Stack Overflow and OpenAI have announced a partnership that aims to provide developers with accurate and vetted solutions by integrating Stack Overflow’s OverflowAPI and validated technical knowledge into OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT.

Brad Lightcap, COO at OpenAI, said: “Learning from as many languages, cultures, subjects, and industries as possible ensures that our models can serve everyone. The developer community is particularly important to both of us. Our deep partnership with Stack Overflow will help us enhance the user and developer experience on both our platforms.”

As part of the partnership, OpenAI will utilise Stack Overflow’s OverflowAPI product and collaborate with Stack Overflow to improve model performance for developers who use their products. This integration will help OpenAI enhance its AI models using enhanced content and feedback from the Stack Overflow community.

Additionally, OpenAI will surface validated technical knowledge from Stack Overflow directly in ChatGPT, providing users with easy access to trusted, attributed, accurate, and highly technical knowledge and code backed by the millions of developers who have contributed to the Stack Overflow platform for 15 years. Well, in theory.
Furthermore, Stack Overflow will utilise OpenAI models as part of their development of OverflowAI and work with OpenAI to leverage insights from internal testing to maximise the performance of OpenAI models.

Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow, commented: “Stack Overflow is the world’s largest developer community, with more than 59 million questions and answers. Through this industry-leading partnership with OpenAI, we strive to redefine the developer experience, fostering efficiency and collaboration through the power of community, best-in-class data, and AI experiences.

“Our goal with OverflowAPI, and our work to advance the era of socially responsible AI, is to set new standards with vetted, trusted, and accurate data that will be the foundation on which technology solutions are built and delivered to our user.”

The first set of new integrations and capabilities between Stack Overflow and OpenAI will be available in the first half of 2024. Beyond this, OpenAI’s partnership with Stack Overflow will enable Stack Overflow to continue to reinvest in community-driven features.