Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On March 4, ChatGPT, an intelligent chat tool launched by American AI research company OpenAI, has set off the so-called generative AI (AIGC) craze around the world, and it has been integrated into social, email, educational and many other applications. So who makes most of the money between OpenAI and its ChatGPT customers?

Notion, an American software services company, recently announced that its ChatGPT-supported tool suite, Conept AI, has entered the stage of full launch. Now, each user pays only $10 a month (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 69 yuan), which can be used to aggregate meeting minutes, generate lists of pros and cons, and draft emails.

Notion is just one of the first companies to eat crabs in the current wave of racing to take advantage of the surge in interest in AIGC. This week, Snapchat launched an integrated ChatGPT service called My AI for users who pay $4 a month (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 28 yuan) to subscribe to Snapchat Plus services.

Educational application Quizlet has also released Q-Chat, a ChatGPT-based tutoring software. Instacart, the US fresh ecommerce company, said it was developing a tool that would allow customers to query food and get data about the product from its retail partners to make decisions about whether it was worth buying.

As more and more companies adopt ChatGPT, we can't help but wonder: who earns most of that revenue? Will more and more companies find ways to integrate AI into products that can be charged? Or does most of the profits end up going to a few companies that provide the basic models for other companies to build and refine their own AI tools?

The answer will largely determine whether AIGC represents a true platform shift from desktops to mobile phones or just a limited set of innovations whose benefits are ultimately concentrated in a handful of big winners.

Developers are obviously thinking about this, too. Recently, in response to concerns, OpenAI said it would no longer use developer data to improve its model without the developer's permission. Instead, it will require developers to choose whether or not to join.

Greg Brockmann, president and chairman of OpenAI, said: "one of our biggest concerns is to figure out how we can become super developer-friendly. Our mission is to really build a platform on which others can build business."

Maybe it's as simple as that: developers don't want to help OpenAI improve its model for free, and OpenAI decides to respect their wishes. This explanation seems to be more in line with the idea that AI really represents platform transfer. Or, OpenAI believes that the model can continue to improve quickly, whether or not all of these developers choose to join. This explanation means that OpenAI and a few other companies will get most of the return.

So what kind of AI features are these companies actually selling? At present, the AI products on the market are basically white-label versions of ChatGPT. Starting this week, OpenAI will provide its technology to other companies through API. Any company can resell ChatGPT in its own application for only $0.002 per 1000 tokens.

For now, when it comes to AIGC, consumers don't have much choice. To some extent, the options in the interface seem to be richer. Do you want to draft an email in AI? It may be more convenient in Notion because you already have some minutes of the meeting. Do you want to solicit some recipe ideas or ask some questions? If your laptop is not with you, asking My AI on Snapchat may be the quickest way.

There are still billions of people who have never used ChatGPT. Introducing the feature to popular consumer apps like Snapchat, which has 750 million users a month, could help it find a new audience. Paying Notion or Snapchat for the use of such ChatGPT features also ensures user stickiness. Over time, these tools will become more personalized, as applications will use the data provided by their users to help improve the underlying model of OpenAI.

Zhao Yi, CEO of Notion, said that more features supported by ChatGPT are coming. At first, it may just be for writing and editing, but a deeper change is coming. "I've never been so excited about anything! the AIGC represented by ChatGPT feels like electricity, while writing and editing are like light bulbs, which is the first use case for electricity," he said. "but there are a lot of other household appliances that need electricity."

Zhao Yi added that by creating interfaces that are easier to use than competitors, Notion will add lasting value to the language model. This is a more important project than it seemed at first: one of the reasons voice interfaces like Siri and Alexa have stalled is that it's hard for users to remember what different things they can do. Another reason is that their language model is far less complex than that of ChatGPT. "this is not only a technological revolution, but also an interface revolution, and we are very good at interfaces," Zhao said. "

A more personalized AI model should also have real value. For the past year or so, some people have been keeping diaries in an app called Mem, which provides a full set of ChatGPT-based features to advanced subscribers. In the end, we may be able to ask all kinds of questions to our diaries in natural language. For example, what was I worried about last summer? When was the last time I saw my friend Brian?

Still, most people don't want to pay extra for AI features at the moment. But over time, the cost of these features seems to fall, and many of today's services that charge $10 a month are likely to be available free of charge. But it also poses risks for startups betting that these features will help drive growth. After all, the cheaper services are, the more likely large platforms are to provide them for free. How does Notion deal with a full set of high-quality AI tools available free of charge in Google Docs?

Perhaps the best-case scenario for small companies is that the AIGC industry becomes similar to the cloud computing market. The infrastructure will be built by a few companies, but the features they provide at low cost will inspire a whole new generation of startups.

At the same time, the capabilities of ChatGPT and other large language models will only expand, and they are likely to engulf many AI startups in the process. As technology companies integrate AI functionality into their applications this year, they'd better figure out the huge risks as soon as possible.

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