5 turbo and GPT-4 models. You can build your apps to accomplish tasks, such as drafting an email, writing Python code, creating conversational agents, tutoring particular subjects, translating languages, and simulating video game characters, to name a few.

How do you use the OpenAI API?

Using the API is simple as it follows the usual API consumption pattern. If you want to use the API, you need to:

  • Install OpenAI package via pip: pip install openai. If you are using Node, you can use npm: npm install openai instead.
  • Next, get your API keys by logging into your dashboard and tapping your profile icon at the top right. Then, open “View API Keys” and click “Create new secret key” to generate your API secret key.
  • Afterwards, you can make API calls to your model endpoints using a server-side language like Python or JavaScript. Then, feed these to your custom API and run a test on your endpoints.
  • Once done, you can fetch custom APIs through JavaScript frameworks like Angular, Vue, or React.
  • Lastly, present your data in an appealing user interface, and your app is up for use.

What are the current use cases of the OpenAI API?

The APIs provide access to the actual usage of machine and reinforcement learning. Multiple opportunities for creativity abound, but these are some of the things you can do and create with the OpenAI API:

  • Integrating a human-like virtual assistant chatbot into your brand’s website or application through the chat completion endpoint.
  • Constructing your own machine-learning model.
  • Fixing subtitles and translations for audio, videos, and live convos.
  • Creating a photo editing app.

What are the benefits of OpenAI?

robot and human touching hands
The main purpose of AI should be to benefit humans.

The company wouldn’t have made it big were it not for the benefits it offers to different industries.

Natural Language Processing

OpenAI has already developed exceptional natural language processing models that can understand, process, and generate human language with high accuracy levels. This development will improve several industries, such as customer service, content creation, and translation.

Predictive Analytics

analytics
Artificial intelligence can soon give accurate predictive analytics.

The machine learning models of OpenAI can analyze big chunks of data to make predictions about future events. This enhanced predictive analytics may spur better decisions in marketing, healthcare, businesses, and finance. You don’t have to spend so much time researching relevant data and analytics on the future for a particular industry because an AI can do it for you.

Efficiency and Productivity

With OpenAI’s technological advancements, technology can automate repetitive tasks. As a result, human workers will have more time to focus on complex and creative tasks. The efficiency and productivity of workers across various industries will surge as artificial intelligence can take care of minor work.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

person wearing VR goggles
Will virtual reality soon become the new reality of humans?

You can use the technologies of OpenAI to create a more immersive and realistic virtual reality experience. Imagine meeting with your team on VR. You don’t have to go through the hassle of going out to meet with each other because you can do it through virtual reality.

Customer Service

The natural language processing models of OpenAI make it possible for chatbots and virtual assistants to tend to a customer’s needs or inquiries with great accuracy. Humans, of course, won’t be erased and replaced. Instead, artificial intelligence will share the burden, giving humans more energy to deal with major work.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

robot
With advanced AI developments, the improvement of robots is not impossible.

OpenAI developed technologies that developers can use to improve the capacities of robots and autonomous systems, making them more human-like. It might seem terrifying to many people, but we can’t disregard the fact that the more digital and hi-tech the world becomes, the more possible it is for robots to exist and do tasks that humans can do. Not everyone realizes it today, but robots can be helpful in many industries.

A good example would be a restaurant where a robot serves the food instead of a human server; it is unusual but lessens the risk of accidents, such as spilling the food due to tripping or slipping on the floor.

OpenAI is a game-changer

With its past, present, and future developments, we can see that OpenAI is a game-changer. Their technological advancements have what it takes to transform the field of artificial intelligence and improve humanity. With its commitment to friendly AI and passion for improving the world, OpenAI is in a great position to positively shape the future of artificial intelligence.

You can also use AI-powered tools to automate your business’s social media efforts. Check out our recommended tools in this Postoplan review and Sprinklr review.

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