Solana Labs, the developer of the Solana blockchain, announced Tuesday that it has released a ChatGPT plugin that connects its blockchain technology with artificial intelligence that will allow users to query information from the network.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot from OpenAI LP that can answer questions from users in conversational language. The company made it possible for developers to extend it with plugins in March, which makes it possible for the bot to pull data from external sources.

With this announcement, Solana has become the first Layer 1 blockchain to integrate AI capabilities. Using the plugin, users will be able to query information directly from the blockchain using conversational prompts in order to understand Solana data and protocols. That’s aimed at enabling developers and amateurs to get a better understanding of information about the computing infrastructure, underlying data and decentralized finance projects.

“Every developer building consumer-oriented apps should be thinking about how their app is going to be interacted with through an AI model because this is a new paradigm for telling computers what to do,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and chief executive of Solana Labs, said in an interview published on Solana’s website.

Yakovenko added that by using AI, people can almost feel like they’re talking to another human, which can completely change how they digest information. “AI will make Solana more usable and understandable,” he said.

The plugin was initially teased by Solana in late April, noting that it would be an open-source implementation allowing users to manipulate data on the blockchain. It currently connects directly to a Solana blockchain node and users can buy nonfungible tokens, transfer tokens, examine transactions on the chain, examine account data and look at NFT prices.

Nonfungible tokens are a type of crypto asset built on blockchain technology that provides provable ownership of digital items, such as artwork and video game items. They are cryptographic tokens that can be bought, sold and traded. NFTs are often part of collections, which people often buy, sell and trade similar to collectible trading cards.

Right now, the AI can describe objects on-chain, such as if it’s part of an NFT set, but it won’t yet automate the creation of NFT collections. Yakovenko said a future goal is to add the ability to write to the blockchain, but the plugin is not there yet. Developers interested in taking the plugin for a spin can grab its current iteration from the GitHub repository.

One of Solana’s claims to value in the blockchain space is that it is a high-speed, low-fee blockchain that makes it easy to deploy and use NFTs on. With the addition of an AI interface for users to talk to and understand the network, Yakovenko hopes, it will attract more developers.

“Right now, we’re in the stage of discovering what AI can do,” he said. “I encourage devs to go write plugins for whatever software they are working on, interact with it, and discover what it can do. I don’t think anyone knows where it’s supposed to go. It’s just really, really cool that you can basically treat it like a ‘Star Trek’ computer.”

In addition to the ChatGPT plugin, the Solana Foundation also announced it’s increasing its AI-focused grants program from its originally announced $1 million to $10 million. The objective is to encourage Solana developers to explore machine learning and AI use cases.

Image: Solana