OpenAI, the for-profit company behind the popular ChatGPT AI model, has threatened legal action against a European computer science student known as Xtekky over their open-source project, GPT4free. The project allows users to interact with GPT-4 without using OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus service. OpenAI charges fees to services that use its API, and GPT4free simply reaches out to those services to receive responses, rather than using OpenAI’s API directly.
Xtekky’s project is not violating any external sites' terms, as the project utilizes Microsoft’s Bing Chat and Quora’s Poe platform, which use OpenAI's API and are free for users. However, OpenAI has accused the developer of "directly attacking" the company and has given Xtekky five days to take down the project from GitHub, or face legal action.
Xtekky has refused to take down the project and has suggested that OpenAI file a formal complaint through GitHub's DMCA process instead of threatening the developer alone. Meanwhile, the student is making changes to the project, such as rebranding it and changing the processing system for requests, to avoid any legal issues in the future.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit AI research group before restructuring as a for-profit partnership. The company is closely aligned with its release of the GPT-3 model, which is not open-source. Its successor, GPT-4, is also not open-source.
