Key Takeaways
- The new OpenAI GPT store lacks usability and discoverability, making it difficult to find useful chatbots.
- Improving search functionality, better curation, and a vetting process for GPTs are necessary for the store to thrive.
- OpenAI has the opportunity to make the GPTs more accessible to users and encourage creators to push boundaries with GPT technology, but it needs to fix the store first.
One of the best announcements to come out of OpenAI’s Spring Update event — besides the GPT 4o — was the news about its custom GPT store opening to all users. I wasted no time in hopping into the store to find some cool GPTs that were once exclusive to paid ChatGPT Plus users. I spent a good few hours trying to navigate the store in an attempt to find something usable, only to leave disappointed.
OpenAI’s custom GPT store holds a lot of potential to offer tailored AI models for various needs, in my opinion, but I truly believe it’s unusable right now due to lack of discoverabiility, quality control, and simply being quite a pain to navigate. There are plenty of things OpenAI can do to improve its GPT store, and I’ve highlighted some actionable recommendations below.
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Improve search and discovery
It’s comically bad right now for a “store”
The first step to improving the custom GPT store is adding a more powerful search engine that allows users to find what they need properly and more easily. The lack of a dedicated search page, for instance, is a deal breaker for me, especially when the featured GPT section itself is quite underwhelming (more on this later in the post). I say that because searching for a GPT simply opens a dropdown view with limited results. It would’ve been fine if the search function itself worked properly to keep me from looking for more results, but that’s not really the case.
I currently have a hard time finding GPTs via the store’s search bar because it simply fails to yield results for me unless I search for something specific. Just to put things into perspective, searching for “zombies” on the GPT store to find one of my most used and favorite GPT doesn’t yield the right result for me, unless I specifically search for it with “cute little zombies” text. And that’s despite being a GPT I’ve previously searched for, and something I use very frequently, too.
Not to mention, there’s no way to search using specific filters or even filter your results. Adding a simple functionality to filter the results, like the one you see in the screenshot below of Apple’s App Store for Mac apps, would greatly help fine-tune people’s search.
Better collections and recommendations
There’s no way to discover useful GPTs right now
OpenAI’s custom GPT store has a curated collections section in the front and center, but it has mostly been a useless hub, showing the same set of GPTs for quite some time. In fact, I’ve never even seen the trending GPTs section show anything besides the 4 to 5 picks that have been there for as long as I can remember. I truly believe the store needs to feature better hand-picked GPTs based on things like staff/editor picks, specific user interests, and more.
If I’m interested in, say, GPTs related to games or gaming GPTs, then I believe the store should be able to read the tags I’m interested in and suggest relevant GPTs, which it doesn’t. That’s mainly because there is no tagging system in place in the store right now, and there is no way for it to track what I’m actively looking for, or help me discover models I may not have actively searched for.
Better curations and proper tags will not expose users to some hidden gems like the ones I found on Reddit and other third-party platforms, but it’ll also inspire creators to do better in order to get discovered and reach more users. The only way to find a useful GPT in the store right now is by, well, searching for it specifically by its name. There is no point relying on the GPT store’s discovery because it’ll only disappoint you.
Needs a better vetting process
Improving the quality of GPTs available in the store
As it stands right now, pretty much anybody can create a custom GPT and toss it in the store with a ChatGPT Plus subscription. That needs to change and OpenAI needs to step in with a stringent vetting process for the store to thrive. It should establish rigorous quality standards for GPTs before they are listed in the store for people to use. There are both manual and automated testing processes in place for this, and I truly believe this simple change could make the GPT store a much better place to be.
It would also be nice if there was a way to see some key performance indicators of a particular GPT before downloading it. Being able to see things like how accurate or creative a GPT is before getting into a conversation with it will save a lot of time for users in finding the right chatbot. There’s no way to publicly review GPT, either, and all you can really do right now is rate it out of 5. While looking at a rating is good to gauge how good/bad a particular GPT could be, I believe it would’ve been better if there was a way to identify the duds better. I’d say adding a verification system for creators would help quite a bit, too, but that might be a bit of a stretch considering how barebones the store is right now.
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There’s plenty of room for improvement
OpenAI has a unique opportunity to reach more users and shape the future of AI accessibility through its custom GPT store, but I doubt it’s making any strides with the current state of the store. But it’s still not late, and OpenAI can turn the tides in its favor by changing and improving a few things to turn the store into a vibrant hub, helping users to find the perfect AI tools. A feature-rich store that’s easier to use and find new GPTs will also encourage creators to push the boundaries of what’s possible with GPT technology. The company definitely has the resources and expertise to work on user feedback, and I hope to see some improvements in GPT store soon.
