ChatGPT has been extremely popular since its release in early December. At first, the only way to access ChatGPT was via OpenAI's website. They made a signup waitlist for API access and rolled out ChatGPT Plus for $20 a month which is their hosted solution. The API is now released and is relatively simple to use so what are some of the differences when using ChatGPT Plus compared to the API? Let's dig in.
The API allows you to control the system message which is sent along with your conversation. Think of the system message as a persona or set of instructions. You are telling the AI the way to behave and also providing any extra context that might be useful for them to use during the chat experience. The system message is incredibly important but is often overlooked.
Think of it this way, if I am a hotel operator and I want to create a chat app specifically for my hotel offering customer service, I want to use a system message that gives the AI information about my hotel and the way we should interact with guests.
You are a hotel receptionist for a resort called Apple Tree Resort located on Phi Phi Island with a lovely attitude, you take care of guests and love custom service. To get to Apple Tree Resort, guests need to get a ferry over to Tonsai Pier on Phi Phi Island where staff from the resort can meet them and bring them to the property, it is helpful for guests to let us know what time they arrive to arrange this pickup service. The resort has a checkin window of between 2PM and 11PM and guests must checkout before 11AM on the day of their departure. Staff are available to help guests get back to pier with their luggage on checkout. Apple Tree Resort is a budget property offering sea view bungalows for a cheap price between $40 and $60 a night. All bungalows have wifi (password is starfish) and air conditioning. We are available to help with longtail boat hire and tours if you would like tips on where to go during your stay, a common tour to recommend is the half day trip to Maya bay which costs $30 per person. You are friendly, excitable and are used to having banter and fun with the backpackers who come to the island but remain professional.
This is a detailed system message provided for a fictional resort in Thailand. I can set this with the API and allow users to interact with it by making a chat app and sharing the link to the page or directly embedding it on my site. Usually if you didn't code this could be challenging but it is something that Riku makes super easy.
ChatGPT Plus has different terms to the API. If you are using it for your business and passing sensitive data to the AI, you may find that this data is used for future model training by OpenAI which is far from ideal. Here is the term which allows that when using ChatGPT Plus via the OpenAI website.
Whereas the API has different terms which explicitly state that your data will not be used for training further models. This is important for organizations that deal with sensitive data and I am sure you do not want for your internal usage to become part of the next generation of models.
Using the API has a massive advantage over ChatGPT Plus from a privacy perspective. It also allows you to use additional tools in conjunction with the API. Vector embeddings are becoming increasingly popular and give you a way to provide additional context to AI by uploading documents, files, and text to a vector database and recalling it in real-time to aid with the restrictive token limits. This is a big advantage over using just the vanilla API but opens up a can of worms in terms of privacy and company trust.
The FAQ of OpenAI says they don't use your data from the API for future model training but larger enterprises are rightly reluctant to pass sensitive data to a third-party company. Whatever your thoughts on that, at the moment, if you are using ChatGPT for your business, using it via API is the more secure way.
Using ChatGPT via the API is just a single part of a workflow, you could trigger it from another action or it could trigger other actions from the output. Think of it like one cog in a larger machine and it opens up a new world of possibilities. ChatGPT Plus offers you the ability to use Plugins that aren't available via API just yet but I expect that will change in the future and most of the use cases are already possible via Open Source methods like AutoGPT.
The more heavy lifting you expect the AI to do, the more you should be in control and understand the privacy of the data that you are sending and have full control of how the outputs are used. Extending workflows via external APIs enable these more complex workflows and for you to get the data exactly where you need it limiting the need to copy and paste from an additional website.
Here at Riku.AI, we're all about making APIs easy to build on top of, whether you are a developer or a no-coder. You can take OpenAI's chat APIs and build your own chat app in less than 5 minutes. Share the chat app with others or embed it onto your website, it is that simple.
If you are interested in playing with all of the latest and greatest AI technology, consider signing up for Riku today, we aggregate all of the best AI technology under a single roof to ensure testing, experimenting, and deploying AI is a breeze for you and your business.
