OpenAI’s first subscription offer to ChatGPT signals a change to make the tools, available since November, more user-friendly for power users.
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
AI startup Unicorn OpenAI is now ready to make money with its popular AI chatbot released in November.
OpenAI has launched its first subscription plan for ChatGPT, opening up the popular AI model for premium use just two months after its public launch.
The new plan, called ChatGPT Plus and announced in a company blog post on Wednesday, will charge subscribers $20 for monthly use of ChatGPT’s tools. Users will get priority access to ChatGPT “during peak hours,” faster responses, and “priority access to new features and improvements,” the company wrote. The subscription is initially only available in the United States and will first roll out to a waitlist.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the announcement. The company also noted in its post that a waiting list is now available for an upcoming ChatGPT API.
The move comes just weeks after OpenAI Chairman and President Greg Brockman posted on the company’s official Discord server asking users for their input on ways to “monetize ChatGPT”. Some users (including this author) reported seeing an offer for a $42 per month pro tier in January, which promised early, priority access to new features and better reliability if the service suffered repeated outages. due to high demand in recent weeks, again reached capacity.
After OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late November, more than one million users swamped the tool’s site in five days, OpenAI said. Since then, product launches and other announcements have poured in quickly from the San Francisco-based company led by CEO Sam Altman. In mid-January, the company announced a multi-year, multi-billion dollar partnership with Microsoft that would have reached a commitment of $10 billion at a valuation of $29 billion. Microsoft has since announced a slew of current and planned product integrations for its AI tools, which experts see as a near-term challenge to Google’s popularity in products like Docs.
Earlier this week, OpenAI announced the development of another product, a “classifier” that it claims could distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text. The company noted that the tool was largely a work in progress — unreliable with text under 1,000 characters and only correctly identifying AI text 26% of the time in its own test — but called on educators and other testers to contribute feedback and feedback. . The request for cooperation came as the Chancellor of New York Schools told the press that the school system is currently considering reversing an early January ban on using ChatGPT in the classroom.
