OpenAI, a for-profit company and research group turned non-profit, is causing a stir due to its threat of legal action against a computer science student over an open-source GPT-4 project. Founder Xtekky is the target of the lawsuit, which the student refers to as “ridiculous”.
The project, entitled GPT4free, was formed by Xtekky, a European computer science student. The project entailed a tool that would ping various websites that employed GPT-4 and could be cloned by any user and operated on their own personal computer. This posed a threat to OpenAI’s proprietary ChatGPT Plus service which charges fees to services that use its API.
GPT-4 can be used for free by services such as Microsoft’s Bing Chat and Quora’s Poe platform, however, GPT4free is able to dodge ads that are associated with theses services. According to Xtekky’s interview with Tom’s Hardware, the threat of legal action solely comes from OpenAI who claim that the student is attacking them directly.
The five-day ultimatum for Xtekky to take down his GitHub repository, or else be faced with a lawsuit, has not been followed. Instead, GPT4free is now using a different processing system and has been rebranded in order to avoid any legal issues.
OpenAI was first formed in 2015 as a non-profit AI research group, however, soon after releasing two open-source AI models, the company restructured as a for-profit partnership. Both GPT-3 and its successor GPT-4 are not open-source and are now typically accompanied by a fee.
Xtekky is an ambitious computer science student and his GPT4free project not only poses a threat to the revenue OpenAI gains from its services and APIs, but it should also be noted that the project was put together by an individual alone. It is a testament to the advancements that technology has made, with solutions to big tasks now achievable by a single person, who may go on to be a major asset to the world of computer science.
