OpenAI starts selling subscriptions to its ChatGPT bot

Details: ChatGPT will still be available for free to users who don't subscribe, but paying customers will get priority access, faster response times, and early use of new features.

The big picture: ChatGPT's popularity came at a high operating cost to OpenAI.

• The AI service uses tons of computing power and experts estimate it's costing OpenAI $100,000 a day or more to run it.
• The company has also recently won a big new investment from Microsoft, which intends to incorporate OpenAI's basic generative AI models into a range of its products, including the Bing search engine.
• Those models include both GPT-3 (which underlies ChatGPT) and the forthcoming GPT-4, which is reported to be speedier and more accurate than its predecessors.

What they're saying: "We are actively exploring options for lower-cost plans, business plans, and data packs for more availability," OpenAI said in a blog post.