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OpenAI is preparing to launch a paid version of ChatGPT
According to foreign media reports, OpenAI said this week that it will launch a paid version of ChatGPT, ChatGPT Pro, but there is no price standard yet.
As a premium version of ChatGPT, ChatGPT Pro offers several advantages: no "outage" (i.e., unavailable) windows, no throttling, and support for an unlimited number of ChatGPT messages (at least twice the regular daily limit).
On January 11, Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI, posted on Twitter to promote ChatGPT Pro: "With ChatGPT Pro, you'll enjoy higher quota caps and better performance. If interested, please join our shortlist".
In a link to the shortlist posted by OpenAI on the Discord server, it asks a series of questions about paid preferences, such as "What is the maximum price of ChatGPT you can accept (per month)?" ”
OpenAI says that friends who participate in filling the shortlist may be selected and be the first to experience ChatGPT Pro. However, since the program is still in the experimental phase, it will not be widely available at this time.
ChatGPT is OpenAI's latest released chatbot model, which is also one of the main models of the GPT-3.5 series. Currently, ChatGPT is still in beta and can be used for free just by logging in.
Although similar chatbots are not uncommon, ChatGPT quickly became popular all over the network and received countless praises. Some developers believe that some technical questions are not answered reliably by ChatGPT even if Google and Stack Overflow are asked. Musk has also lamented that "many people are crazy into the ChatGPT cycle", "ChatGPT is too good to be scary, we are not far from artificial intelligence that is powerful enough to be dangerous".
In December 2022, just one week after ChatGPT launched, it already had more than 1 million users. This also confirms the popularity of ChatGPT around the world.
Some schools began to "block" ChatGPT
The popularity of ChatGPT has brought many surprises to the technology world, but as an emerging technology, ChatGPT also faces a lot of controversy.
On the one hand, ChatGPT, which can write essays and poetry, has made academics worry that students will use it to cheat. In response, New York City education officials have also specifically banned students from using ChatGPT in public schools.
Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education, said that while ChatGPT can provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not develop students' critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which are critical to academic and lifelong success.
On the other hand, the technical limitations inherent in ChatGPT make the content it generates not entirely accurate. For example, some netizens pointed out that the code provided by ChatGPT contains completely irrelevant explanations; Some netizens also said that ChatGPT sometimes generates plausible-sounding replies that are both incorrect and meaningless.
OpenAI said: "The ChatGPT model still has many limitations, so we plan to update the model regularly to make improvements in these areas. But we also want to get valuable user feedback by providing an interface to ChatGPT to uncover issues that we are not aware of. ”
OpenAI needs to prove its profitability
In addition to the controversy, ChatGPT has to face another headache, and that is operating costs. And this may be one of the reasons why OpenAI decided to launch ChatGPT Pro.
It is understood that ChatGPT has a lot of operating costs. According to OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT's operating expenses are "jaw-dropping," with the average compute cost per chat being several cents (ChatGPT is hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud).
In order to ensure that ChatGPT can operate in the long term, OpenAI needs to come up with a suitable commercialization path. In a recent announcement on the company's official Discord, OpenAI made it clear that it is "already considering how to promote the commercialization of ChatGPT" to "ensure the long-term vitality of the tool."
In addition to actively exploring commercialization paths, OpenAI has also begun to seek financing in recent days.
According to media reports on January 10, Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion (67.3 billion yuan) in OpenAI to acquire its 49% stake, and the two sides are currently negotiating, and OpenAI's post-investment valuation is expected to reach $29 billion.
According to the news, some large VC companies have previously abandoned their investments in OpenAI, and some investors have expressed doubts about whether OpenAI can afford such a high valuation.
Before the funding rumors came out, OpenAI had been under pressure to profit from products like ChatGPT. OpenAI expects its revenue to reach $200 million in 2023, but the startup's profitability is clearly too weak compared to the $1 billion it has invested so far.
In the coming days, OpenAI needs to prove its profitability.
Reference Links:
https://techcrunch-com.translate.goog/2023/01/11/openai-begins-piloting-chatgpt-professional-a-premium-version-of-its-viral-chatbot/?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=zh-CN&_x_tr_hl=zh-CN&_x_tr_pto=sc