Because the ChatGPT and Whisper APIs launch this morning, OpenAI is changing the terms of its API developer policy, aiming to deal with developer — and user — criticism.

Starting today, OpenAI says that it won’t use any data submitted through its API for “service improvements,” including AI model training, unless a customer or organization opts in. As well as, the corporate is implementing a 30-day data retention policy for API users with options for stricter retention “depending on user needs,” and simplifying its terms and data ownership to make it clear that users own the input and output of the models.

Greg Brockman, the president and chairman of OpenAI, asserts that a few of these changes aren’t necessarily — it’s all the time been the case that OpenAI API users own input and output data, whether text, images or otherwise. However the emerging legal challenges around generative AI and customer feedback prompted a rewriting of the terms of service, he says.

“Considered one of our biggest focuses has been determining, how will we change into super friendly to developers?” Brockman told TechCrunch in a video interview. “Our mission is to essentially construct a platform that others are in a position to construct businesses on top of.”

Developers have long taken issue with OpenAI’s (now-deprecated) data processing policy, which they claim posed a privacy risk and allowed the corporate to profit off of their data. In one in all its own help desk articles, OpenAI advises against sharing sensitive information in conversations with ChatGPT since it’s “not in a position to delete specific prompts from [users’ histories].”

In allowing customers to say no to submit their data for training purposes and offering increased data retention options, OpenAI’s attempting to broaden its platform’s appeal, clearly. It’s also searching for to massively scale.

To that last point, in one other policy change, OpenAI says that it’ll remove its current pre-launch review process for developers in favor of a largely automated system. Via email, a spokesperson said that the corporate felt comfortable moving to the system because “the overwhelming majority of apps were approved in the course of the vetting process” and since the corporate’s monitoring capabilities have “significantly improved” since this time last yr.

“What’s modified is that we’ve moved from a form-based upfront vetting system, where developers wait in a queue to be approved on their app idea in concept, to a post-hoc detection system where we discover and investigate problematic apps by monitoring their traffic and investigating as warranted,” the spokesperson said.

An automatic system lightens the load on OpenAI’s review staff. But it surely also — at the least in theory — allows the corporate to approve developers and apps for its APIs in higher volume. OpenAI is under increasing pressure to show a profit after a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft. The corporate reportedly expects to make $200 million in 2023, a pittance in comparison with the greater than $1 billion that’s been put toward the startup thus far.