Episode 134: ChatGPT App Store Is the Next AI Platform

MCP was actually invented by Anthropic by the makers of the Claude AI and basically they also invented the connections with MCP which is basically what ChatGPT apps are about, like you build the apps over MCP, so basically they took the idea, the technology and made something really cool.

Hi, my name is Demetri Panici and I'm a content creator, agency owner, and AI enthusiast. You're listening to the AI Agents podcast brought to you by Jotform and featuring our CEO and founder Aytekin Tank. This is the show where artificial intelligence meets innovation, productivity, and the tools shaping the future of work. Enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the AI Agents Podcast. In this episode, we're talking about the ChatGPT app store. How you doing, Aytekin?

Oh, I'm doing great. We've been thinking about doing the ChatGPT app store for a long time but have been waiting for them to actually launch it. They never really launched it, just soft launched it. They added it to the products and started accepting apps.

We even released the second version of our product, Jotform ChatGPT App, and obviously we're going to showcase that as well in addition to other products. We waited and waited. I guess they had that red alert moment and switched gears to competing with Anthropic on different things and kind of left out the ChatGPT apps release.

So we decided enough is enough because the ChatGPT app store is amazing. It's just so great. I'm constantly using it. I was just looking for a car rental and used the sixth ChatGPT app instead of going to the sixth website because it's so much easier. I can use voice, talk to it, say things like I'm arriving at this airport on this date. It's just so much easier, which I cannot do on the sixth website.

How about you? Have you been using it?

Yeah, I've been checking out this stuff recently. There are a couple different communities competing over apps or app stores or something similar. You have Claude with different connectors, Perplexity making Perplexity Computer with different apps, and you can build your own connectors and apps in Perplexity Computer. There are many different things right now, and we have to do our best to keep up.

With ChatGPT, I think it's probably the easiest to interact with interface and set stuff up. It feels like an app store, like Apple's app store, but inside ChatGPT. That's a very important point. It reminds me of when Apple released the App Store in 2008 or so. It was very small then, with fun apps, but people didn't take it seriously and Apple didn't have many features. Ten or fifteen years later, mobile app stores are huge. Most people use mobile apps daily more than desktop apps, especially for banks, social media, watching YouTube, and everything else.

So I think the ChatGPT app store has that potential. This is going to happen for all AI products because MCP was invented by Anthropic, the makers of Claude AI, and they also invented the connections with MCP, which is basically what ChatGPT apps are about. You build apps over MCP, so they took the idea and technology and made something really cool with the apps. It's really exciting.

I think it's going to be really cool.

Did you want to go into it or should I showcase the app store itself and then we can get into some of the apps?

Let me share my screen. This is what the app store looks like. You have the ability to see it now, right?

Yeah, I can see it. They just added that menu on the left side. If ChatGPT has a billion users, the app store is probably getting so much usage. We know it as well; we get thousands of connections every day. People are using it thousands of times daily. That's a huge number of people using the app store.

That's a huge opportunity to miss if you are not on the app store today. If you're a SaaS product or a consumer product, especially consumer products, because a million people, mostly consumers but also businesses, are using ChatGPT. If you are not in the app store, you're missing out so much.

Let me start by looking at what kind of apps are here. First, we have Adobe Photoshop, which I have connected and is a classic. It's interesting to showcase. The same goes for Canva, which I'll get into later. There's also Apple Music. Many of these are a mixture of personal, lifestyle, and productivity apps. ChatGPT is definitely the app most trying to mix everyday use cases for people as well as work.

You don't see a lot of that with Claude or Perplexity; they're more work-oriented. ChatGPT has this AI-oriented manner that people might use for things like Zillow to find a house or a place to rent.

A fun one to kick off is the ChatGPT Apple Music connection. I'm an Apple Music person, not Spotify. With this, I can ask questions like, 'What are some of the top trending songs in Apple Music?' and it interacts with the app.

It finds the Apple Music tool but doesn't have live charts, which is frustrating. What it can do is find Apple Music playlists that look like current trending charts and search for specific artists, songs, or genres. For example, I can say, 'Show me current trending pop charts.' It's also connected to your account, so it can find your favorite songs or top played songs on Apple Music.

You have to sign into your Apple account for this. It says no connection required but gives you the option to connect. You can click to create a playlist or add songs to your library, which is your downloaded list of songs from Apple Music.

The problem is it's only a connector in the sense that you can find new music by searching. Some music apps aren't great at searching for new music; you have to scroll through playlists. You can ask questions like what music sounds similar to Panic at the Disco, my favorite artist, and add it. You can press the plus symbol to add new music to your library without sifting through a poor experience.

If you combine it with deep research, you can ask it to look at all the music you like and discover new music for you, then add it to a playlist. You can combine it with deep research of ChatGPT.

This seems to be on the personal side, a lot about adding things to lists and researching through AI, trying to do things without interacting with the app interface much.

What are your thoughts on how these app connectors build a bridge between the chat interface and the list of things you can add? Most connectors try to move you towards the chat interface and away from the app itself.

I think these are first versions. They will add more capabilities as people use them and build these features.

Let me demo Jotform, which has a UI interface. I'm sharing Jotform. With the ChatGPT Jotform app, I'm already connected. If not connected, you click connect and authenticate Jotform so ChatGPT can talk to it.

You can create forms on the interface, customize, and see and analyze submissions. There's a UI but you don't have to use it. The UI makes it stronger. This is like the first version of the Apple Music app; they will add more UI elements over time.

Let me demo our ChatGPT app. When I start chat, it says, 'Hey, I think you're ready to dive in. Ask me anything.' I want to create a quiz for third graders.

Within the chat interface, it opens boxes connected to Jotform. The OpenAI model creates a prompt and sends it to Jotform's MCP, building the form or quiz for you. You can see it built from the Jotform site but don't have to go there.

This is our second version. You can't do everything; you might need to click edit in Jotform to open the form there. Looks like I'm logged out, but ideally, you should be able to do everything here. We're adding features to the app.

You can use full screen. I'm on mobile, so it's a bit slow. You see the full quiz it created. I can try the quiz and get the link by asking for it.

Here's the final quiz link I can share with someone else. It's that easy to create forms.

If I fill out the form as a test user, I can ask it to build conditions or calculations for the quiz.

I completed the quiz and can ask, 'Show me who filled this form.' I don't leave ChatGPT.

If I use 10 different SaaS products, I don't have to leave ChatGPT; it can do my job here. I can say, 'Pull all data from Jotform and send it to HubSpot.' I can use ChatGPT any way I want.

We see tremendous use, like 5,000 requests per day recently. We interviewed users and found five reasons why our ChatGPT app is valuable.

First, ChatGPT knows forms well. It knows the whole web and has seen all forms worldwide. When I ask it to build a quiz, it knows what kind of quiz for third graders. It knows user experience and what questions to ask and add.

Second, it knows your business. For example, a summer camp needing an application form. The model has browsed summer camp websites and builds a great form.

Third, it knows Jotform. The models have read all commands and features of Jotform and can use it via MCP connection.

Fourth, it can use other tools like web searches or create a contact form on Jotform as part of a project, like building a website.

Fifth, it uses its memory about you. It knows what you like and your business. If you say, 'Create an application form,' it knows you're a summer camp and what you need, including address, business name, and logo.

That's why it's powerful and why users see huge usage. When they let ChatGPT use Jotform, it's much more powerful.

How much do you use ChatGPT individually relative to others?

I don't think I use Google anymore.

You don't use Google anymore?

For everything. For example, I read credit card terms by asking ChatGPT instead of Googling or reading small print. It does the research for me. I use it for everything.

That means the more context it has about you, the better. Many apps store memory. ChatGPT has been doing that for at least a year and a half or two years.

Memory is powerful. I personally disabled it because I do lots of testing and don't want confusion with history. You can turn off memory in settings. Then each chat forgets previous chats and remembers only the current thread.

I prefer that for testing. But memory is powerful if you use it.

It's important that AI remembers what we give it because it gets better with more information. That can be scary for some, but it can be incredible if we interact comfortably.

Sometimes you want a fresh conversation without previous context. I'm undecided if memory is that powerful, but it should have a switch to turn it on or off depending on your needs.

Another interesting example is Canva and Photoshop apps. Canva is widely used for brand assets, social posts, presentations, and marketing materials.

I grabbed the Jotform logo and asked Canva to create a social media graphic asking, 'What makes your AI tick?' in the Jotform theme with interesting text and design.

It created options themed around Jotform. I took one and went to Photoshop to add the Jotform logo properly.

Photoshop tried to add the logo but didn't do a great job. I tried different prompts and showed a picture of myself for social media.

I asked Photoshop to smooth the top of my head where there was a weird artifact that looked like I had no hair. It did a pretty good job making it look natural.

This kind of basic AI image editing is pretty nice and enjoyable.

I also tried the TripAdvisor app. For example, planning a week at Disney World in Orlando, I asked what attractions to visit nearby, like Universal, a zoo, or SeaWorld.

The app showed hotels and some photos but wasn't great at showing attractions. These first versions of apps aren't very good yet. Using ChatGPT directly might give better responses.

TripAdvisor and similar platforms are interesting but often don't give good answers through the app interface.

This app store has been off for a bit. Where do you think ChatGPT can do a better job announcing and promoting it? I know you guys are on the app store now.

They just soft launched it and probably haven't put enough resources into it because they've been focused on other things like releasing new model versions.

The apps are going to be huge because there's so much power and interest. With a billion people using ChatGPT, there's a huge opportunity for products to be in front of those people.

Expectations have changed; we want things instantly. But Apple didn't have an app store at iPhone launch and it took years to build it out. We have to be patient.

People prefer talking to ChatGPT than learning another UI. Even TripAdvisor requires learning a form builder, which isn't easy despite years of effort.

People want to ask for things and have their wishes fulfilled instantly. The chat interface is accessible to everyone who can type or use voice.

This is powerful because there are many online consumer and SaaS products, and a billion people talk to AI daily. Connecting these is very powerful.

We're excited to build our app for ChatGPT and believe everyone else is too. It's going to be huge but we need to wait a bit more.

The way these things evolve is interesting. Some efforts get shut down unexpectedly, like Sora, which was shut down despite investment.

I hope they keep the app store around and don't sunset it like Sora.

If we don't have other thoughts, let's wrap up. Please check out the Jotform app inside the ChatGPT app store. It's a great way to interact with our app without needing to get into it.

Make sure to leave a like, comment, and review on Apple Podcasts. We'll see you in the next one. Peace.