They couldn't be, realistically, any more closed without being an essentially infinite money sink of the kind even nation states would struggle to fund long-term. It's the public using it that's helping offset costs and also giving them the usage data that they need to iterate on the design.

You can’t use OpenAI models without technically breaking OpenAI terms. That’s the best part.

The human brain is a model that competes with OpenAI, and every time you look at the output, you use OpenAI outputs to develop your brain.

Thus, every user interaction violates the rules as written, and is “illegal, harmful, or abusive.”

Malicious compliance is the move. Just don’t use it!

Umm why would they bother developing a product if they're not selling it to customers?

It could theoretically be a B2B product only (or something else limited) and not B2C.

Yeah but even then it would make it to consumers through their customers.

A bit like MS Copilot for Bing / Windows which is really just rebranded ChatGPT. For the O365 version they added a lot of stuff to interact with office but their online chatbot is just the same.