OpenAI's chatbot store is filling up with spam

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Perceived Failure of the GPT Store Concept

  • Many see the GPT Store as a misfire: mostly “prepackaged prompts” with little genuine capability beyond base ChatGPT.
  • Users report that almost any GPT they try feels indistinguishable from just asking GPT‑4 directly.
  • Some argue meaningful innovation is constrained because both the interface (chat) and backend (the model) are fixed by OpenAI.

Spam, Quality, and Moderation

  • The store is described as flooded with low‑effort, copycat, SEO‑style GPTs and fake‑looking ratings.
  • Posters suggest low or zero barriers to entry made the spam outcome inevitable.
  • People ask why OpenAI doesn’t aggressively dogfood its own models for moderation and discovery; some speculate this is either a deliberate choice, incompetence, or a tradeoff for growth/revenue.
  • Concerns that spam overload can later justify paid “boost”/promotion products.

Business & Platform Risk for Developers

  • Former plugin developers say GPTs destroyed plugin discovery and revenue; GPTs are easier to create and now crowd out plugins.
  • Example: an OCR plugin earned ~$20k in 6 months but has since been marginalized; OpenAI’s multimodal models partly duplicate its value.
  • Discussion of “platform risk” / “sharecropping”: building on someone else’s platform invites rug‑pulls, cloning, or “enshittification.”
  • Some still see fast, opportunistic building (even with known risk) as rational if development cost is low.

Comparisons to App Stores and Barriers to Entry

  • Apple/Google stores are cited as having higher skill and process barriers (coding, fees, review), which filter out some junk.
  • Several argue consumer app platforms only work if entry is hard; OpenAI went the opposite way (“no code required”), encouraging flood‑level volume.

AI, Spam, and the Wider Web

  • Strong sentiment that AI and spam are tightly coupled: LLMs massively lower the cost of generating plausible text for SEO, email, and content farms.
  • Worry that search engines and the web will drown in AI‑generated sludge just as we rely on the same companies to filter it.

Ethics, Academia, and Hiring

  • Debate over acceptable AI use in cover letters and academic work; norms vary widely by institution and interviewer.
  • Some see AI‑written applications as deceptive; others view AI assistance as pragmatic in a system already using automated filters.