Man uses ChatGPT to build a Chrome extension and sells it for $1,000
A man with no coding knowledge created a Chrome extension using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a conversational AI chatbot that uses a vast database, and sold it for $1,000. Ihor Stefurak, an entrepreneur from Ukraine’s startup ecosystem, experimented with ChatGPT and onboarded it as his chief technology officer on the project.
To create the extension, Ihor and his team input a simple command into any text area of any website, which would trigger an “invisible AI assistant” in the background. Users can prompt the AI assistant by typing “/ai” followed by the task they want the assistant to achieve.
Within 24 hours of listing the extension for sale, it received $1,000 worth of pre-orders and attracted about 50 people, five of which placed their bids. Ihor sold the extension on Acquire last week.
After the successful launch, Ihor upgraded to ChatGPT Plus, the paid version of the AI-based chatbot that offers solutions to more advanced and complicated queries. ChatGPT Plus allowed Ihor to ask the chatbot to write the code for a simple Chrome extension that monitors input boxes on websites, which ChatGPT delivered by providing three JavaScript files: one to execute the idea, another an HTML file, and the third one a manifest.json file to make the extension compatible with Chromium-based browsers.
Although it took a considerable amount of time and effort to test and revise the assistant’s answers, Ihor was able to build the extension in about 10 hours with the help of ChatGPT. The whole idea behind this project was to show that someone who is not a programmer could devise ChatGPT to build a Chrome extension.
