OpenAI announces ChatGPT Professional: a paid version of its phenomenally successful AI chatbot. Find out about the benefits, price and launch date of this variant aimed at professionals.
Since its launch, ChatGPT has been a viral success. This powerful AI chatbot developed by OpenAI is extremely versatile, and capable of writing scientific essays, dissertations, poems or even computer code.
However, one of the main causes of success of ChatGPT is that it is free. Anyone can use this tool from a web browser, without having to pay a single euro.
Yet this AI rivals paid content creation software such as Jasper AI. And its operating cost is far, far from anecdotal…
Free access reaches its limits
we will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering
– Sam Altman (@sama) December 5, 2022
At the moment, OpenAI burns millions of dollars a day by letting Internet users freely exploit the computing power of server racks to use its chatbot.
Each message exchanged with the AI costs several cents, as it is hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud. However, the company covers this cost.
In exchange, she grabs valuable data which will enable us to find out how Internet users use this tool, and also to improve its performance. However, this business model is reaching its limits.
Last week, on its official Discord server, OpenAI announced that it was ” started thinking about how to monetize ChatGPT “ in order to ” ensure long-term profitability “.
The company also shared a link to join the waiting list for the future paid version of AI. This new variant will be called “ChatGPT Professional”..
OpenAI in search of profitability
This paid version could enable OpenAI to turn ChatGPT into a profitable product. It hopes to generate $200 million by 2023a fraction of the $1 billion already raised in 2019…
Finding this profitability becomes imperative, at a time when Microsoft is preparing to invest $10 billion in the company. According to a report by Semafor, the American giant wants to take over 49% stake in OpenAI and would enable it to reach a valuation of $29 million.
In exchange, he would pocket three quarters of the startup’s profits until he had repaid his stake. The other investors would take a 49% stake, and OpenAI will make do with the remaining 2%..
ChatGPT Pro: benefits and new features
The waiting list put online by OpenAI also reveals the benefits of ChatGPT Pro. First and foremost, availability will be guaranteed at all times. Subscribers won’t have to worry about downtime, as is currently the case with the free edition.
There will be no no throttling either (voluntary speed limitation), and users will be able to exchange an unlimited number of messages with the chatbot. At least, OpenAI promises “at least twice the classic daily limit”.
How much will ChatGPT Professionnal cost?
Working on a professional version of ChatGPT; will offer higher limits & faster performance. If interested, please join our waitlist here:
– Greg Brockman (@gdb) January 11, 2023
By clicking on the waiting list link, Internet users can also answer questions for help OpenAI set the price of the service. In particular, the firm asks ” at what monthly price would ChatGPT be too expensive for you to continue using it? “.
We can deduce that the cost of the service has not yet been defined. For the time being, OpenAI is trying to find out how much Internet users would be willing to pay…
Although ChatGPT has attracted more than a million users in just a few days, it is difficult to know how many of them are enthusiastic enough to pay. Many simply test the tool out of curiosity, without necessarily planning to integrate it into their workflow.
ChatGPT Pro launch date
To use ChatGPT Pro, all you need to do is join the waiting list. You may have the chance to be selected to test this new version.
However, OpenAI points out that this is still an experimental program. The general availability date remains undefined for the moment.
Eventually, the free version could simply disappear. This is a “preview” for research purposes, and OpenAI does not promise that it will remain available forever…