OpenAI, a leading AI lab, revealed a groundbreaking marketplace on Monday designed to provide users with access to personalized artificial intelligence "apps" catering to various tasks such as math tutoring or sticker design. The move signals OpenAI's ambitious plans to expand its consumer business. CEO Sam Altman shared these updates at the AI lab's inaugural developer conference, drawing in 900 developers globally. This initiative represents the latest effort by the company to capitalize on the widespread popularity of ChatGPT by incentivizing developers to contribute to its ecosystem.

ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, has rapidly gained traction, boasting 100 million weekly active users, as revealed by Altman during the conference.

OpenAI dubs these customized AI apps as "GPTs," positioning them as early versions of AI assistants capable of executing real-world tasks, such as flight bookings, on behalf of users. The company is set to launch a GPT Store later this month, allowing individuals to share their GPTs and earn income based on user engagement. This marks a renewed effort following earlier unsuccessful attempts to establish a ChatGPT plugin ecosystem earlier this year.

Altman, in his keynote speech at the San Francisco event, envisions a future where users simply ask their computers for assistance, and AI handles various tasks seamlessly. He emphasized the importance of a gradual and iterative deployment approach to address the safety challenges associated with AI.

In addition to the introduction of GPTs, OpenAI announced a series of developer-focused updates, including significant cost reductions, met with enthusiastic cheers from the audience. The company unveiled the GPT-4 Turbo model for its 2 million developers, boasting substantial cost-effectiveness and increased data processing capabilities compared to its predecessor, GPT-4.

OpenAI also introduced assistant application programming interfaces (APIs) with vision and image modalities, confirming an earlier Reuters report. A beta program for developers to fine-tune GPT-4 models was also launched.

The conference drew considerable attention, with attendees lining up early in the morning, and Altman's speech garnering over 40,000 viewers on the YouTube live stream. Notably, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made a surprise appearance, expressing continued support for OpenAI and its foundation models, for which Microsoft has invested over $10 billion.

Addressing concerns from enterprises, OpenAI launched its Custom Models program, offering to create bespoke GPT-4 models at a premium price. The program matches offers from Google and Microsoft to cover legal costs related to copyright infringement claims for enterprise users.