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OpenAI introduced @ mention capabilities for custom GPTs within GPT-4, changing how people interact with the generative AI chatbot and making the platform more enticing for publishers.
Previously, people could ask ChatGPT questions like, “Stylish summer attire for men,” and receive a generic array of responses based on GPT’s existing training data. Now, the @ feature lets people specify their preferred custom GPT, like @Vogue, to the query and receive a tailored response. For publishers, this lets them index their custom-made chatbot from the GPT store within the latest ChatGPT.
“It’s not a new user acquisition tool, but a way to make it more convenient for existing users of your GPT to engage again,” said Josh Jaffe, Ingenio’s president of global media. “OpenAI could easily update this tomorrow and make it into a discovery tool.”
Publishers face diminishing search and social traffic. Some are turning to chatbot-driven chat channels, such as Quora’s Poe, for discoverability and referral traffic. Other publishers are actively exploring the launch of chat channels on Instagram direct messages, which specifically target followers who comment on their posts, sources told ADWEEK.
The integration feature was first spotted last Friday by Dan Shipper, CEO and co-founder of AI business newsletter Every, and it is currently available to limited users.
Facets of the @ feature are still unclear—will custom GPTs appear alphabetically, will it only show GPTs people have interacted with before, or will it be algorithm-based on user data? Jaffe noted that so far, only the custom GPTs he had interacted with previously showed up.
“[The @ feature] could increase the amount of interest for a publisher to be available in [GPT’s] ecosystem,” said Nick Martin, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Direqt. “There’s more of an opportunity to get in front of people.”
OpenAI’s GPT Store launched earlier in January and costs $20 monthly: 100 million people used ChatGPT weekly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during its developer conference in November.
But unclear monetization models and the potential for chatbots to replace people visiting publisher websites (where they are monetized more effectively) leave publishers weary of investing in custom GPTs.
“[The @ feature] will require significant education on how to consume publishers’ GPTs so that users have this in mind while they interact with ChatGPT,” said Rodrigo Fuentes, founder of BrandWeaver.ai. “If publishers can win that battle, they would be a step closer to taking back control of the interface.”
OpenAI did not respond to media requests.
Paywalls, use cases and limited monetization opportunities
To grow its audience, Ingenio created three gen AI chatbots, originally developed for its Astrology.com platform, in the GPT Store last week. The setup, according to Jaffe, was straightforward and took a couple of hours: Create an account under astrology.com, upload a prompt and submit the custom GPT.
Despite its user-friendly setup, publisher use of GPT Store is limited, three sources told Adweek.
Many of the chatbots in the store center around image creation, copy editing or coding, said Jaffe. For digital publishers such as news or lifestyle sites, there’s no clear means of monetization.
At Raptive—a platform that helps monetize some 5,000 publisher titles, such as MacRumors—a significant deterrent is that the GPT Store is behind a paywall, according to executive vice president of innovation Marc McCollum.
“None of them have approached us to get advice around leveraging GPT Store,” McCollum added.
Testing AI tools for search engine optimization is one potentially helpful use case for publishers in the GPT Store. However, Raptive’s proprietary AI tool, Topic, already solves this, further diminishing publishers’ incentive to incur additional costs.
Publishers looking to grow audiences anticipate developments from OpenAI that might address some of these concerns.
“The sentiment almost across the board is that if there’s a chance to build an audience, especially if the effort isn’t too significant, there’s a willingness to lean in,” said Martin.
