OpenAI is introducing a higher-priced paid tier for its chatbot ChatGPT that includes unlimited access to its most powerful artificial intelligence models, including an improved version of its software that can perform human-like reasoning tasks.
The new ChatGPT Pro option, announced in a livestreamed event on Thursday, will cost $200 a month and offer access to an expanded version of o1, its reasoning model. OpenAI previously introduced a preview of the model in September, but the company said the new version is faster and better at solving competitive math and code problems.
Like other AI companies, OpenAI has been working to convince customers and businesses to pay for its software and help offset the high costs of building cutting-edge artificial intelligence models. OpenAI also offers a ChatGPT Plus subscription for $20 a month, a tenth of the cost of the new option.
OpenAI, Google and other AI companies have also been working to build more sophisticated artificial intelligence systems that can field complex queries by taking extra time to compute an answer. The process, which the industry has taken to calling reasoning, could help improve the performance of leading AI systems at a time when OpenAI and some of its rivals are seeing diminishing returns from their costly efforts to build better models.
The announcement kicked off what OpenAI said will be 12 days of livestreamed product events. In a post on X Wednesday, OpenAI said it’s planning “a bunch of new things, big and small.”
