They make their AI accessible to anyone. Sounds pretty open to me. Maybe not for developers, since they associate „open“ with open source, but surely for everyone else.
Isn't that the same as any other company offering services for money? The fact that they give freebies doesn't make them "open". It would be far too vague, nevermind that "open" already has a specific well-established meaning in the context.
Most executives and schoolchildren didn’t know what the hell they were a year ago. Now my middle schoolers are playing with them. That’s greater access by any reasonable measure.
You could have said the same thing about Netflix a decade ago, but naming themselves OpenStreaming would have been just as ridiculous. Having a popular product has nothing to do with being an open company.
It might not be the openness that OSS developers expect, but they're providing a platform for anyone to build on top of, whether it be hobbyist projects or commercial products.
Yes, of course, "anyone" can build a project on this platform. Unless of course they are anonymous, or broke, or want to touch on various medical topics, or demagraphic topics, or mention genitals, or if they violate any of the other dozens of vague current and future restrictions that OpenAI has in place.
Anybody can go buy a Camry and use it to build a business, sell Uber rides, or even use it as a platform to build aftermarket parts for converting them into taxis. That doesn't make Toyota open in any way.
It makes Toyota more open than Rolls Royce though. ChatGPT for free is amazing. $20/month is a steal. OpenAI could easily have chosen to be TotallyClosedAI, charged way more, and not have released it to the general public, leading the general public to flounder as tech elites suddenly became more productive, leaving everyone else behind.
Also, don't forget, it's only due to the Magnusson act and other acts that we have rights beyond what Ford wants to grant us on our cars. (Since Ford was the one in that lawsuit, Toyota came later.) If it were up to manufacturers, the hood would be welded shut, we wouldn't be allowed to use aftermarket parts at all, and they'd take a cut of every Uber ride.
I don't see Congress acting in the case of OpenToTheGeneralPublicAI and ChatGPT, unfortunately, but the car analogy falls short because software isn't the same as physical goods. Toyota's info about what cars are doing after being sold is limited, but they have to get them in the hands of customers. OpenAI can just let customers use ChatGPT via the website or an API and it's usable by customers.
