The text machine ChatGPT gets a subscription business model after a completely free test phase. For $20 a month, paying customers should get reliable access to the software and faster results, even when workloads are high. Another advantage is early access to future new features and improvements, as the developer company OpenAI announced in a blog entry.

ChatGPT is artificial intelligence-based software trained on massive amounts of text and data to mimic human speech. OpenAI made ChatGPT publicly available last year, sparking both admiration and concern for the software's capabilities.

ChatGPT is so good at mimicking human speech that there are concerns, among other things, that it could be used to cheat on schoolwork or create large-scale disinformation campaigns. This week, OpenAI therefore presented a program that is supposed to recognize text written by computers.

The large rush of users over the past few weeks has temporarily overloaded the system. ChatGPT Plus customers should have no problems with this. The subscription model will initially only be available in the USA, but will be introduced in other countries "soon". ChatGPT emphasized that there should continue to be free access to the software. The subscription income should finance it for as many users as possible. OpenAI also has a multi-billion dollar deal with Microsoft, in which the group embeds the company's programs into its cloud platform.