Software
OpenAI Might Launch ChatGPT Pro at $200 Monthly
2024-12-05
OpenAI's "12 days of shipmas" event is yet to commence, but early indications suggest a significant announcement might have already surfaced. A "feature gated" webpage on OpenAI's website refers to a "ChatGPT Pro" plan that packs in all the advantages of ChatGPT Plus along with some new delights.
Uncover OpenAI's Early Event and Subscription Plans
ChatGPT Pro: An Upgraded Subscription
According to the leaked page discovered by software engineer Tibor Blaho on X, ChatGPT Pro offers unrestricted access to all of OpenAI's models. This includes the full version of its o1 "reasoning" model, a condensed release called o1-mini, and GPT-4o. Unlike most AI, o1, o1-mini, and other reasoning models have the ability to self-fact-check, which helps them avoid common pitfalls. However, this also means they often take more time to arrive at solutions. O1 and o1-mini reason through tasks, planning ahead and performing certain actions to tease out answers. OpenAI released a preview of o1 in September and promised to bring o1-mini to all free users of ChatGPT, but this has not yet materialized.In addition to unlimited access to various features, ChatGPT Pro also includes unlimited access to Advanced Voice Mode, ChatGPT's human-like conversational feature, and a new "o1 pro mode" which "uses more compute for the best answers to the hardest questions," as per the page. O1 pro mode may simply increase the "reasoning" time the model takes before responding with an answer. In its o1 preview announcement, OpenAI aimed to experiment with o1 models that reason for hours, days, or even weeks to enhance their reasoning capabilities, and this could be a step in that direction.All these features come at a significant cost. Per the page, ChatGPT Pro starts at $200 per month or £200/€229 depending on the region. Users upgrading from ChatGPT Plus to Pro will receive a prorated credit for the remaining duration of their subscription. This makes ChatGPT Pro easily OpenAI's most expensive subscription plan to date, being 10 times the cost of ChatGPT Plus.There have long been rumors of price hikes for the premium ChatGPT. According to The New York Times, by 2029, OpenAI expects to charge $44 per month for ChatGPT Plus. The company has also considered ultra-costly business subscriptions with additional functionality and access to models under development, as per The Information.GPT-4.5: The Next Big Model?
A separate leaked webpage discovered by Blaho contains another surprise - mention of what could be OpenAI's next major model. According to the page, subscribers to OpenAI's ChatGPT Team plan will soon get access to a "limited preview" of "GPT-4.5." However, OpenAI later removed the reference to GPT-4.5 from the page. We await further clarity on this matter.