Artificial intelligence company OpenAI says that it will soon be releasing a premium version of its viral AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT. OpenAI has been spending millions per month to maintain its free chatbot, and the new chatbot program, ChatGPT Professional, is meant to help the company monetize the software and prove its worth as an investment.
The premium service was revealed when Open AI posted a waitlist link in its Discord server asking users for information about how they might use ChatGPT Professional.
"ChatGPT Professional (experimental) is geared towards professional use," the waitlist form posted by OpenAI reads. "If you are selected, we'll reach out to you to set up a payment process and a pilot."
Users who complete the form have a chance to be selected to pay for a pilot version of ChatGPT Professional. The form also includes a list of the service's benefits, including at least twice the daily limit on messages, "no blackout windows", and rapid responses from the software.
"Please keep in mind that this is an early experimental program that is subject to change, and we are not making paid pro access generally available at this time," the company added.
OpenAI's co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, has said that ChatGPT's operating costs are "eye-watering", equivalent to a few cents for every chat sent. Largely due to its free access, there were more than a million ChatGPT users as of early December, far surpassing similar tools from other companies.
ChatGPT is hosted on Microsoft's
The push to monetize ChatGPT is a part of OpenAI's efforts to prove investors' money won't be wasted.
"We're starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT (early thinking, nothing official to share yet)," OpenAI wrote on Discord in January, according to TechCrunch. "Our goal is to continue improving and maintaining the service, and monetization is one way we're considering to ensure its long-term viability. We're interested in chatting with some folks for ~15 min to get some early feedback."
