What does it do?
This is the official toolkit for sending requests to OpenAI’s AI models, the ones behind ChatGPT, DALL-E image generation, and Whisper speech transcription, directly from Python code. Instead of manually constructing web requests and parsing responses, you write a few lines that say, in effect, ask GPT this question or transcribe this audio file, and the library handles the plumbing underneath. It’s the difference between wiring your own telephone line and just picking up a phone that already works. Nearly every app you’ve heard of that has ChatGPT built in uses some version of this library or its equivalents in other languages.
See it in action
This code sends a question to OpenAI’s ChatGPT-style model over the internet and prints back the answer it generates.
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(api_key="your_api_key_here")
response = client.chat.completions.create(
model="gpt-4o-mini",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in French."}]
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)Why would a non-developer care?
Any product feature described as powered by ChatGPT or powered by GPT almost certainly used this library, or a close cousin, to actually make that connection happen. It matters because it’s the literal on-ramp between OpenAI’s models and the thousands of products now built on them.
Real-world examples
Companies ranging from Duolingo, which uses GPT models for language exercises, to countless smaller startups building AI writing and coding assistants, rely on this library to connect their apps to OpenAI’s models. Without it, every one of those companies would need to hand-build the same request-and-response plumbing from scratch.
Who uses it
Developers building any product feature that calls OpenAI’s models, from customer support bots to coding assistants.
How it compares to alternatives
Its direct counterpart is Anthropic’s own Python library for the Claude API; the two are similar in spirit but talk to different companies’ models. Frameworks like LangChain often sit on top of libraries like this one to add extra orchestration.