News

The Developer of the GPT4Free Project May Face Trial

OpenAI lawyers attentively look at the developer of the GPT4Free project, which provides free access to GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. The company has formally demanded that he delete his repository within five days or he will face legal action.

Let me remind you that we also wrote about Amateur Hackers Use ChatGPT to Create Malware, and also about OpenAI that Launches Its Own Bug Bounty Program.

And also information security specialists warned that Russian Cybercriminals Seek Access to OpenAI ChatGPT.

GPT4Free is a project created by a student named xtekky; it is published on GitHub and is very successful in reversing APIs to give anyone free access to the OpenAI language models.

Essentially, the development of xtekky tricks the OpenAI API by simulating requests from sites with paid accounts, such as the You.com search engine, WriteSonic, or Poe from Quora.

Thus, anyone using GPT4Free definitely violates the OpenAI Terms of Service. However, xtekky stated that he did not see this as a problem, because GPT4Free is intended solely for “educational purposes”. At the same time, the developer understood that “lawsuits may follow.”

As Tom’s Hardware now reports, the enthusiast has already had legal problems. So, according to xtekky, OpenAI sent him a letter demanding to remove the repository within five days, or he will have to appear in court.

At the same time, xtekky says that OpenAI is hardly worth dealing with it, since it does not connect directly to the company’s API, but only receives data from other sites that pay it for licenses. And if the owners of these sites have any problems with his scripts, they can contact him directly.

Xtekky has stated that it will happily remove scripts that use site-specific APIs, but only at the request of their owners. For example, he has already removed scripts for phind.com, ora.sh and writesonic.com. In addition, any site can block external exploitation of its internal APIs using a number of simple measures.

The same effect can be achieved by simply opening the tabs of sites. I can open tabs Phind, You and so on in my browser and spam requests. My repository just makes it all easy.<span class="su-quote-cite">explains the author of GPT4Free.</span>

The enthusiast notes that he advised all site owners who contacted him to protect their APIs, but no one did. That is, even if he removes all the scripts from the repository, any other developer can easily repeat the same thing.

OpenAI can contact the site owners and warn/alert them and then jointly come to me and take down, but it seems that this [legal threat] comes solely from OpenAI, and in essence they claim that I am directly attacking them. I don’t know for sure, but it seems that if a site uses the OpenAI API, it has legal protection from OpenAI, and OpenAI is liable for the damage that the site receives.<span class="su-quote-cite">says xtekky.</span>

The developer says that he has decided not to remove the repository for now (the repository is actually running at the time of this writing) and intends to tell OpenAI that if they want to achieve removal, then the company should file a formal complaint for violation of the DMCA (“Digital Millennium Copyright Act”). ”) on GitHub rather than talking to him directly.

Also, according to xtekky, deleting the repository simply won’t do anything:

Users distribute and host this project everywhere. Deleting my particular repository will have little effect.<span class="su-quote-cite">the author concludes.</span>
Sending
User Review
0 (0 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

Daniel Zimmermann

Daniel Zimmermann has been writing on security and malware subjects for many years and has been working in the security industry for over 10 years. Daniel was educated at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany and currently lives in New York.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sending

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button