OpenAI has launched the monetized version of ChatGPT, its phenomenal chatbot disrupting the web search industry with unique text-generating ability.
The company announced the plan to launch a professional version last month, in aim to create more efficient alternative for professionals who’d be counting on it to speed up their work.
Dubbed ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI said the cost starts from $20 per month, but with enormous benefits that include general access to ChatGPT even during peak times, faster response times and priority access to new features and improvements – all better than the base-level ChatGPT.
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We're piloting ChatGPT Plus, a $20/mo subscription for faster response times and reliability during peak hours: https://t.co/ZDK37w9MIs
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) February 1, 2023
However, the company said the free version of the ChatGPT stays, adding that the ChatGPT Plus is only available to US customers for now.
OpenAI’s cofounder Greg Brockman tweeted the plan last month, inviting people to join the waitlist as they aim to create the version which will “offer higher limits & faster performance.” The company said Wednesday it’ll begin the process of inviting people from its waitlist in the coming months and look to expand ChatGPTPlus to additional countries and regions soon.
Working on a professional version of ChatGPT; will offer higher limits & faster performance. If interested, please join our waitlist here: https://t.co/Eh87OViRie
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) January 11, 2023
“We launched ChatGPT as a research preview so we could learn more about the system’s strengths and weaknesses and gather user feedback to help us improve upon its limitations,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “Since then, millions of people have given us feedback, we’ve made several important updates and we’ve seen users find value across a range of professional use cases including drafting and editing content, brainstorming ideas, programming help and learning new topics.”
OpenAI indicated that other plans are on the way, according to its blog post. The company said that it’s “actively exploring” options for lower-cost plans, business plans and data packs in addition to an API.
“We love our free users and will continue to offer free access to ChatGPT. By offering this subscription pricing, we will be able to help support free access availability to as many people as possible,” it said. “We plan to refine and expand this offering based on your feedback and needs.”
ChatGPT has seen unprecedented growth since it was launched late last year, recording more than a million users in its first month. Its sweeping adoption is being fueled by its AI-powered ability to generate answers and authentic-looking responses to queries about all topics. ChatGPT uses the GPT-3.5, a language model released last year, to accomplish tasks such as creating poems, composing college essays and writing code.
Last month, the AI-powered chatbot passed an MBA exam set by a Wharton professor, scoring strong B. It has also passed law and US medical licensing exams, adding to several other brilliant ways it has wowed users.
ChatGPT’s brilliance has stoked investment interest in OpenAI, with Microsoft, which had invested $1 billion in the company in 2019, leading the pack. Last month, Microsoft increased its investment in OpenAI with reported $10 billion as the company pushes for $29 billion valuation.
This is despite the shortfalls that have cast doubt on ChatGPT’s reliability. OpenAI’s cofounder and CEO Sam Altman has warned that the chatbot cannot be trusted at the moment because it is still prone to misinformation and biases. As educators worry about ChatGPT’s impact on critical thinking, some schools have made decisions to ban it.
But OpenAI has come under pressure to turn a profit on products like ChatGPT following Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar investment that includes move to incorporate the chatbot into Microsoft’s search engine Bing.
The company expects to make $200 million in 2023, which amounts to nothing compared to how much Microsoft has betted on it. Altman said ChatGPT’s operating expenses are “eye-watering,” amounting to a few cents per chat in total compute costs.
Elon Musk has shown with Twitter that it’s possible to make money from the very things most people think should be free, now ChatGPT is telling you that in order not to join a queue or suffer hiccups, there’s a VIP session.
People will definitely pay, it is not in doubt. We can also argue that those talks about heavy traffic and breakdown were marketing strategy, everything was orchestrated in order to prepare you for the paid version, else you can continue managing the popular side.
Facebook was made free, and it has been abused, with Zuckerberg getting knocks here and there, so nobody should expect any large-scale platform to be completely free again. We are going somewhere…