Getting OpenAI api to work in jupyter. (Using provided example code )

Question

Okay, so I followed this quickstart tutorial for getting ChatGPT api to work with python: https://platform.openai.com/docs/quickstart?lang=ChatCompletions Its the og documentation. I did all the steps listed and went with the 'Setup your API key for all projects (recommended)' you use setex to add the env variable i think and then go into advanced system settings and duplicate that variable as a system variable. I ran the echo snippet in cmd to verify it had stored it correctly and got my key with no problems. They say when you reach this step there is no need to provide the api key in your code.

Here's the issue. I did all the previous steps but when I run some provided example code:

from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()

completion = client.chat.completions.create(
  model="gpt-3.5-turbo",
  messages=[
    {"role": "system", "content": "You are a poetic assistant, skilled in explaining complex programming concepts with creative flair."},
    {"role": "user", "content": "Compose a poem that explains the concept of recursion in programming."}
  ]
)

print(completion. Choices[0].message)

I get this error:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenAIError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In[7], line 2
      1 from openai import OpenAI
----> 2 client = OpenAI()
      4 completion = client.chat.completions.create(
      5   model="gpt-3.5-turbo",
      6   messages=[
   (...)
      9   ]
     10 )
     12 print(completion.choices[0].message)

File ~\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\site-packages\openai\_client.py:93, in OpenAI.__init__(self, api_key, organization, base_url, timeout, max_retries, default_headers, default_query, http_client, _strict_response_validation)
     91     api_key = os.environ.get("OPENAI_API_KEY")
     92 if api_key is None:
---> 93     raise OpenAIError(
     94         "The api_key client option must be set either by passing api_key to the client or by setting the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable"
     95     )
     96 self.api_key = api_key
     98 if organization is None:

OpenAIError: The api_key client option must be set either by passing api_key to the client or by setting the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable

I am very confused and maybe there is somebody that has gotten past this error...

I tried adding this line openai.api_key = 'sk-xxxxx' to no avail. It gave me the same error.

Answer 1

You should probably use :

client = OpenAI(api_key='sk-XXXXXX')

Btw you should not expose your api_key like that. Better deactivate that one ASAP and get a new one.

Best solution would be to set an environment variable in form of (google environment variables):

OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-XXXXXX

the OpenAI() tries by default to read the value of this environment variable. this is a common way to prevent the exposure of your private api_key. Google will for sure explain this in more detail to you.