Ask HN: Why call it an AI company if all it does is call open AI API?

Not being a hater since I also leverage open ai api heavily in my projects but to call it AI project would be silly.

It’s just like building on top of AWS or GCP.

Open AI is an AI company. Extending LLMs projects like memory for chat gpt etc are AI projects.

Some two minute UI that makes a call to open ai to show you “As a large language model …” is not impressive and NOT an AI company.

Isn’t it a lie basically to claim so? Or am I missing something.

In my case I’m building a dev tool that uses open ai product in the workflow. My product is NOT an AI company. It’s a dev tool for app developers.

ESL btw.

So should I lie and say it’s an AI company? Just trying to understand this trend.

Almost every question like this can be answered with the word "engagement"

It's the hot topic of the moment, people are searching it. Businesses market to what people are searching.

Is it lying? Sure, I could be convinced. Is it illegal? Nah. Will people do it no matter what we think about it? Forever.

I'd focus on your own marketing rather than worrying about whether other people are lying. You don't need to call yourself an AI company, just say you "utilise AI to xyz" or something if you want in on the AI marketing. Same keywords, no lies, sorted.

Why call it an IT company when all it does is to use existing IT? I think it's fine.

Depends on whether you value your principles more than money.