Cutting-edge AI chatbot, ChatGPT has fixed a $42 subscription fee for users who want to enjoy all the interesting features the text generator has to offer. The AI programme has set restrictions for users who are not subscribed to a plan on the AI technology.
Tech expert and founder of James Ivings shared the update via Twitter on Saturday, 21st January 2023. The tweet had an image of his ChatGPT account with a dropdown instruction to upgrade his membership on the platform. He thus wrote, “ChatGPT goes paid today!”
According to Ivings tweet, the ChatGPT pegged its monthly subscription fee at $42 per month, with premium services for users who subscribe to the plan. Subscribers would enjoy easy access to and use of the programme even when demand is high, at a faster response speed. Paid users would also get priority access to new features.
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Users of the free plan are not blocked out of the text generating program, ChatGPT will give such members less priority. Unpaid users will be able to access ChatGPT only when demand on the text generator is low and enjoy standard response speed and regular model updates.
Ivings tweet, which has over 3.6 million views, has garnered mixed reactions, with 500 Twitter users sharing their concerns and over 3000 others retweeting the information.
$42/mo is cheap
— Digital Lawrence (@DigitalLawrence) January 21, 2023
For context, $42 is about N29000 a month and about N348000 a year in Nigeria..Not so many people would afford this..
— PE (@Peteribeabuchi) January 21, 2023
Also reacting to Ivings’ tweet, an IT expert, Guillaume Bardet, conducted a Twitter Poll to find out people’s preference for the free and paid plan. Results showed that 52.3% of the voters chose the free plan, while 16.7% preferred the professional plan. However, 31% of the users were apparently there to observe as they chose the third option, which was a popcorn emoji.
It was fun while it lasted lol the real question now is who’s upgrading?
— Guillaume Bardet (@GuillaumeBardet) January 21, 2023
Prior to ChatCPT’s subscription update, there have been speculations in recent days about whether or not the AI bot would continue to be free for users.
Why ChatGPT?
ChatGPT was created by one of the leading artificial intelligence research laboratories in the world, OpenAI, which is a significant leap in natural language processing and image generation.
When the AI program was launched, the platform hit one million users in 5 days, a feat which took the social networking site Facebook months to achieve. However, it didn’t topple Instagram’s Android app, which was launched in April 2012 and crossed one million registrations on Android in just 24 hours.
Because of the revolutionary conversational AI chatbot abilities, ChatGPT is still one of the buzzwords in late 2022, and it will be in 2023, with thousands of articles on “How to use ChatGPT” content gradually increasing on search engine results pages.
This new subscription move by OpenAI will result in users turning to other free text-generating programs with far less buzz than ChatGPT, as many of its users are unhappy about the company’s monetization decision.
However, the free version of ChatGPT has been tried, and it still works excellently, though it experienced some lagging in the speed at which the AI bot generated a response to the question.
ChatGPT Users’ Concerns Could Be Google’s Breath Of Fresh Air
Users’ possible attention shift from ChatGPT due to subscription concerns would be great news for Google. This is because Google has transcended being just a search engine to becoming the world’s preferred entry point to the internet. Google is pretty much more than a noun; it is now used as a verb in sentences, with phrases like “Google it.”
So, with talks around the world on whether or not ChatGPT could one day replace Google’s search engine, there is a good enough reason for the global search engine to be worried.
In December 2022, Google issued a “code red” over the growth of the AI bot ChatGPT, The New York Times reported. The report highlighted that Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, instructed some teams to focus on building out AI products. The move comes as talks abound over whether ChatGPT could one day replace Google’s search engine.
In the coming months, we’ll get to see how the world adjusts to ChatGPT’s subscription plans and how they will affect its competitors.
So, would you be interested in paying $42 monthly for full access to ChatGPT?