Artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI has eliminated the requirement for users to create an account in order to access its widely used generative AI tool, ChatGPT3.5.

OpenAI announced on April 1 that it would no longer require ChatGPT users to sign up to make it “easier to experience the potential of AI.” However, users without accounts will not be able to store their history of previous interactions.

The feature will be rolled out in gradual phases for all countries, starting with the United States.

While overall public sentiment cheered the supposed democratization of AI, Simon Willison, co-creator of the Python-based web framework Django, questioned OpenAI’s capability to prevent data scrapers from “abusing” the free ChatGPT-3.5 API.

AI developers see the removal of ChatGPT’s sign-up mandate as a catalyst for developing newer large language models (LLM). However, many others raise concerns about the surrounding use cases.

OpenAI estimates that ChatGPT has a weekly active user base of more than 100 million people across the globe.

The number is set to increase, considering that a number of people who were previously reluctant to share personal information with a corporation like OpenAI can now use ChatGPT with relative anonymity.

It is important to note that while ChatGPT-3.5 is not the most powerful “free” generative AI tool on the market currently, BuzzFeed data scientist Max Woolf believes the move is OpenAI’s attempt to keep people from using competitors.

According to data from Hugging Face, ChatGPT-3.5 ranks 16th globally in terms of its capability. Some other free generative AI tools that perform better include Anthropic’s Claude S and Gemini Pro by Google DeepMind.

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Recently, a generative AI robot landed a teaching job at a school in Kerala, India.

The AI teacher, Iris, was developed in partnership with e-learning provider Makerlabs as part of the Atal Tinkering Lab project by NITI Aayog, an Indian government agency.

The humanoid can speak three languages and respond to complex questions. “By adapting to each student’s needs and preferences, IRIS empowers educators to deliver engaging and effective lessons like never before,” the company said.

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