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ChatGPT has no doubt become a viral sensation and OpenAI’s chatbot is also one of the fastest services to get to 100 million users in just three months. But it’s not all perfect as there are times when ChatGPT continues to face downtime, given the sheer overload thanks to so many users. This is also why the company recently launched a monthly subscription plan called ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20. But what exactly is ChatGPT Plus, how does one sign up or get access and what does it offer? Let’s take a closer look today.
According to OpenAI’s blog post, this is a ‘pilot’ subscription, which will offer “faster response speeds and priority access to new features.” The response time is not affected even when OpenAI’s ChatGPT servers are facing a high demand, which has been a problem. In fact, when ChatGPT was just rolled out, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had tweeted that the cost of running these queries– which are carried out on cloud servers– is high– and they have to look at monetising the service in some way. This is also why the subscription has likely been launched.
No, the free version still remains. So you can continue using that for daily tasks if that’s what you are doing right now.
The paid version is not open to all for now. OpenAI says it is inviting users in small groups for now, and this is based on “capacity and availability.” There’s no exact time on when one will get their invite for now. Users can sign up on a Google doc form to get on the waitlist. The form is available on the company’s website. OpenAI says it plans to roll out paid subscriptions to all users eventually, though it is starting with those in the United States first.
OpenAI will let users cancel the subscription at any time, just like any other service. Just click on My Account in the sidebar of ChatGPT, followed by ‘Manage by subscription’. They will be taken to the Stripe checkout page where they can ‘Cancel Plan. can select “Cancel Plan”. OpenAI recommends that “to avoid being charged for your next billing period, cancel your subscription at least 24 hours before your next billing date.” Fees once paid are non-refundable.
Also if your account is terminated for violating OpenAI’s Terms of Use, users will not get a refund as such. OpenAI is only accepting credit cards at the moment for this service.
Microsoft’s Bing Search will also offer a chatbot which is powered by the same technology powering ChatGPT. But Microsoft says the model they are using in Bing Search is bigger than the one being used to power ChatGPT– which is GPT 3.5. Microsoft has not confirmed whether this is the much rumoured GPT-4 model, which is supposed to be much bigger than GPT 3. Still, Microsoft claims, Bing Search’s chat and AI features require a waitlist as well for now. Hopefully, the wider public testing will be announced soon.
