ChatGPT: That's why the creators will soon charge 20 euros per month

In the first few months, millions of people played around with the AI, but now the company behind it is launching a subscription model.

The makers of ChatGPT are making the platform chargeable in the future. For 20 US dollars a month, paying users should get reliable access to the software in the future and get the results faster than free users - especially when the workload of the AI chat platform is high. There will also be new features for paying users, according to a blog post from the company. The offer will initially only be available in the U.S., and only then will it be expanded to other countries.

With the subscription model, the creators presumably also want to take advantage of the hype surrounding the text robot, which according to its own information has 100 million monthly users. If only a fraction of them decide to pay for the program, it could bring OpenAI, the platform's operator, an enormous windfall. Since its release, the program has been the topic of discussion in many newspapers, magazines and on TV almost every day and is considered highly controversial.

Although the text robot can summarize the content of texts extremely quickly, write cover letters for job applications or even write birthday speeches and rap lyrics, the texts are often incoherent in terms of content or logic, or the source references are incorrect. For example, when asked who the German chancellors since 1949 are, ChatGPT answers with a list at the end of which are Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet, the latter of whom lost the last federal election. There is also a dispute about whether the text robot could possibly infringe copyrights with its answers.

OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and investor Sam Altman, among others. Microsoft also invested one billion US dollars in the organization - the company wants to link its Bing search engine with ChatGPT's technology. The chatbot can imitate human conversations and, due to its good results, has already triggered debates about the future of academic homework, for example.

The algorithm is not the only well-known project to emerge from the Research Lab. The AI Dall-E, which created images from text-based user input, also became a viral success. OpenAI says its goal is to develop artificial intelligence on an open-source basis to benefit society. It is divided into the non-profit company OpenAI Inc. and the for-profit subsidiary OpenAI LP.