GPTs Are the Wrong Tool for Building AI Apps

I like all this GenAI stuff. There’s plenty of excellent things you can do with it. But one specific offering, OpenAI’s custom GPTs, has me underwhelmed.

Don’t worry. There are lots of other AI presents to open besides GPTs.

GPTs are just okay. They’re like getting socks for your birthday. Let me explain the reasons why I’m underwhelmed.

A Stupid Name

First, I hate the name — “GPT” (singular) or “GPTs” (plural). The name is confusing, and I feel mildly embarrassed to even use it.

Before GPTs, we already had the model which is called “GPT-x" (“GPT-3.5”, “GPT-4”, and so on).

And now we have these custom tweaks that we call “GPTs”.

If I say I’m working on a “GPT” or have released a “GPT”, people don’t quite know what I’m talking about until I clarify. And even then they might think that I’ve fine-tuned an LLM model or done something very sophisticated.

What I’m doing to create a GPT isn’t sophisticated. When I create a GPT using OpenAI’s portal, I’m essentially specifying an extra bit of prompt grounding.

Example instructions for a GPT — this one role-plays Spanish conversations.

If you use the GPT Builder, you can say something like “Make me a GPT that talks…