Can you drop me a line at michael.schade@openai.com with more info and your account email? I'll take a look. And yes, that bot has to go—many improvements coming on that front!
Saudi is currently working very, very hard to limit the spread and influence of extremism within their borders, so they're careful about which resources for learning about islam are available.
Both Saudi and OpenAI seem to be ultra-aggressive about blocking VPN's such as Mullvad. There are other options for getting your own servers/VPNs that you can put OpenVPN on. When I lived in Saudi I did that, and it got around 100% of the most aggressive internet filters.
If it's blocked for political reasons I'd like to understand why, so we can understand their values that allow all those countries on the list but not Saudi.
I was able to register with a US phone number and VPN, but I'm also blocked from actually paying to get an API key.
I find the worry about compliance a thin excuse since a larger company like Microsoft that does have presence in the country offers Bing without issue. Same with SnapChat which has signifianct Saudi investmnet.
I believe it's some kind of misguided political activism.
Does Bing offer their chat AI in Saudi? Or just search results. Search results are easy to filter and have a whole framework for compliance in GCC countries that is relatively straightforward to follow.
Yes I'm talking about Bing's chat AI. There is absolutely no indication or precedent for legal concern.
I know people who work at Saudi Authority for Data and AI. They have no idea why we're blocked, while UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman can use it.
They've been holding regular AI talks and hackathons to grow the local talent. But we don't have access to GPT4 API and it's holding us back.