ChatGPT, the chatbot and virtual assistant developed by OpenAI which was launched in the end of November 2022, took the world by storm by its impressive capabilities, viral content, industry adoption, public demonstrations and lastly the broader discussion about the role of AI in society.
OpenAI Plans Massive Subscription Fee Increase Amid AI Evolution
ChatGPT has been the cynosure of AI revolution and had prompted other players to also work and develop their AI models. Now, again the chatbot is making headlines but this time around its not a version upgrade or bug fixing, it is in the news due to its pricing.
As per recent reports, OpenAI is considering a dramatic increase in its subscription fees for AI chatbots.
It is being said that ChatGPT Plus service which used to cost $20 per month and offered priority access to features, custom GPTs, and DALL-E 3 image generation, shall now be hiked to $2,000 per month.
It’s all cloudy whether the price hike is applicable to only ChatGPT Plus service or only to the newer models like the upcoming Strawberry which has believed to have advanced reasoning capabilities.
Amid AI Success, OpenAI Struggles to Feel Afloat Due to Financial Woes
OpenAI is also developing the post training technique wherein the performance of the models is enhanced based on the human feedback.
This recent potential price revision comes after OpenAI surpassing 1 million paid business users and achieving over 200 million daily active users, which can be largely attributed to the successful launch of GPT-4, which has led to the record spike in revenue and downloads.
Despite all the good, the ugly is that the company is amidst severe financial challenges and as per projections, the company has projected a colossal loss of to $5 billion next year.
The likes of Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Apple are expected to provide additional funding to support OpenAI which would potentially boost its valuation to $100 billion.
Excluding the high electricity and cooling costs, daily operational costs for ChatGPT for OpenAI reaches upto $700,000.
Post the success of ChatGPT, other tech giants have also forayed into GenAI and have been heavily investing in the same. These major companies include the likes of Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Apple investing heavily in generative AI.
Notably, despite its proliferation and worldwide adoption of ChatGPT, OpenAI is reportedly nearing bankruptcy which has triggered questions around the sustainability of high AI investments.
Concerns are growing over potential AI peaking, and predictions are doing rounds that 30% of AI projects could be abandoned by 2025.
