diff --git a/src/PromptingTools.jl b/src/PromptingTools.jl
index 82e12c7b9..6825b140c 100644
--- a/src/PromptingTools.jl
+++ b/src/PromptingTools.jl
@@ -12,7 +12,10 @@ using PrecompileTools
 const MODEL_CHAT = "gpt-3.5-turbo"
 const MODEL_EMBEDDING = "text-embedding-ada-002"
 const API_KEY = get(ENV, "OPENAI_API_KEY", "")
-@assert isempty(API_KEY)==false "Please set OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable!"
+# Note: Disable this warning by setting OPENAI_API_KEY to anything
+isempty(API_KEY) &&
+    @warn "OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable not set! OpenAI models will not be available - set API key directly via `PromptingTools.API_KEY=<api-key>`!"
+
 # Cost per 1K tokens as of 7th November 2023
 const MODEL_COSTS = Dict("gpt-3.5-turbo" => (0.0015, 0.002),
     "gpt-3.5-turbo-1106" => (0.001, 0.002),