OpenAI has released a paid version of its popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. Known as ‘ChatGPT Professional’, it is now available at $42 per month. The research lab announced its plans to monetize ChatGPT a week ago,
The upgraded yet “experimental” version of ChatGPT claims to be available during high demand, with no blackout windows, priority access to new features, a faster response rate, no throttling and increased API request limits. The exact features and pricing of the ChatGPT Professional plan can vary depending on the specific needs of the user and the agreements made with OpenAI. It is not publicly accessible as it is based on selection, and the company posted a waitlist link on its Discord server for the same.
Since its release last November, the LLM-based ChatGPT has garnered widespread popularity for generating texts and ideas from scratch, including explaining complex concepts, writing code, crafting poems, and so on.
A month into ChatGPT’s release in December 2022, Google expressed concern over the growing popularity of the model and its potential impact on its ad revenue. According to Sridhar Ramaswamy, a former leader of Google’s ad team, the use of ChatGPT could lead to fewer clicks on Google links that include ads, which is a significant source of revenue for the company. In 2021, Google’s ad revenue was reported to be $208 billion, representing 81% of Alphabet’s overall revenue.
According to reports, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been in conversation about the company’s response to ChatGPT. They reportedly plan to release more than 20 AI-based products this year, with a demonstration of an AI search chatbot being one of them in its annual I/O event in May.
