OpenAI, which promotes the provision of high-performance AI for a fee, was originally a non-profit organization

OpenAI, which has been announcing high-performance AI such as chat AI `` ChatGPT '' and transcription AI `` Whisper '' one after another, was active as an open source and non-profit AI research organization when it was first established. However, as of 2023, it has been pointed out that ``the source code of many products is private, and the behavior as a commercial company has become remarkable''.

OpenAI Is Now Everything It Promised Not to Be: Corporate, Closed-Source, and For-Profit
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3naz/openai-is-now-everything-it-promised-not-to-be-corporate-closed-source-and-for-profit

OpenAI is an AI research organization established in December 2015 with funding from Elon Musk and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Garrett Hoffman. At the beginning of its establishment, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, ``Of course it is possible to make a profit with OpenAI, but we are not thinking about it,'' emphasizing that it will act as a non-profit organization. In addition, in its founding statement , 'Our purpose is to create value for all people, not our shareholders. Researchers are strongly encouraged to publish their papers, code, and blog posts. If we obtain a patent, we will share it all over the world, ”he emphasized developing AI as open source.

A non-profit research organization 'OpenAI' of artificial intelligence that prevents misuse of robots is established by prominent entrepreneurs and investors in the IT industry - GIGAZINE

by Hersson Piratoba

In February 2019, OpenAI released the sentence generation AI 'GPT-2'. However, when GPT-2 was released , the publication of papers and model data was postponed because it was too dangerous to generate natural sentences easily. After that, OpenAI released the model data of 'GPT-2' in stages , but researchers pointed out that 'postponing the publication of the paper was a wrong response.'

In June 2020, an enhanced text generation AI ``GPT-3'' of ``GPT-2'' was announced. However, OpenAI signed an exclusive license agreement with Microsoft in September 2022. After that, the source code of 'GPT-3' has not been released until the time of writing the article.

Microsoft acquires exclusive license for world-class language model 'GPT-3' - GIGAZINE

As mentioned above, the idea of 'open-sourcing AI' is beginning to fade, and at the same time, the idea of 'working as a non-profit organization' is also wavering. OpenAI announced the paid service “ ChatGPT Plus ” of “ChatGPT” in February 2023, and in March 2023 , it will start providing a paid API that can use ChatGPT . In addition, we are promoting the monetization of developed AI, such as announcing the AI platform ' Foundry ' that can use the latest AI models such as 'GPT-4' for 3.5 million to 20 million yen per month.

When OpenAI first released a paid API in 2020, it explained the reason for the paid provision, ``Commercialization can cover the cost of AI research and ensuring safety.'' It is also pointed out that the pressure for monetization has arisen due to the investment of hundreds of billions of yen by Microsoft.

Microsoft announces that it has invested hundreds of billions of yen in OpenAI and signed a long-term partnership - GIGAZINE