Users may wonder how long they can count on it staying free as Openai moves towards charging for more sophisticated versions of its popular chat gpp bot.
The company, which recently disclosed Microsoft's multi-billion dollar investment in its technology, has floated plans for a subscription option.
Openai is taking feedback from prospective customers about what they think the bot's offerings are worth to them, but some users are seeing a $42 monthly option.
"We will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering," the CEO of OpenAI said in December.
The evolution towards paid versions is a common framework for newer technologies, where companies may release free or low cost versions to entice users.
Marketing experts said that the model of online storage service, which offers paid plans and a free version, might give a sense of how companies may think about their own products.
Jonathan Zhang is an associate professor of marketing at Colorado State University. Strong discounts that are part of the habit tend to disappear.
Insider did not get a response from a representative for OpenAI.
Microsoft's investment in Openai could help the startup come up with tiered options, as well as develop more extensive and specialized versions of the chat game.
An assistant professor of marketing at the Kelley School of Business said that it's likely that OpenAI has a bare-bone free version of the service.
It can also consider paid versions on top of that for individuals or companies, and perhaps even figure out ways to determine pricing based on the type and amount of content a user wants to produce, and how much they'd be willing to pay for it.
The company will still benefit from keeping a free version of the software.
He said that a free version would help gather data and improve other versions of GPT.
The buzz around artificial intelligence is drawing companies to the space as computing power and other infrastructure becomes more powerful. Nick Washburn is an investor at Intel Capital.
He said that if anyone told you what the business models were behind it, they were making it up. In real time, it is being figured out.
