ChatGPT Premium is waiting in the wings

Jan 12, 2023

Apps

If you’re one of the countless individuals who have become well-acquainted with OpenAI’s newest utility, you’re in for a bit of a shock. The artificial intelligence think tank suggested this week that it would start charging users to experience ChatGPT soon. In the company’s own words, it’s ‘starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT” as one of the ways to “ensure [the tool’s] long-term viability.’

We all sort of knew that the utility wasn’t going to be free forever, such advanced tools rarely are. If you aren’t familiar with ChatGPT yet, it's basically an artificial intelligence and deep learning tool that processes words for the purpose of entertainment. While you can use the tool to write articles, screenplays, and even novels, its primary function is to demonstrate the power and sophistication of neural networks and the deep learning model. ChatGPT is what we refer to as a large language model, and as such, it’s been trained on stupendous amounts of data related to language and human communication. The tool gives the impression that it is a sentient being on the other end of the screen, but, in reality, it’s simply clever coding, countless hours of training, and an advanced process known as Natural Language Processing (NLP).

According to OpenAI, the version of the software it intends to monetize will be called ChatGPT Professional. This information was gleaned from a Discord server where OpenAI posted a waitlist link. The form included in the link poses all sorts of questions, such as ‘At what price (per month) would you consider ChatGPT to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?’

OpenAI also outlines the benefits of this new ChatGPT Professional utility in the waitlist. Some of these include no blackout windows, no unlimited messages to the utility, and no throttling. Throttling, here, means the act of purposefully limiting the available bandwidth so that internet speeds slow down. This is a common practice amongst mobile carriers and Internet Service Providers. Basically, if you choose to pay for ChatGPT Professional, you won’t be subjected to any annoying delays in processing.

However, as the professional utility is still only in the experimental stages, we don’t expect it to be made available to a wider audience any time soon. Should you deem this service essential enough in your personal or work life that you’d consider paying for it, sign the waitlist and you may be one of the first individuals notified when it releases for testing. Should you be selected, OpenAI will reach out to you to set up a payment plan and give you access to the pilot program.

We don’t know exactly how this new utility will affect the base version of ChatGPT. However, seeing as the professional variant is still in testing, we can assume that it’s going to be more fluent, knowledgeable, and proficient at its job. Enjoy your time with ChatGPT while you still can, because we can’t say how long it’ll still be available as a free service.