The
US
Patent
and
Trademark
Office
(PTO)
has
denied
OpenAI’s
application
to
register
the
word
GPT,
which
means
generative
pre-trained
transformer,
saying
GPT
is
too
general
a
term
to
register
and
can
prevent
competitors
from
correctly
describing
their
products
as
a
GPT.
OpenAI
argued
in
its
application
that
GPT
is
not
a
descriptive
word
—
that
GPT
isn’t
such
a
general
term
that
consumers
would
“immediately
understand”
what
it
means.
The
PTO
wrote
in
its
February
6th
decision
that
it
doesn’t
matter
if
consumers
don’t
know
what
GPT
means
—
because
those
who
do
use
the
technology
understand
GPT
refers
to
a
general
type
of
software,
not
just
OpenAI
products.
Since
the
rise
of
generative
AI,
many
other
AI
services
have
added
GPT
to
product
names.
For
example,
there’s
an
AI
detector
startup
named
GPTZero.
Other
companies
often
refer
to
their
foundational
AI
models
as
GPTs
because
they
literally
are.
The
term
GPT
became
closely
tied
to
OpenAI
after
ChatGPT
and
its
AI
models
GPT-3
(and
later
GPT-4)
became
popular.
When
it
opened
ChatGPT
to
outside
developers,
the
company
called
its
custom
chatbots
GPTs,
too.
Lately,
OpenAI
has
been
giving
distinct
brand
names
to
other
services,
though.
It
recently
released
its
text-to-video
generation
model
named
Sora.
Gizmodo
notes
that
this
isn’t
the
first
time
the
US
has
denied
OpenAI’s
trademark
claim
for
GPT;
the
first
time
was
in
May
2023.
The
company
can
appeal
once
more
to
the
Trademark
Trial
and
Appeal
Board
for
another
shot
at
getting
the
term
GPT
trademarked.
(Originally posted by Emilia David)
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