9 Custom Actions in ChatGPT
This chapter covers
- Facilitating communication between software applications using APIs
- Connecting ChatGPT to external services and enhancing its functionality utilizing Custom Actions
- Building custom GPTs by using the OpenAPI specification
- Integrating ChatGPT with Google Calendar for managing and retrieving calendar events
In the previous chapter, we learned to build a custom GPT for Bob’s fitness company. This GPT accessed information related to Bob’s specific fitness services and used it to generate tailored fitness packages for users based on their specific needs.
We manually uploaded files for the GPT to reference, and we discussed some limitations that came with this approach. Specifically, we noted that uploading a limited number of files means the GPT can’t access a large database or dynamic content. It also cannot perform any real action, such as updating or making changes to another service.
Consider CanvaGPT as an example. Unlike our basic custom GPT, CanvaGPT can access a variety of Canva templates and even make changes to them by allowing ChatGPT to talk to Canva’s services. This represents the real power of GPT-driven applications: enabling two applications to communicate to perform a task.