13 ms·

Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

108 points by azalemeth 3y ago

iLoveOncall 3y ago
Seems perfectly legitimate to me.
hospitalJail 3y ago
The lengths people need to go to because OpEnAI isnt allowing people to use the GPT4 API. Its been 1+ month and still no API access for me? Can't really blame it on demand anymore. Will be overjoyed when we get a non facebook licensed LLM that is 95% of the quality to run locally.
- KyeRussell 3y ago
  Yeah and who’s doing the training for that? Your Grandma’s iPad? This stuff is hard, and it’s incredibly easy to sit here on Hacker News talking about how things will be when we finally get to the fireworks factory. But for the time being, the reality is that there’s serious money and smarts behind the development and ongoing operation of this stuff. I, a nobody, got access to GPT-4 pretty soon after it was released. Maybe your stated use case wasn’t compelling enough to get access to the beta? I, after getting access to GPT-4 mind you, signed up for ChatGPT Plus or Pro or whatever it’s called. GPT-4 calls are still very heavily capped. What’s the motive behind the conspiracy theory to which you’re alluding?
  - benxh 3y ago
    Many of the currently ongoing reproductions of LLaMa for starters. (see: Red Pajama[0]). Or any of the OpenAssistant affiliated projects. [0] - https://www.together.xyz/blog/redpajama https://www.together.xyz/blog/redpajama
  - capableweb 3y ago
    > I, a nobody, got access to GPT-4 pretty soon after it was released. Maybe your stated use case wasn’t compelling enough to get access to the beta? I'm also a self-proclaimed nobody and got access a day or two after applying, with some ideas I wanted to play around with. Same for friends who applied, got access within days. The only ones that didn't get access was the ones who didn't share what they wanted to build with the access.
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Doesnt change that this company whos original goal to 'democratize AI' is authoritarian-style picking who gets access.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Your imagination of why you got access earlier than someone else is...just that.
    - aldarisbm 3y ago
      You're a OpenAI assistant, you will rate responses from 1-10, depending on how much impact you believe it would make in growing our company revenue through research and development of an idea. Depending on their rating, queue them accordingly.
  - qingdao99 3y ago
    I got GPT-4 access within just a couple hours of release and I'm sure I didn't write anything interesting, I probably just ticked the box for "student" or "hobbyist". Edit: Nevermind, it took ~2 days. Point still stands, I just checked out the form and I definitely ticked "General exploration of capabilities", which is probably the least interesting option if OpenAI is being selective.
- burnished 3y ago
  My wait was like a day, I wonder how they pick and choose? I gave pretty simple reasons in their questionnaire but somehow I can't imagine anyone reading those.
  - josteink 3y ago
    Unless you pay for your account, there is a waitlist. I don’t know if parent poster has paid or not, but if he haven’t, he’s probably still waiting.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    my wait was for a day, but then I also had beta access to GPT-3 and Dall-E 2. perhaps that’s why? or perhaps the parent comment is complaining about public access and has just not applied for the beta
- phillipcarter 3y ago
  > Can't really blame it on demand anymore. I'm 100% positive it's demand. Bing uses it, and Microsoft gets the exclusivity rights because they invested billions into OpenAI (which you didn't). Then there's all the other commercial players who are looking to build product on top of it.
CSMastermind 3y ago
Is the threat for copyright infringement? That would be my guess and probably make the most sense. I think the push back here might be a bit of a red herring if what they're objecting to is the name "GPT4free". It would be nice to know what the actual legal request was.
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  "computer science student who runs the repo" They are just trying to scare the person into taking it down. They figure it is easier to scare the repo owners than trying to get their customers to make changes on their end.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > It would be nice to know what the actual legal request was. Indeed. Given how trademarks work, the name is a very real possibility. OTOH, given how relatively expensive GPT-4 queries are, it may be genuinely straining hardware in the backend to the tune of far more money than he can afford, in which case I assume it's probably something but I don't want to guess what as that something might be dismissed by a judge as OpenAI's problem rather than this person's.
Mystery-Machine 3y ago
The author of the article doesn't know that OpenAI's language model is called GPT-4, that's with s dash. This in turn makes GPT4free seem even closer related to GPT-4, which it isn't. GPT4free existed way before GPT-4 was announced as far as I know. On top of that, GPT is not OpenAI trademark.
- Deukhoofd 3y ago
  > On top of that, GPT is not OpenAI trademark. Not yet, but they're definitely working towards it. https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=97733259&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=97733259&caseType=SERIAL_...
  - kvetching 3y ago
    they've really done a 360 on openness
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      180*
      - ben_w 3y ago
        No, no, I'd say 360 is correct in this case. Possibly not deliberately correct, but it is IMO correct. Trademarks etc. are unavoidable, and also used by the Wikimedia Foundation, the Python Software Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, etc.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - RobotToaster 3y ago
        They're good at moonwalking
    - helsinkiandrew 3y ago
      > they've really done a 360 on openness I don't think that's fair - I'd guess many (probably most) large, fully open source projects have trademarked their name/project to stop people using it for similar projects, scamming, and confusing users. GPT may have been a step too far for OpenAI but even the FSF agree on Trademarks: https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/licensing/2020/FOSSmarksv2.pdf https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/licensing/2020/FOSSmarksv2.pdf
throwuwu 3y ago
Fuck this guy, we finally have a super popular web service that runs off of a pay for value model instead of ads and this guy goes and shits in the punch bowl.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fredguth 3y ago
  He is not directly doing this. He is using Forefront.ai that offer GPT4 for free in their service. So, the guy is ripping off some VC money, not directly OpenAI's. The question remaining is what is Forefront.ai business model?
- postalrat 3y ago
  Isn't the issue here they are abusing the free service? This project will probably justify the end of the free service.
- krono 3y ago
  This AI-Age Robin Hood is merely liberating the stolen goods from their fence. Morally speaking neither party is doing any better or worse than the other.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  OpenAI is largely funded by Microsoft who absolutely love ads. I'd like your comment if OpenAI had nothing to do with M$.
binarymax 3y ago
OpenAI upset that someone is leveraging APIs and content freely available on the web? Let me play for you the worlds smallest violin.
- NLPaep 3y ago
  It’s exploiting bugs on other websites to get free access…
  - wzy 3y ago
    So they should go at the other sites, or at least have the other sites go after this repo.
  - theturtletalks 3y ago
    Companies normally pay for that sort of penetration testing...
  - rfoo 3y ago
    Calling public (but undocumented) APIs without authentication is NOT exploiting bugs. If this is "exploiting bugs" then by the same logic I'm hacking the government website by clicking view source.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      Yeah it's not exploiting bugs, it's abusing websites. To me hacker mentality ends at you found the REST call, and maybe you use it, or share it on some random forum. Creating a gaudy branded library that's providing actual client implementations, then building an entire site that's built on those, is just bad taste If you actually look at the implementation, some of the sites did everything right in terms of CSRF tokens and not exposing their OpenAI key directly. So the next step for the sites they're attacking with this is a whole mess of JS based detection, behavior detection, ie all the mess that we'd rather the internet didn't have. If this person had just shared it anonymously and left it instead of drumming it up for personal glory, some motivated hackers would have used it. Now it's flooding websites at rates that break their ability to pay their bills.
Mizoguchi 3y ago
"Xtekky said that he has advised all the sites that wrote to him that they should secure their APIs, but none of them has done so" Lock your door so I don't come into your home and get your stuff.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Not really an appropriate analogy. More appropriate would be, 'you should really put a password on your wifi.'
  - 0x6c6f6c 3y ago
    Yeah this is exactly the type of scenario you use CSRF tokens for, or just any amount of authentication really.
  - Mizoguchi 3y ago
    Same fundamental reasoning, you are to blame if I'm abusing your [time, service, space, trust, wifi, etc]. So if you want to stop my abuse, don't enable it in the first place.
dist-epoch 3y ago
What is going on with this repository? The .git directory has 155 MB, yet a clean checkout of main branch is 1 MB.
tedivm 3y ago
So the group that relied on stealing and ripping the licenses off of software to build their project is upset that people are using their product in a way they don't like? That's some amazing hypocrisy.
- jacekm 3y ago
  The guy is essentially stealing the CPU power, he's not just going against ToS.
  - tedivm 3y ago
    Yeah and OpenAI, Microsoft, and Github are stealing and profiting off of my brainpower by stealing my open source code. I don't have any sympathy for thieves who get stolen from.
- akudha 3y ago
  Why is this amazing? Isn't this pretty much the standard situation everywhere - aka, rules for thee, none for me? For example, NRA not letting guns at their convention, but they want guns everywhere else. And on and on and on...
  - ejb999 3y ago
    The NRA allows people to carry guns at their convention, just not when someone who is protected by the secret service is speaking. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/posts-mislead-on-rules-for-guns-at-nra-convention-utah-gop-event/ar-AA1aaz7V https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/posts-mislead-on-rules-... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nra-2023-conference-gun-ban/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nra-2023-conference-gun-ba...
    - bastardoperator 3y ago
      Why not, wouldn't they be safer assuming we use NRA logic? I'm still seeing the hypocrisy...
jwblackwell 3y ago
Good on OpenAI
- imdsm 3y ago
  Agreed. Good on OpenAI.
villgax 3y ago
Fair use begets fair use
neom 3y ago
This was on the front page a few days ago and the consensus seemed to be this project is unethical: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35740836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35740836
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks! we've copied the title from that thread to this one after getting complaints that the blog title is misleading.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lm28469 3y ago
If you don't want your API to be used don't expose it to the world. We've seen so many "If you don't want your art to train AI don't post it on the web", I think it's faire
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RobotToaster 3y ago
OpenAI complaining that someone is making their AI Open, ironic.

108 points by azalemeth 3y ago

Seems perfectly legitimate to me.

The lengths people need to go to because OpEnAI isnt allowing people to use the GPT4 API. Its been 1+ month and still no API access for me? Can't really blame it on demand anymore. Will be overjoyed when we get a non facebook licensed LLM that is 95% of the quality to run locally.

KyeRussell 3y ago
Yeah and who’s doing the training for that? Your Grandma’s iPad? This stuff is hard, and it’s incredibly easy to sit here on Hacker News talking about how things will be when we finally get to the fireworks factory. But for the time being, the reality is that there’s serious money and smarts behind the development and ongoing operation of this stuff. I, a nobody, got access to GPT-4 pretty soon after it was released. Maybe your stated use case wasn’t compelling enough to get access to the beta? I, after getting access to GPT-4 mind you, signed up for ChatGPT Plus or Pro or whatever it’s called. GPT-4 calls are still very heavily capped. What’s the motive behind the conspiracy theory to which you’re alluding?
- benxh 3y ago
  Many of the currently ongoing reproductions of LLaMa for starters. (see: Red Pajama[0]). Or any of the OpenAssistant affiliated projects. [0] - https://www.together.xyz/blog/redpajama https://www.together.xyz/blog/redpajama
- capableweb 3y ago
  > I, a nobody, got access to GPT-4 pretty soon after it was released. Maybe your stated use case wasn’t compelling enough to get access to the beta? I'm also a self-proclaimed nobody and got access a day or two after applying, with some ideas I wanted to play around with. Same for friends who applied, got access within days. The only ones that didn't get access was the ones who didn't share what they wanted to build with the access.
iLoveOncall 3y ago
[flagged]
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Doesnt change that this company whos original goal to 'democratize AI' is authoritarian-style picking who gets access.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Your imagination of why you got access earlier than someone else is...just that.
  - aldarisbm 3y ago
    You're a OpenAI assistant, you will rate responses from 1-10, depending on how much impact you believe it would make in growing our company revenue through research and development of an idea. Depending on their rating, queue them accordingly.
- qingdao99 3y ago
  I got GPT-4 access within just a couple hours of release and I'm sure I didn't write anything interesting, I probably just ticked the box for "student" or "hobbyist". Edit: Nevermind, it took ~2 days. Point still stands, I just checked out the form and I definitely ticked "General exploration of capabilities", which is probably the least interesting option if OpenAI is being selective.
burnished 3y ago
My wait was like a day, I wonder how they pick and choose? I gave pretty simple reasons in their questionnaire but somehow I can't imagine anyone reading those.
- josteink 3y ago
  Unless you pay for your account, there is a waitlist. I don’t know if parent poster has paid or not, but if he haven’t, he’s probably still waiting.
- permo-w 3y ago
  my wait was for a day, but then I also had beta access to GPT-3 and Dall-E 2. perhaps that’s why? or perhaps the parent comment is complaining about public access and has just not applied for the beta
phillipcarter 3y ago
> Can't really blame it on demand anymore. I'm 100% positive it's demand. Bing uses it, and Microsoft gets the exclusivity rights because they invested billions into OpenAI (which you didn't). Then there's all the other commercial players who are looking to build product on top of it.

CSMastermind 3y ago

Is the threat for copyright infringement? That would be my guess and probably make the most sense. I think the push back here might be a bit of a red herring if what they're objecting to is the name "GPT4free". It would be nice to know what the actual legal request was.

meragrin_ 3y ago
"computer science student who runs the repo" They are just trying to scare the person into taking it down. They figure it is easier to scare the repo owners than trying to get their customers to make changes on their end.
ben_w 3y ago
> It would be nice to know what the actual legal request was. Indeed. Given how trademarks work, the name is a very real possibility. OTOH, given how relatively expensive GPT-4 queries are, it may be genuinely straining hardware in the backend to the tune of far more money than he can afford, in which case I assume it's probably something but I don't want to guess what as that something might be dismissed by a judge as OpenAI's problem rather than this person's.

Mystery-Machine 3y ago

The author of the article doesn't know that OpenAI's language model is called GPT-4, that's with s dash. This in turn makes GPT4free seem even closer related to GPT-4, which it isn't. GPT4free existed way before GPT-4 was announced as far as I know. On top of that, GPT is not OpenAI trademark.

Deukhoofd 3y ago
> On top of that, GPT is not OpenAI trademark. Not yet, but they're definitely working towards it. https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=97733259&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=97733259&caseType=SERIAL_...
- kvetching 3y ago
  they've really done a 360 on openness
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    180*
    - ben_w 3y ago
      No, no, I'd say 360 is correct in this case. Possibly not deliberately correct, but it is IMO correct. Trademarks etc. are unavoidable, and also used by the Wikimedia Foundation, the Python Software Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, etc.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - RobotToaster 3y ago
      They're good at moonwalking
  - helsinkiandrew 3y ago
    > they've really done a 360 on openness I don't think that's fair - I'd guess many (probably most) large, fully open source projects have trademarked their name/project to stop people using it for similar projects, scamming, and confusing users. GPT may have been a step too far for OpenAI but even the FSF agree on Trademarks: https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/licensing/2020/FOSSmarksv2.pdf https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/licensing/2020/FOSSmarksv2.pdf

throwuwu 3y ago

Fuck this guy, we finally have a super popular web service that runs off of a pay for value model instead of ads and this guy goes and shits in the punch bowl.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fredguth 3y ago
He is not directly doing this. He is using Forefront.ai that offer GPT4 for free in their service. So, the guy is ripping off some VC money, not directly OpenAI's. The question remaining is what is Forefront.ai business model?
postalrat 3y ago
Isn't the issue here they are abusing the free service? This project will probably justify the end of the free service.
krono 3y ago
This AI-Age Robin Hood is merely liberating the stolen goods from their fence. Morally speaking neither party is doing any better or worse than the other.
ChatGTP 3y ago
OpenAI is largely funded by Microsoft who absolutely love ads. I'd like your comment if OpenAI had nothing to do with M$.

binarymax 3y ago

OpenAI upset that someone is leveraging APIs and content freely available on the web? Let me play for you the worlds smallest violin.

NLPaep 3y ago
It’s exploiting bugs on other websites to get free access…
- wzy 3y ago
  So they should go at the other sites, or at least have the other sites go after this repo.
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  Companies normally pay for that sort of penetration testing...
- rfoo 3y ago
  Calling public (but undocumented) APIs without authentication is NOT exploiting bugs. If this is "exploiting bugs" then by the same logic I'm hacking the government website by clicking view source.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    Yeah it's not exploiting bugs, it's abusing websites. To me hacker mentality ends at you found the REST call, and maybe you use it, or share it on some random forum. Creating a gaudy branded library that's providing actual client implementations, then building an entire site that's built on those, is just bad taste If you actually look at the implementation, some of the sites did everything right in terms of CSRF tokens and not exposing their OpenAI key directly. So the next step for the sites they're attacking with this is a whole mess of JS based detection, behavior detection, ie all the mess that we'd rather the internet didn't have. If this person had just shared it anonymously and left it instead of drumming it up for personal glory, some motivated hackers would have used it. Now it's flooding websites at rates that break their ability to pay their bills.

Mizoguchi 3y ago

"Xtekky said that he has advised all the sites that wrote to him that they should secure their APIs, but none of them has done so" Lock your door so I don't come into your home and get your stuff.

somenameforme 3y ago
Not really an appropriate analogy. More appropriate would be, 'you should really put a password on your wifi.'
- 0x6c6f6c 3y ago
  Yeah this is exactly the type of scenario you use CSRF tokens for, or just any amount of authentication really.
- Mizoguchi 3y ago
  Same fundamental reasoning, you are to blame if I'm abusing your [time, service, space, trust, wifi, etc]. So if you want to stop my abuse, don't enable it in the first place.

dist-epoch 3y ago

What is going on with this repository? The .git directory has 155 MB, yet a clean checkout of main branch is 1 MB.

tedivm 3y ago

So the group that relied on stealing and ripping the licenses off of software to build their project is upset that people are using their product in a way they don't like? That's some amazing hypocrisy.

jacekm 3y ago
The guy is essentially stealing the CPU power, he's not just going against ToS.
- tedivm 3y ago
  Yeah and OpenAI, Microsoft, and Github are stealing and profiting off of my brainpower by stealing my open source code. I don't have any sympathy for thieves who get stolen from.
akudha 3y ago
Why is this amazing? Isn't this pretty much the standard situation everywhere - aka, rules for thee, none for me? For example, NRA not letting guns at their convention, but they want guns everywhere else. And on and on and on...
- ejb999 3y ago
  The NRA allows people to carry guns at their convention, just not when someone who is protected by the secret service is speaking. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/posts-mislead-on-rules-for-guns-at-nra-convention-utah-gop-event/ar-AA1aaz7V https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/posts-mislead-on-rules-... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nra-2023-conference-gun-ban/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nra-2023-conference-gun-ba...
  - bastardoperator 3y ago
    Why not, wouldn't they be safer assuming we use NRA logic? I'm still seeing the hypocrisy...

jwblackwell 3y ago

Good on OpenAI

imdsm 3y ago
Agreed. Good on OpenAI.

villgax 3y ago

Fair use begets fair use

neom 3y ago

This was on the front page a few days ago and the consensus seemed to be this project is unethical: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35740836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35740836

dang 3y ago
Thanks! we've copied the title from that thread to this one after getting complaints that the blog title is misleading.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lm28469 3y ago

If you don't want your API to be used don't expose it to the world. We've seen so many "If you don't want your art to train AI don't post it on the web", I think it's faire

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

RobotToaster 3y ago

OpenAI complaining that someone is making their AI Open, ironic.