Updates·December 5, 2024, 22:47

OpenAI launches new $200-a-month subscription

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OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Pro, which costs ten times as much as the Plus subscription. It targets users who push the models hard and includes a special, compute-heavy version of o1.

OpenAI launched the ChatGPT Pro subscription on December 5, 2024. It costs $200 a month plus VAT or tax, making it ten times more expensive than ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month. The launch was part of OpenAI's "Shipmas" series of twelve announcements throughout December.

The subscription gives unlimited access to the o1, o1-mini and GPT-4o models, as well as Advanced Voice Mode, OpenAI's voice feature. It has not been extended to the free version of ChatGPT.

More compute for hard tasks

New in Pro is "o1 pro mode," a version of o1 that uses more compute to think longer about difficult tasks. While it works, a progress bar appears in the interface, and the user can start other conversations while the answer is being prepared.

According to OpenAI, the target group is so-called power users, meaning people who push the models to the limit in areas such as math, programming and writing. OpenAI has also promised Pro subscribers new, more powerful and more compute-intensive features. Which ones has not been disclosed.

OpenAI's own figures

At the same time, the full version of o1 can now analyze uploaded images, which the preview version o1-preview could not. According to OpenAI, the full o1 makes 34 percent fewer major errors than the preview version on difficult real-world questions. Pro mode is said to produce 75 percent fewer errors on everyday coding tasks. The figures come from OpenAI itself and have not been independently verified.

OpenAI also says that o1 pro mode performs better than o1 and o1-preview on tests in math, science and coding. However, the full o1 performs worse than the preview version on a few tests, such as MLE-Bench.

What is coming

O1 is scheduled to arrive in OpenAI's API, which developers use to build their own services, with function calling and image analysis. Browsing and file upload are to follow in the coming months.

TechCrunch links the launch to reported losses of around $5 billion a year and revenue of around $300 million a month. The figures are reported and not confirmed by OpenAI in the source.