OpenAI, the research lab-turned-company behind popular AI tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, has become perhaps the primary focus of attention by marketers looking to enhance their creativity. And in the six months since launching ChatGPT, the tech company has shown an increasing willingness to work alongside brands—from incorporating their services directly into the chatbot to establishing alliances with enterprise consultancies.

Deciding precisely how to get involved with OpenAI, however, remains a point of friction for curious marketers. To clear up this confusion, Ad Age spoke with Aliisa Rosenthal, OpenAI’s head of sales, for an under-the-hood look at how the tech company approaches its collaborations and interest from other businesses. Rosenthal oversees account executives, managers and sales engineers to bring OpenAI’s toolbox to more customers.

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Read on to learn how Rosenthal suggests brands get involved with OpenAI, the differences between the various available routes and the use cases brands could leverage going forward.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Firstly, what have the past six months—since the launch of ChatGPT—been like as head of sales at OpenAI?

It’s been exhilarating. I think just taking ChatGPT from this small, in-house project to something that has access to the entire world means that we get to experience the creativity and innovation of millions of users. Being able to sit on the front lines and work with our customers every day to bring these creative ideas to life has been really exciting.

How would you explain OpenAI’s approach to working with brands?

Basically, there are two main ways to work with us. There's our API platform, which lets brands integrate AI directly into their own digital experiences, whether that's web or mobile. For example, Shopify is using our models to create product descriptions automatically. Spotify is using our models to build an AI DJ so their users can find songs and podcasts that they like. Brands can also offer recommendation engines or shopping assistants or conversational experiences. 

The other way is through our recently launched plugins for ChatGPT. Plugins are more top-of-funnel, so they can be used to capture users off-platform when they're, say, looking for a product or just chatting with ChatGPT without knowing exactly what they're looking for. Instacart, for example, built a plugin that allows users to ask ChatGPT, “Hey, what’s something healthy I should have for dinner?” or “I'm trying to meal-plan for the week—what recipes do you suggest?” And if you’re interested in adding those suggestions to your cart, the plugin takes you into Instacart and automatically fills your basket for you. 

What advice do you have for brands that are deciding which of these two options to pursue?

I would say that the API route is probably more approachable when you have a developer to work with. Anyone can start using our APIs and plugging them directly into their product. We have a lot of different models available: we have Whisper, which can help with speech transcription; we have DALL-E for image generation; we have ChatGPT for marketing copy and email generation.

In terms of plugins, anyone can also build one, but they need to sign up for developer access in our waitlist. What we're looking for to publish in our plugins marketplace are new experiences for our ChatGPT community. We really encourage people to be creative, think of interesting ways and ideas to meet users where they are and design experiences that are going to be really exciting for us and for our user base.

What’s the timeline for getting off the plugin waitlist?

We’re moving through it pretty quickly. It shouldn't be too long of a wait. In addition to our first batch of plugins that we released upon launch, we just released another batch on May 2. [This new batch includes plugins from Lowe’s, Zillow and Redfin.]

Are there options for brands to forge more direct partnerships with OpenAI?

In terms of working directly with brands, we don't offer any sort of established partnership. We do have enterprise customers and we can work with companies to help them become successful with their API. So we have a sales team and we do offer enterprise licensing. 

The only type of partnership we open today is a system integrator partnership, such as the one with Bain, through which we work with partners to help our customers ideate and integrate our solutions.   

ChatGPT is obviously the most popular tool right now, but what are some ways that brands can leverage OpenAI’s other platforms?

So DALL-E can be used to generate images for marketing content, for website use and even for the average knowledge worker to include images in their slide decks. With Whisper, the automatic speech recognition model, we are seeing some brands do things like enabling ordering from your phone without having to type in anything.