ChatGPT has been blowing through cash. I mean seriously, it's insanely useful! In under a month of its release, the platform has already been used by over 1 million people! Sam Altman tweeted about the rapid growth of the platform, emphasizing how expensive it costs to run each day. With the average chat costing somewhere around a few pennies, I wouldn't be surprised if they took the massive data they've been collecting the past few weeks and soon started to charge. You could do some really cool things with it, but indie developers are always looking for cool ways to make things better.
With no official API available yet, the vibrant open-source community has already come up with many third-party tools, apps, and extensions to expand access to the awesome features ChatGPT has to offer. Over the next few minutes, we'll take a look at the best tools that you can use that make use of ChatGPT.
WebChatGPT
A big concern about ChatGPT is how factually inaccurate it could be (and many times, confidently so!) With WebChatGPT, you can add result functionality that will verify the questions you ask with web results. The extension slows down the response rate of both the website itself & its responses, but if you want somewhat of a fact checker to be included in your questions, this could be your tool. Customize how many results, what time period, and the region you want search results to come from. This is particularly useful if you're looking to produce results from ChatGPT that take place after the middle of 2021.
Google GPT Search Extension
Another really useful tool is this Chrome Extension that displays ChatGPT results along your Google searches. This works great for questions and queries that you want knowledge summarized in a paragraph or two. Often Google displays lists, ads, or other junk content when you're not looking for anything beyond a simple paragraph. If you're a developer or somebody who looks up facts a lot β this could save you a couple seconds a search having to sift through noisy Google responses.
For more complex queries or conversations, it's worth having the chat in the web app, but for everyday searches, this Chrome extension works great.
Mac Sidebar App
If you want to keep ChatGPT in the Menu Bar, use this Mac app. It works as a WebView clip of the chatbot in your menu bar for easy access. This is 100% easier than navigating to the website every time you want to ask a question, but if you're looking for longer & more complex answers, stick to the web version. If you want an alternative Windows version, this app is made by a different developer you can also use.
AI Tweet Responder
Replai is an AI-driven tweet responder. You can select casual, positive, ideas, or disagreements within a single click. Replai claims to be a great way to 10x your account following since you can automate the hard work. Although it seems slightly counterfeit, it could work for those trying to speed things up.
ChatGPT in Any Text Box
This extension made by Gabe Ragland adds a right click option in Chrome that you can run ChatGPT on any input. This would work when filling out forms, tweeting, or filling any other input out online. You can download it on GitHub and install the package as a chrome extension.
Voice to ChatGPT
Well... you've heard of voice to text or voice to chat. What about voice to ChatGPT? This chrome extension lets you use your spacebar talk to ChatGPT, instead of typing. With this comes faster, more optimized conversations that aren't limited by your own typing speed.
This extension adds png and pdf export support for your conversations with ChatGPT. It's kind of annoying to screenshot various sections of your conversation if you want to share it with others. This extension fixes just that! Have everything easily outputted into a single screenshot or pdf for easy sharing.
Texting ChatGPT
The team over at Hyperwrite released a service that allows you to text ChatGPT, similar to the way you would interact with it on the official website. All you have to do is text your question or prompt to +1 (631) 699-2703. You can ask anything you want for free until you reach 10 queries, but then you'll have to have a Hyperwrite account to continue.
Some chats work way better to ask on a desktop than mobile, but I see texting the AI as a middle ground between Googling something & asking Siri. Siri is egregiously terrible, with other AI advancements in the last few years rapidly outpacing her. You can actually have conversations with ChatGPT, but you don't need to go through fine-tuning your questions as you sometimes need to with Google, just to get a concise answer about a random question you have. Just remember, there are currently no sources on the answers you will get from ChatGPT, so don't take everything you get returned at face value.
Run a ChatGPT Communication Bot
Made by Altryne, This GitHub Repo allows you to fuel a Telegram bot configurable to use with ChatGPT. Generate a bot token code from Telegram's website and plug it into the code to get your own ChatGPT Telegram Bot. If you prefer Whatsapp bot, this one integrates directly with Whatsapp and simply requires a phone number running Whatsapp and browser with ChatGPT access.
Reverse Engineered API
In the coming months an official API will most likely be released for developers to create proper applications, but for now, there are a variety of reverse engineered API's that make use of different languages and platforms. Recently introduced API's and integrations include Dart, Python, Node.js, VSCode, Wechat, and voice-based prompts.
Companies Making use of ChatGPT
Companies like DoNotPay have been experimenting with negotiating to companies using this API. They're currently testing out a system to automatically talk to a chatbot to save one of their employees money on their Comcast internet bill, how crazy! Although not public yet, I'm sure this will disrupt the current automated chatbot industries if it picks up enough friction.
Concluding Thoughts
We're on the verge of the next technological breakthrough. Just when we thought GPT-3 was a revolutionary tool, OpenAI went ahead and surprised us with ChatGPT. And due to the nature of the tech community, it was only a matter of time until talented developers figured out ways of using the new chat program to create extensions and tools both locally and for the web.
I've had the Mac menu app and Chrome Search Extension running for a few days now for personal use & found them both to be extremely useful. Regardless, all of these tools can be super useful depending on what you're looking for. We'll see how things play out in the next few months as this is probably the most disruptive technology we've seen in a very long time! Happy chatting!
