Setting aside the legalities for a moment, a nontrivial part of OpenAI's advantage in the LLM space has been its ability to incentivize feedback mechanisms - to own the interface in which generated text is presented, own the widget where someone gives it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and re-integrate that feedback at scale into its fine-tuning.

Of course they'd want to leave the door open to building their own products, in order to continue to be able to present those widgets and have exclusive access to the resulting data.

Just because ChatGPT+Plugins isn't going to be the center of people's lives (did anyone truly think it would?) doesn't mean that when they have another product idea that they have unique insight into, they won't want to bring it to the world directly.

I hope it isn't true! I'd expect them and other LLM orgs to support some plugins where it isn't worth them building the functionality internally but also replacing the ones that they can do better or with less or little effort. Hard to be upfront and honest about what the future looks like this early in the applied statistics arena. Maybe OpenAI should be deferring more to their Head of PR?

This is the usual "Netflix attempting to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix" and a critical eye to where the work is being done and the value being delivered.

(disclosure: paying OpenAI customer, no other relation)

Any lawyers know if this opens them up for legal action if they kill a business in this manner after a public statement like this? It must, if this is the reason they requested the removal, otherwise why would they tip their hand about what they intend to do in the future? And not to mention it makes developers even more concerned. They could have just let the lie alone, instead of drawing attention to it.

I'm not a lawyer but deal with legal stuff - they are not open to legal action.

Hey but that hearsay seems like it is a solid foundation to build a case on!

“Your honor, the defendant said some things in an interview that they don’t agree with anymore and I want to sue!”

“Sue for what?”

“Sue to make them believe the thing they said!!!”

Lol.

Now, now. They are open to legal action…

…just not anything that would survive a motion to dismiss.

I guess it depends on your definition of "open".

Crazy person can pro se file a suit on a napkin. :D

Also no a lawyer, but... my understanding was that you're always open to legal action from anybody. They might not have a very good case and they might just get laughed out of court, but they can still sue you. Is that not the case?

Edit: Or I guess as you said in a reply to a sibling comment, you might only count it as "open to legal action" if you have a decent chance of losing.

You don't have an agreement with them, and they changed their mind because they had no contract barring them from doing so. No liability.

They are already funding startups that have early access to their GPT-X models like harvey.ai ("lawyer GPT"), so he might be correct in OpenAI not releasing competitive products, just funding them.

“Satya holding on line 1 for you Sam”

Still poor decision to pull the article altogether. Why not just tell the public? What's the big deal.