Earlier today, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly subscription for its flagship chatbot. This release is the first of many expected over the next 12 days, as the San Francisco startup has a series of announcements planned to roll out starting today.
Everything from OpenAI’s $20 monthly subscription is included in this price tier, as well as significantly more access to the GPT-4o and o1 artificial intelligence models. With a ChatGPT Pro subscription — which will cost $2,400 for a full year — users can also use an exclusive model from OpenAI called o1 pro mode that has more computing power to process responses.
“Power users of ChatGPT, at this point, they’re really using it a lot, and they want more computing than $20 can buy,” CEO Sam Altman said during the video broadcast announcing the new premium tier. Although the high price tag may come as a shock to many consumers, this subscription is aimed at hyper-committed users who want almost unlimited access, and at researchers who will potentially experiment with using ChatGPT for more complex, intensive tasks.
No change to the pricing of OpenAI’s other subscription plans was announced, and the free option remains available. The startup’s first subscription option for its consumer chatbot, called ChatGPT Plus, originally launched last February for $20 a month, and remains that price for now. At the Plus level, users unlock most of ChatGPT’s new features and generative AI models. These subscribers are also not rate limited as much by OpenAI as free users. How many ChatGPT requests users can make per day, or the amount of time they can spend messing around with ChatGPT’s best voice interface, is determined by their subscription level.
The company is targeting its new $200 monthly subscription at those who use OpenAI’s generative AI model for more technical work. “People will find o1 pro mode the most useful for hard math, science, or programming problems,” Jason Wei, an OpenAI researcher, said during the video stream. WIRED has yet to test a ChatGPT Pro subscription firsthand to see how it handles these types of requests, though I look forward to testing the tool as part of helping readers better understand its strengths and limitations, similar to our previous work with ChatGPT Plus , as well as its specific features, such as Advanced Voice Mode and AI web browsing.
Although subscribers to ChatGPT Pro receive what OpenAI calls “unlimited access” to the o1 model, the GPT-4o model, and the Advanced Voice Mode feature, the startup is clear that its terms of use still apply. So actions like sharing an account between multiple people or using the Pro plan to run your own service are not allowed and may get your account banned. Users can request a refund for the $200 subscription within the first two weeks of purchasing it if they are unsatisfied by going through OpenAI’s online help center.
In addition to ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI announced that the o1 model, which focuses on “reasoning” capabilities and multi-step processing of user input, is no longer in limited preview. According to the startup, this fully released o1 model responds faster to questions, can now accept images as input, and makes fewer errors. The startup plans to add web browsing and file upload capabilities to ChatGPT’s o1 option in the future.
As the end of the year approaches, OpenAI is expected to continue to launch new AI features. Reporting from The Verge suggests that these annual releases may include OpenAI’s highly anticipated generative AI video model, Sora. It’s possible that some of these upcoming announcements could also provide more insight into how Altman thinks about AI agents, tools that can potentially perform online tasks on your behalf, and the company’s focus going into 2025.