Alexandre Airvault is the co-founder and CEO at Blobr. Blobr is like “Shopify” for APIs. In this article, he talks of ways to make APIs AI-compatible.
We help companies who have APIs to create the developer portal so that they can expose, manage, and monetize the APIs. We provide a slick portal where users can manage their API keys and monitor consistent information with documentation about the APIs. And we help API providers package the APIs to create API products that are easy for end users to consume. We looked at AI as an extension of API products and how we can make them consumable by other sources. We are now releasing the possibility to create your ChatGPT plugin directly from Blobr. This makes the API consumable differently.
Less than a year ago, there was a big upheaval because of LLMs. There are different actors, some providing open AI and open-source solutions. There are big actors in the fray with Google and Meta. This makes it easy for LLMs to plug data sources, the oil blending those elements to provide the results.
Earlier, APIs were mainly used by developers. There are roughly 28 million developers worldwide, consuming APIs and making machine-to-machine connections. Now, with LLMs, it is changing. We believe that, now, APIs will be consumed, where potentially 7 billion users can directly consume the API without needing a developer’s integration. This will change the market and the way APIs are exposed and consumed.
Let us consider four cases.
- Zapier is connected to the ChatGPT plugin. ChatGPT provides a plugin where you can connect your API, but on top, you need a manifest file, which is a specific file describing how to interact with the API. Zapier has done that, and it’s helping them to create new businesses. Potential and new customers can discover their service through ChatGPT and open an account on Zapier to create “Zaps.”
- Kayak is a service from which you can book plane tickets. They provide a plugin that provides flight information, and you can book directly from it. It is a new distribution channel for them and is easy for end users to use.
- Hubspot is famous worldwide as a CRM tool. They have something similar to a ChatGPT plugin. This helps people consume and understand the data from experts so they can ask questions to the CRM in natural language.
- PennyLane is an accounting solution with a good opportunity to upsell customers. Connecting to ChatGPT and asking questions can monetize that.
So, there are different ways of connecting your APIs to LLM.
At Blobr, we help companies create projects based on their data or the APIs they use daily. This brings a frictionless experience, where you can share with teams that are not experts with the tool per se to ask new questions that otherwise would require the expert to answer. This helps data literacy in your team about all those topics and complex insights that may not be easy to uncover. Once you have integrated an API and the plugin the right way, you can ask all the questions related to the data and potentially link it to other tools.
This does give us many cool use cases. But this comes with some limitations.
- Huge datasets can provide hallucinations. So, you cannot send too much information.
- APIs must be documented in a specific way. The specs need to be crisp and clear.
- Many different plugins are available. You need to be sure of the plugin you want to use and use the right one that suits your needs.
- You need to have the right context.
ChatGPT plugin creator
We help companies create ChatGPT plugins. We create a wrapper from the API, simplifying the API, transforming the API into products that are different use cases and are easier to understand, avoiding hallucinations, and trying to reduce the content shared in real time with the plugin.
You can manage granular access to data and rate limits. You can control and manage content sharing. You also want to have visibility on how ChatGPT uses your APIs—understanding what questions are potentially asked of your APIs and dynamically improving the content of your plugin and algorithms. You can also monetize your plugin in some subscription or pay-per-use model.
