OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus for $20 per month

Generative AI company OpenAI announced today it will be piloting a new, paid version of its popular ChatGPT chatbot called ChatGPT Plus. The new service is aimed at frequent or professional users, and will cost $20 per month.

The company says ChatGPT Plus will offer users fast response times, even during peak periods, as well as priority access to new features and improvements.

The free version of ChatGPT originally launched in late November of 2022, and has since become the center of attention in the AI world, as millions of people get their first taste of the sometimes shocking conversational talent of advanced natural language processing AI models.

ChatGPT has also faced criticism for generating false information. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the chatbot’s shortcomings in a December tweet. “ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness,” he wrote. “It’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.”

The subscription ChatGPT will run on the same GPT-3.5 natural language models that power the original free version, but with some improvements, OpenAI says. “The research preview for ChatGPT allowed us to learn from real-world use, and we’ve made important improvements and updates based on feedback,” the company says.

The “Plus” pilot will be available only to subscribers in the United States at first. OpenAI says it will begin inviting people who have signed up on a wait-list in the coming weeks, and access and support to people in other countries will be “coming soon.”

OpenAI will continue to offer the free version of ChatGPT, but those users may have to wait longer for the chatbot’s answers (especially as more people get interested in trying it), and for new features.