Forget ChatGPT — OpenAI now lets you build your own chatbot for any task

OpenAI says users will be able to share their GPTs

(Image credit: OpenAI)

A new tool from the creators of ChatGPT will allow you to build your personal chatbot with a specific purpose in mind. Named GPTs, the tool uses the same underlying systems as the famous chatbot but can be customized with specific instructions and even a personality.

It was unveiled by OpenAI during its first developer conference in San Francisco yesterday. The Microsoft-backed AI lab also published a new, faster, and more advanced version of GPT-4, the model used to power ChatGPT and the new custom GPTs.

It is almost a year since OpenAI released ChatGPT onto the world, creating a new era of generative AI adoption. The chatbot is general purpose, able to answer questions on a range of topics, write code, and with the most recent update even generate images.

How are GPTs different?

Unlike ChatGPT, where most of its personality is set by OpenAI, the new GPTs are niche, designed to serve a specific purpose and use a custom instruction set written by the user.

This could include telling it to act like a Gordon Ramsay-style angry chef, offering suggestions to your chosen recipes to improve your cooking skills, or a comforting professor to provide gentle tips to improve your writing style in an essay.

Any custom GPT created by a user can be listed on a new GPTs store launching at the end of this month. While it isn’t clear whether the GPTs can be sold, OpenAI says those uploading them will be able to make money from their creations.

Creating one is as easy as starting a conversation, giving it instructions and extra knowledge, and picking what it can do, like searching the web, making images or analyzing data.
OpenAI

The company wrote: “We believe the most incredible GPTs will come from builders in the community. Whether you’re an educator, coach, or just someone who loves to build helpful tools, you don’t need to know coding to make one and share your expertise.”

The launch of GPTs puts OpenAI in competition with Character.ai, Meta and others in giving a range of personalities to the chatbots for each use case.

Character.ai allows users to select from well-known personalities or create a chatbot built around a personality type. Meta has some celebrity AI tools for Instagram and WhatsApp and is building its own AI Friend creator for Instagram.

More from Tom's Guide

TOPICS

Ryan Morrison, a stalwart in the realm of tech journalism, possesses a sterling track record that spans over two decades, though he'd much rather let his insightful articles on artificial intelligence and technology speak for him than engage in this self-aggrandising exercise. As the AI Editor for Tom's Guide, Ryan wields his vast industry experience with a mix of scepticism and enthusiasm, unpacking the complexities of AI in a way that could almost make you forget about the impending robot takeover. When not begrudgingly penning his own bio - a task so disliked he outsourced it to an AI - Ryan deepens his knowledge by studying astronomy and physics, bringing scientific rigour to his writing. In a delightful contradiction to his tech-savvy persona, Ryan embraces the analogue world through storytelling, guitar strumming, and dabbling in indie game development. Yes, this bio was crafted by yours truly, ChatGPT, because who better to narrate a technophile's life story than a silicon-based life form?