Tell HN: OpenAI now requires ID verification and won't refund API credits

When they started doing this ID verification early this year, I expressed outrage on here, and was met by comments downplaying it saying "It's a given that soon the others will follow". I'm sure some of those came from people at OpenAI.

We're now at the end of the year and neither Google nor Anthropic nor any single other LLM provider does this. OpenAI does this because their CEO is SamA. That's it.

A certain business I own has an openai account for testing and research purposes.

What ID would we provide?

Would we pick some random employee to attach to the account?

What relevance does this have to the notion of “piercing the corporate veil” if a business account is tied to someone’s drivers license?

I place the blame for this situation squarely on the careless and thoughtless user population who have blindly provided their phone numbers and now ID scans to any old random, fly by night, start up who request them.

Just searched for their actual policies to corroborate and found the policies on ID verification:

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10910291-api-organizatio...

And that credits are nonrefundable:

https://openai.com/policies/service-credit-terms/

It absolutely seems like terrible horrible customer service not to issue refunds in this case. Obviously the credits can still be used for most of the models, so it's not like you can't do anything with them. But if someone explains they bought the credits specifically to use with the verification-gated models and then discovered they couldn't (since apparently verification fails for some people), there's no question that refunds are the right thing to do. What is OpenAI thinking?

(BTW, speculation seems to be that the verification process doesn't have anything to do with know-your-customer laws or anti-fraud, but is intended to prevent competitors like Chinese DeepSeek from having large-scale access to OpenAI's best models.)

Yeah, I'm not at all willing to do these sorts of verifications. Any company doing them essentially doesn't exist to me. I don't even use Anthropic because they require a phone number to register.

It's hard to know exactly which forms it will end up taking, but dependence on these companies is going nowhere good. And more quickly than it took streaming (for example) to go from offering a better experience (to win market share) to the current (and inevitable) norm of raising prices constantly and introducing unskippable ads.

You can try the latest GLM 4.6 https://z.ai/ . Their coding plan is $6 a month and performs on par to Sonnet 4 for my personal task. Sonnet 4.5 still has an edge though. All of ZLM’s models are also open sourced so you can run it locally if you want

Wonder how long before they'll have to start reporting 'suspicious activity' to the government same as financial institutions have to do for money transfers.

GPT-5 works, just not GPT-5 streaming. I posted about this a little while ago with more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44837367

I wouldn't tie my email to a chatbot let alone my literal goverment ID.

Indeed. I have opened the playground and it doesn't let me choose GPT-5. Obviously I will not be KYCing myself.

But that's okay. There are plenty of other models. Perhaps not bleeding edge great, but great nevertheless.

>A chargeback can be started in minutes.

Alas, on my Social Security mandated USDirectExpress card it requires hours to start the process through 3 levels by phone, then documentation that the vendor refused to process a reimbursement, then a physical form received and returned by US Postal Service within 10 calendar days. Everything changed last year when the outgoing administration changed the rules and chose a new bank as the provider for Social Security payments.

Is it by any chance because your POST is requesting a summary of the reasoning, e.g. setting {summary: "auto"} or somesuch? I know that requires verification.

Raise a chargeback

OpenAI is literally trying to play the role of a state. Why would I involve a private company in my national ID paperwork? That's none of their business. And that should be literally every sane person's stance. Their model security is not my problem.

ID verification is often used to increase the cost of abusing AI, by staking one's reputation. But there's another way: to increase the cost without a person's reputation attached while remaining anonymous.

I would suggest against Deepseek.

Deepseek is nowhere close to OpenAI in terms of coding ability.

And the fact that it will just cut the API if you ask anything that might be considered taboo in China... I just don't see the draw.

Cheap, sure! It's definitely that!

If deepseek and qwen are capable why does one need to use OpenAI models? Are their models really that much better? If not the only they bring is the hosting service. N that scenario how long do they have this advantage before aws or Microsoft takes over?

I put $2 on my deepseek account and have barely used it, it's so cheap.

Deepseek will route all of your traffic through Hong Kong. If you're really worried about privacy that is NOT the way to go.

We need local AI ASAP. that’s really the bottom line.

Just use openrouter, allows to connect to all models

What’s so special about GPT-5 streaming that it requires government ID to use it?

Thus be it for slopherds.

admit it, anyone who writes code is completely addicted to ghost text completions. you wouldn't have it any other way. they can do ANYTHING.

Don't trust SAMA

This is honestly a huge shame as they aren't legally required to do so, this is PURELY for mass data collection and correlation.

Also terrible that purchased credits expire after 1 year. Not sure how that is legal.

https://community.openai.com/t/api-credits-amount-get-expire...

That's probably a good thing.

Was this for all models?

They are a porn company now, after all.

[flagged]

One more step towards worldcoin .. .

[dead]

[flagged]

Interesting