OpenAI wants to shut a student's repository over GPT4 access
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In other news, a big company with a non-profit and for-profit subsidiary sues an independent creator trying to make things easier for everyday folks. Even though it technically doesn’t violate its terms and conditions? Perhaps we’ll leave that for the experts to decide.
OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, a scourge on teachers and succor to everyone else, opted against free access when it released its newer GPT4 model.
Instead, users and companies pay for ChatGPT Plus or access to OpenAI’s API should they want to use GPT4. You could also find other freely accessible sites like You.com and Forefront that paid for access to the API and integrated GPT4 into their chatbot.
But what happens if you write a program that runs queries through these freely accessible sites and returns the answer to you? did just that.
His GitHub project GPT4free is viral on the site, gaining 14,000 stars this week. You could clone this repository, install the required Python dependencies in just a few steps, and viola! You now have a chatbot running in your browser.
In simple terms, GPT4free pings the internal URL sites like You.com use when you feed your prompts into them, fetches the JSON returned, and reformats them. Very similar to the steps you would take if you opened all these sites manually and input your prompt, but done for you in the background instead. Code any enthusiast with a logical mind could write.
And since OpenAI gets paid by these sites for the service, they are okay with this, right?
Um, no. OpenAI sent Xtekky a letter demanding the repo’s takedown within five days or face a lawsuit.
Although You.com and the likes foot the bill for your queries, you still end up costing them when you ping them with queries without visiting them, most commonly in the form of lost ad revenue.
Doing the right thing
Xtekky told Tom’s Hardware that he was willing to take down scripts that use individual sites’ APIs should they reach out to him and that he had already done so for phind.com, ora.sh, and writesonic.com.
These sites could also restrict external usage of their internal APIs using standard security practices, including blocking common requests from any API that isn’t their own.
Although he has advised sites that wrote to him to secure their APIs, Xtekky says that none have done so, leaving it open for any other developer to take advantage. “Users are sharing and hosting this project everywhere,” he added. “Deletion of my repo will be insignificant.”
Xtekky would later reveal on the project’s Discord channel that a rebranding that would process requests seamlessly and legally is in progress.
Even if Xtekky takes his repo down, many others will likely replace it. You, the reader, absolutely should not do it. Neither should you use ad-blocking extensions like uBlock Origin. Independent media needs its revenue. Perhaps you could support them with a fiver. I’ll leave that up to you.
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