ChatGPT’s premium offering, ChatGPT Plus, has set its pricing as a monthly subscription service that promises faster response times and priority access to new features and updates.
OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed startup behind ChatGPT, announced the anticipated launch of its “professional” version of the AI-assisted chat bot on Wednesday. OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman also tweeted the news.
ChatGPT Plus, for $20 per month, will be available exclusively in the U.S., with OpenAI saying in a blog post that it “will begin the process of inviting people from our waitlist over the coming weeks. We plan to expand access and support to additional countries and regions soon.”
The subscription tier will provide a “number of benefits,” according to a statement from the Edwards, California-based company, including access “even during peak times,” plus “faster response times” and “priority access to new features and improvements.
“We love our free users and will continue to offer free access to ChatGPT,” the post added. “By offering this subscription pricing, we will be able to help support free access availability to as many people as possible.
The AI chat bot, which debuted in November, is able to generate text in response to prompts. From being banned in K-12 schools over cheating or plagiarism concerns, to being utilized in the halls of Congress, where a Boston-area Democrat congressman used ChatGPT to write a speech prodding federal lawmakers debate the innovative technology, the chat bot has already seen a fair share of controversy.
OpenAI called the rollout of its proprietary AI chat bot a “research preview” from which it would learn about “the system’s strengths and weaknesses and gather user feedback to help us improve upon its limitations.”
Moving forward, the company said its plans are to “refine and expand” while teasing that soon it would launch ChatGPT API waitlist and was “actively exploring options for lower-cost plans, business plans, and data packs for more availability.”
