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OpenAI announces ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month

OpenAI announces ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month

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For those that don’t want to wait to talk to the AI and who want faster responses.

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An illustration of a cartoon brain with a computer chip imposed on top.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

OpenAI has announced ChatGPT Plus, a $20 monthly plan that gives you priority access to the AI chatbot, even during peak time where free users would have to wait. The company also says the plan will give you “faster response times” and “priority access to new features and improvements.”

OpenAI says it’ll be sending out invitations for the service to people who are in the US and on its waitlist “over the coming weeks” and that it’ll be expanding the rollout to other countries and regions in the future.

Even just over a week ago, it seemed like OpenAI was going to introduce a plus or pro version of the service at $42 a month, a significantly higher price that would be hard to justify for those not making money with the service. At $20 a month, however, it could be accessible to a wider range of people, including students and businesses who need reliable access to AI-generated text.

It could also set a standard for upcoming paid AI chatbots, which will almost certainly be hitting the market. Given that OpenAI is a forerunner in the field, anyone trying to release a bot that costs more than $20 a month will have to really sell why theirs is worth the premium over ChatGPT Plus.

The use of AI to write things like articles or essays that have been assigned as homework can be controversial. OpenAI definitely seems to realize this, as it released a free tool meant to detect generated text earlier this week, though it’s questionable how effective it’ll be at this point.

ChatGPT isn’t becoming a paid-only tool. OpenAI says it’ll continue to offer free access to it and that paid users will “help support free access availability to as many people as possible.”