A few months ago, OpenAI launched the GPT Store, a marketplace where people can create and list AI-powered chatbots customized to perform a number of tasks. The GPT Store is powerful, to be sure. But using it requires using OpenAI’s models and no others, which some chatbot creators — and users — are opposed to doing. So startups are creating alternatives.
Key Takeaway
FlowGPT is aiming to revolutionize the GenAI app landscape by providing a platform for creators to build and share their own AI-powered apps, but it faces challenges related to content moderation and ethical use.
Introducing FlowGPT
One such alternative, FlowGPT, aims to be a sort of “app store” for GenAI models like Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama 2 and OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 as well as front-end experiences for those models. Through FlowGPT, users can build their own GenAI-powered apps and make them publicly available, earning tips for their contributions.
The Founders and Vision
Jay Dang, a UC Berkeley computer science dropout, and Lifan Wang, a former engineering manager at Amazon, co-founded FlowGPT last year out of a shared desire to create a platform where people could quickly spin up — and share — GenAI apps. Dang describes FlowGPT as an “ecosystem” for GenAI-powered apps — a collection of infrastructure and creator tools tied to a marketplace and community of GenAI app users.
How FlowGPT Works
Users interact with GenAI apps on FlowGPT through a chat window that’s not dissimilar to ChatGPT, with options to type in prompts, thumbs-up (or thumbs-down) apps, share links to conversations or tip individual app creators. Each app has a creator-provided description along with the date it was created, how many times it’s been used and the model the creator recommends to power it.
Challenges and Controversies
FlowGPT faces challenges with some of its apps potentially causing harm, such as therapy apps and apps that advertise themselves as authoritative health resources. The platform also struggles with moderation, leading to concerns about the proliferation of inappropriate content.
Investors seem optimistic about FlowGPT’s potential, with a recent $10 million “pre-Series A” round led by Goodwater. The company is also working on expanding its offerings to mobile platforms and implementing a revenue-sharing model for app creators.
