API
When Twitter says it’s going to start charging for its API, or OpenAI says it won’t steal data from people who use the ChatGPT API, what the hell are they talking about?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. It’s a way for two computer programs (aka applications, aka apps) to talk to each other. Take Facebook, for example. It’s a huge network of interconnected systems made up of millions of lines of code. That system is, to say the least, complicated. Not only is it complicated, it involves a ton of trade secrets and that’s going through constant internal changes as the company works on it and builds new things.
Developers want to connect their apps to other apps for all kinds of different reasons, but they need to do it in a way that’s simple, doesn’t give away secrets, and doesn’t break when an engineer changes a line of code. That’s where APIs come in.
To continue the Facebook example, the company’s APIs do all kinds of things, including connecting to Facebook’s advertising system, letting other apps post on the platform, and providing outside access to users’ friend lists (with permission of course).
