Proposal: Reward Users When Their Novel Ideas Create Value for OpenAI or ChatGPT
One of the most interesting things about ChatGPT is that people don’t just use it to retrieve information. They increasingly think with it.
That means users sometimes contribute genuinely original ideas during conversations—new product concepts, mechanisms, business models, research directions, or solutions that may have real commercial or practical value.
I think OpenAI has an opportunity to turn that dynamic into a feature rather than a source of mistrust.
The basic idea:
When a user contributes a genuinely novel idea through ChatGPT, and OpenAI later decides to make meaningful use of that idea, OpenAI could voluntarily recognize that user as a “micropartner” and share a very small portion of the resulting value.
OpenAI would define the rules and economics.
This would not mean every suggestion earns compensation, nor would it mean users could simply claim ownership of anything OpenAI later builds or says. The threshold could be intentionally high. Recognition might apply only when OpenAI determines that:
-
the user contributed a sufficiently original, specific, and novel idea;
-
the idea was materially relevant to something OpenAI later developed, commercialized, or incorporated into relevant responses in other conversations; and
-
recognizing the contribution would be appropriate under a clearly defined program.
The reward itself could be modest: cash, credits, equity-like participation, a fixed innovation award, or another form OpenAI considers workable.
The important part is the incentive it creates.
Today, a thoughtful user who has a potentially valuable idea may reasonably wonder: Why should I explain the best version of this idea to an AI company if I have no idea what happens to it afterward?
A micropartner model could reverse that incentive.
Instead of users guarding their best ideas, OpenAI could encourage them to bring those ideas into ChatGPT, develop them more deeply, stress-test them, and potentially make them available for consideration.
That could create a very unusual innovation network: millions of people voluntarily brainstorming with OpenAI, knowing that exceptionally valuable contributions might be recognized if they ultimately matter.
There could also be benefits beyond compensation:
-
greater trust around how user-generated ideas are treated;
-
an incentive for users to contribute higher-quality thinking;
-
a mechanism for surfacing innovations from people who would never otherwise have access to Silicon Valley product teams;
-
a powerful demonstration that AI can distribute economic opportunity rather than only concentrate it.
There are obviously difficult implementation questions: attribution, independent invention, similarity between ideas, legal releases, abuse prevention, confidentiality, eligibility thresholds, and how value should be measured.
But those seem like design problems, not reasons the concept itself is impossible.
OpenAI would not need to promise that every idea is reviewed or rewarded. It would only need to create a credible mechanism for saying:
“If a genuinely novel idea comes from a user conversation and we decide to build on it, commercialize it, or incorporate it into relevant responses in other conversations, we have a way to recognize the person who contributed it.”
I initially sent this idea to OpenAI support and asked whether there was an appropriate product/business-model channel for it. Support told me there is currently no documented channel for unsolicited proposals beyond the normal feedback/support mechanisms and suggested posting it here for community discussion.
So I’m curious what others think:
Would a system like this make you more willing to share and develop original ideas with ChatGPT? And what rules would be necessary to make it workable without creating an impossible flood of ownership claims?