[lolinder]

That's exactly what they're saying: it's interesting that Microsoft came to the same conclusion that Meta did, that models are generally not worth keeping locked down. It suggests that OpenAI has a very fragile business model, given that they're wholly dependent on large providers for the infra, which is apparently the valuable part of the equation.

[krick]

To be fair, OpenAI's products are not really models, they are... products. So it's debatable if they really do have anything special.

I don't really think they do, because to me it seemed pretty much since GPT-1, that having callbacks to run python and query google, having "inner dialog" before summarizing an answer and a dozen more simple improvements like this are quite obvious things to do, that nobody just actually implemented (yet). And if some of them are not obvious per se, they are pretty obvious in the hindsight. But, yeah, it's debatable.

I must admit though, that I doubt that this obvious weakness is not obvious to the stakeholders. I have no idea what the plan is, maybe what they gonna have that Anthropic doesn't is gonna be a nuclear reactor. Like, honestly, all we are pretending to be forward-thinking analysts here, but in reality I couldn't figure out that Musk's "investment" into Twitter is literally politics at the time of it happening. Even though I was sure there is some plan, I couldn't say what it is, and I don't remember anybody in these threads expressing clearly enough what is quite obvious in the hindsight. Neither did all these people like Matt Levine, who are actually paid for their shitposting: I mostly remember them making fun of Musk "doing stupid stuff and finding out" and calling it a "toy".

[bongodongobob]

What product? A chat window? I'm not trying to be rude btw, but if the product isn't the LLM itself, that's all they have.

[kaonwarb]

I regularly use several features within ChatGPT that are well beyond a chat window. Advanced Voice, DALL-E integration, Projects, and GPTs (mostly a couple private ones I created for my own use). There are other features that I don't use, like Canvas. Perhaps the sum of these still isn't an impressive product in your eyes, but it's surely more than just a chat window.

[blackqueeriroh]

Interesting, so apparently UI and UX and responsiveness and polish all don’t matter for products? We can just ship shittily drawn interfaces now?

[solarkraft]

They aren’t that good. It’s mostly well rounded now, but on nacOS it’s often impossible to select parts of code sections.

[mistercheph]

That’s not just on macOS, and I’m pretty sure that’s a deliberate dark pattern to prevent users from taking their query to claude or gemini after gpt shits the bed.

[PittleyDunkin]

> To be fair, OpenAI's products are not really models, they are... products

What's the distinction? What kind of functionality do they offer that other models don't?

[brookst]

A model is an ingredient in an AI product. The product includes the UI, tools / RAG, apps on various platforms, system prompts and personality, and so on.

Lots of products have been successful without a technical moat. Facebook has network effects, Apple has UX (though silicon has become a technical advantage if not moat), Adobe has “everyone knows how to use these tools” switching costs, Google has brand synonymous with search.

Companies are betting that models will be commodities but AI products will be sticky.

[szundi]

ChatGPT.com does much more than for example Llama3.2-vision. It can search the web automatically, write code and run it just to answer you, much more agency.

[kyriakos]

I use OpenAI not just because it has decent models that work decently by default but because I don't need to care on how to setup a model on a cloud provider and their API is straight forward. They are quite affordable too (e.g. TTS is one of the cheapest I found for its quality)

I could switch to a different provider if I needed to maybe with cheaper pricing or better models but that doesn't mean OpenAI doesn't offer a "product".

[miki123211]

Open AI is the only company that really matters in the consumer conversational AI space.

Their unique value-adds are the Chat GPT brand, being the "default destination" when people want AI, as well as all the "extra features" they add on top of raw LLMs, like the ability to do internet searches, recall facts about you from previous conversations, present data in a nice, interactive way by writing a react app, call down to Python or Wolfram Alpha for arithmetic etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually stop developing their own models and start using the best ones available at any given time.

[lolinder]

> in the consumer conversational AI space.

The "consumer conversational AI space" only exists right now as a novelty, not a long-term market segment. In the not too distant future that space will be covered for most users for free by their hardware manufacturers, and the number of people willing to pay a monthly subscription to a third party will drop even further than it already has.

[potatoman22]

I think it will be at least a few years until your average Joe can run a speech to speech model on their phone.

[lolinder]

I didn't say anything about running locally. Siri and Google Assistant (Gemini) are what I had in mind: assistants bundled with the phone will remove the need to pay for ChatGPT.

[blharr]

I mean they have name recognition and a userbase, but they're hardly the best at doing any of those features.

Default destination for many is still just Google, and they've added AI to their searches. AI chat boxes are shoehorned into a ton of applications and at the end of the day it'll go to the most accessible one for people. This is why AI in Windows or in your Web Browser or on your phone is a huge goal.

As far as extra features, chat GPT is a good default, but they're severely lacking compared to most other solutions out there.

[sumedh]

> It suggests that OpenAI has a very fragile business model

That is the reason they are making products so that people stay on the platform.

[lolinder]

Their big risk there as I see it is that the market for "I need an AI" is much much smaller than they thought it would be. People don't generally need or want to pay for "AI", they want to pay for solutions to specific problems.

This means that in a world where AWS/Azure/GCP all compete in the compute and the models themselves are commodities, AI isn't a product, it's a feature of every product. In that world, what is OpenAI doing besides being an unnecessary middleman to Azure?

[wongarsu]

The ones at the forefront of the "I need an AI" hype are selling agents, or tools that integrate in your email workflow, or some other tool with AI in the name. OpenAI is selling the shovels, the backend API those services are using. AWS/Azure/GCP are selling factory space and are providing blue-prints for shovels. Which is compelling at scale, but if you are busy selling AI tools to people who don't know better it's faster to just use an API to whatever OpenAI offering is SOTA or close to SOTA.

I'd agree there isn't much money in it. OpenAI should probably milk the revenue they get now and make hay while the sun is shining. But their apparent strategy is to bet it all on finding another breakthrough similar to the switch from text completion to a chat interface

[lolinder]

Yeah, the problem with selling shovels where shovels=APIs is that APIs cost almost nothing to replicate and are not copyrightable. Tools like Ollama and LiteLLM already offer APIs that are drop-in replacements for OpenAI.

OpenAI isn't losing yet because their models are still marginally better and they have a lot of inertia, but their API isn't going to save them.

> But their apparent strategy is to bet it all on finding another breakthrough similar to the switch from text completion to a chat interface

I'm still convinced that their strategy is to find an exit ASAP and let Altman cash out. He's playing up AGI because it's the only possible way that "AI" becomes a product in its own right so investors need to hear that that's the goal, but I think he knows full well it's not in reach and he can only keep the con going so long. An exit is the most profitable way out for him.

[ta988]

They are the useful idiots that attracted the funding to take the risks and make the technology emerge but didn't have the right marketing and political power. They will disappear as fast as they appeared. It is a common tale in technologies, a lot of companies who invented and/or developed something and did all the hard work just couldn't compete when it got comoditized.

[m3kw9]

OpenAI has infrastructure and a product around serving to people plus they have SOTA models. Joe blow can’t just take a Qwen or whatever and start making money at scale