Building a Chatbot with OpenAI ChatGPT-API and PHP

Tuesday April 11, 2023

Are you interested in building a chatbot powered by an AI language model? Look no further than this ChatGPT clone project! In this article, we’ll walk through the process of setting up and running the ChatGPT clone, which allows users to chat with an AI language model trained by OpenAI.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model to generate responses to user input. The chatbot is built using PHP and the OrhanErday/OpenAI library, which provides an easy-to-use interface for communicating with the OpenAI API.

Getting Started

Before running this project, you’ll need to make sure you have the following installed:

  • PHP 7.4 or later with SQLite3 enabled
  • Composer
  • An OpenAI API key

To get started, follow these steps:

  1. Clone the repository to your local machine by running git clone https://github.com/orhanerday/ChatGPT.git.
  2. Navigate to the project directory by running cd ChatGPT.
  3. Install the OrhanErday/OpenAI library by running composer require orhanerday/open-ai.
  4. Set your OpenAI API key as the $open_ai_key variable in event-stream.php.
  5. Start the PHP built-in web server by running php -S localhost:8000 -t ..
  6. Open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8000.

That’s it! You should now see the ChatGPT clone interface, where you can chat with the OpenAI language model.

Using Docker

If you prefer to use Docker to run the ChatGPT clone, you have two options:

Method I:

  1. Clone the repository to your local machine by running git clone https://github.com/orhanerday/ChatGPT.git.
  2. Navigate to the project directory by running cd ChatGPT.
  3. Build the Docker image by running docker build -t chatgpt ..
  4. Run the app by running docker run -p 8000:8000 -e OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY> chatgpt.
  5. Open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8000.

Method II:

  1. Pull the Docker image from Docker Hub by running docker pull orhan55555/chatgpt.
  2. Run the app by running docker run -p 8000:8000 -e OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY> orhan55555/chatgpt.
  3. Open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8000.

Chat History

This project saves chat history using cookies by default. If you want to change this to use authentication instead, you can modify the code in index.php to save chat history in a database or other storage mechanism.

Conclusion

In this article, we walked through the process of setting up and running the ChatGPT clone, a PHP-based chatbot that uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model to generate responses to user input. Whether you’re building a chatbot for your business or just for fun, this project is a great starting point that you can customize to fit your needs. So what are you waiting for? Give it a try and start chatting with an AI language model today!