Get up and running with the OpenAI API #
Looking for ChatGPT? Head to chat.openai.com.
The OpenAI API provides a simple interface for developers to create an intelligence layer in their applications, powered by OpenAI’s state of the art models. The Chat Completions endpoint powers ChatGPT and provides a simple way to take text as input and use a model like GPT-4 to generate an output.
Want to jump straight to the code?
Skip the quickstart and dive into the API reference.
This quickstart is designed to help get your local development environment setup and send your first API request. If you are an experienced developer or want to just dive into using the OpenAI API, the API reference of GPT guide are a great place to start. Throughout this quickstart, you will learn:
- How to setup your development environment
- How to install the latest SDKs
- Some of the basic concepts of the OpenAI API
- How to send your first API request
If you run into any challenges or have questions getting started, please join our developer forum.
Account setup #
First, create an OpenAI account or sign in. Next, navigate to the API key page and “Create new secret key”, optionally naming the key. Make sure to save this somewhere safe and do not share it with anyone.
Quickstart language selection #
Select the tool or language you want to get started using the OpenAI API with.curlPythonNode.js
Python is a popular programming language that is commonly used for data applications, web development, and many other programming tasks due to its ease of use. OpenAI provides a custom Python library which makes working with the OpenAI API in Python simple and efficient.
Step 1: Setting up Python #
Install Python
Set up a virtual environment (optional)
Install the OpenAI Python library
Step 2: Set up your API key #
Set up your API key for all projects (recommended)
Set up your API key for a single project
Step 3: Sending your first API request #
Making an API request
After you have Python configured and set up an API key, the final step is to send a request to the OpenAI API using the Python library. To do this, create a file named openai-test.py using th terminal or an IDE.
Inside the file, copy and paste one of the examples below:
ChatCompletionsSelect libraryChatCompletionsEmbeddingsImages
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from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()
completion = client.chat.completions.create(
model="gpt-3.5-turbo",
messages=[
{"role": "system", "content": "You are a poetic assistant, skilled in explaining complex programming concepts with creative flair."},
{"role": "user", "content": "Compose a poem that explains the concept of recursion in programming."}
]
)
print(completion.choices[0].message)To run the code, enter python openai-test.py into the terminal / command line.
The Chat Completions example highlights just one area of strength for our models: creative ability. Explaining recursion (the programming topic) in a well formatted poem is something both the best developers and best poets would struggle with. In this case, gpt-3.5-turbo does it effortlessly.
