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How much would you pay for unlimited access to a cutting-edge AI chatbot? OpenAI is betting some customers will fork over $200 per month.
On Thursday, a software developer named Tibor Blaho spotted a mention of a new "Pro" subscription tier for ChatGPT within the computer code of a little-known company domain. Hours later, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that ChatGPT Pro is real and available now.
The Pro tier will cost a whopping $200 per month—far more than the $20 monthly charge for the existing ChatGPT Plus. The Pro tier is designed to offer customers unlimited access to the most cutting-edge OpenAI models, including o1, o1-mini, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice mode.
In contrast, ChatGPT Plus offers access to the most advanced AI features but caps subscribers to “80 messages every 3 hours on GPT-4o and 40 messages every 3 hours on GPT-4,” the company says. In addition, a Plus subscription limits the time you can talk to the Advanced Voice mode for ChatGPT.
OpenAI also says that the Pro subscription will offer access to an “o1 pro mode, a version of o1 that uses more compute to think harder and provide even better answers to the hardest problems." The company's benchmarks show o1 pro performing slightly better than the regular o1 model in math, science, and coding tasks.
(Credit: OpenAI)"In the future, we expect to add more powerful, compute-intensive productivity features to this plan," the company added in a blog post.
The news signals that the company sees a market for true power users of ChatGPT at a time when it’s trying to rake in more revenues. OpenAI is marketing Pro for "researchers, engineers, and other individuals who use research-grade intelligence daily to accelerate their productivity and be at the cutting edge of advancements in AI," it added in the blog post.
As part of Thursday's announcement, the company's CEO added that the o1 model is now out of preview and available for ChatGPT Plus and Pro users.