For its 200 million weekly active users worldwide, ChatGPT is an invention of convenience. In seconds, the tool can offload hours of menial work in coding, writing and studying, just a few of the product’s many applications.
But as the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, bids to become a for-profit corporation for the first time, users are starting to seriously evaluate if they would pay to use the free platform if it becomes paywalled, or worse, riddled with advertisements.
In September, Reuters reported that OpenAI planned to restructure itself from a nonprofit to a for-profit benefit corporation, a break from its founding mission to conduct artificial intelligence research without financial obligations to stakeholders. While this change hasn’t been executed yet, Bloomberg reported last month that OpenAI was in talks with the California attorney general’s office to change its corporate structure.
However, it is unclear how ChatGPT might transform under a new, for-profit OpenAI.
ChatGPT currently operates on a freemium model, offering a free version of its large language model (LLM) that individuals can access with restrictions and caps on the number of times the features can be used. For individuals, there is also the “Plus” plan, which costs $20 a month, and the “Pro” plan, which lists at the significantly heftier price point of $200 a month.
Celia Quillian, a creator who teaches followers how to implement ChatGPT and AI in their lives through her TikTok page @smartworkAI, said she doesn’t anticipate a for-profit OpenAI will alter the free aspect of the freemium model.
“It’s better for them to give something away for free, so that people that really enjoy using it at a higher extent and need those more premium features will trial it, try it, and then upgrade,” Quillian said.
Quillian noted that ChatGPT’s LLM competitors, which include Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Claude, will likely keep many of their features free, putting pressure on OpenAI to continue doing the same.
Angela Virtu, a professorial lecturer at American University’s Kogod School of Business, agreed that ChatGPT will keep a freemium model — but anticipates that OpenAI might raise prices on the premium plans, as well as begin adding advertisements to the free chatbot.
“In my mind, that’s where they would make the most money, because they have all of this knowledge about all the individual users, an unprecedented amount that is going to rival the social networks,” Virtu said.
ChatGPT for education
As the workforce increasingly adapts to using AI tools to aid in various fields, such as legal, health care and consulting work, universities across the U.S. are also making concerted efforts to introduce students to generative AI implementation in schoolwork. For instance, Northwestern University announced it would provide free ChatGPT 4.0 access to students, faculty and staff at the start of the 2024-2025 academic school year.
Virtu said she encourages students to leverage generative AI to brainstorm assignments or debug code.
“If our students don’t get exposure to this technology in school, to start learning the balance and understanding the ethical implementations and responsible use of it, they’re not going to be prepared for the workforce,” Virtu said.
OpenAI also launched ChatGPT Edu in May, a version of ChatGPT built to “responsibly bring AI to campus,” according to OpenAI’s webpage.
Xiaoming Zhai, director of the AI4STEM Education Center at the University of Georgia, said that while he believes ChatGPT Edu is a big step forward for students, parents and teachers concerned about data privacy issues, cost may be hindering OpenAI from tailoring more of their product’s efforts to focus on education.
“I do wish that OpenAI would open some opportunity or program to use their models in school settings. Hopefully that can be free for students, so that it can really make a difference to education,” Zhai said.
Will Tuggle, a junior at George Washington University, occasionally uses ChatGPT to review concepts his professors discuss in class or to generate random trivia questions to quiz his friends. But as a polyglot, Tuggle said he mainly uses the AI chatbot to practice and learn languages — namely Japanese, the language he is currently focusing on mastering.
However, Tuggle believes that utilizing the chatbot alone will not help students to accurately learn the native speech and culture surrounding language.
“If you learn French from a textbook, it’s going to be so formal. But when you go and ask someone a question on the street, they’re not going to speak that way,” Tuggle said. “I think the big thing that the AI is missing is the absence of a listening function.”
While generative AI may not be a fully competent tool to solely support students wishing to learn foreign languages, Tuggle believes that ChatGPT’s integration into education is generally positive. However, he is uncertain about whether he would ever pay for access to ChatGPT’s more premium features in light of the for-profit restructuring.
“It’s a great tool to use, but it’s not the end of the world if it becomes less accessible to everyone, because there are still so many great resources out there,” Tuggle said.
