"Crazy" – OpenAI makes losses with ChatGPT Pro

It's crazy, writes Sam Altman in a post on X. The CEO of OpenAI explains there that the company is losing money due to the more expensive subscription, ChatGPT Pro. Access costs 200 US dollars a month and includes the option to create videos with Sora, among other things. "People are using a lot more than we expected."

OpenAI is generally in financial difficulties. Subscriptions generate significantly less money than the company has in expenses. These are covered by financing from other companies and investors. On the one hand, the development of new AI models costs a lot of money. This is made up of the required hardware, employees and energy costs, plus the costs for the data, such as licensed content from publishers. The training of GPT-4 is said to have cost around 80 million US dollars in 2023. This figure has not been confirmed. Google's largest model from the Gemini family is said to cost 200 million US dollars.

And then there are the costs associated with using the models. Every request consumes energy. This also seems to be a problem for OpenAI, as Altman writes.

OpenAI's subscriptions: Altman has come up with the price

There is currently free access to ChatGPT, where the chatbot uses the AI model GPT-3.5. For 20 US dollars a month, you get access to GPT-4 or GPT-4 Turbo. The o1, o1-mini and GPT-4o models are included in the subscription for 200 US dollars. All of them are said to be significantly better at reasoning than their predecessors. Reasoning means they are supposed to be better at logical thinking and therefore produce better answers. According to OpenAI, the more expensive service is actually of interest to people who want to use AI in the areas of development and research.

The ChatGPT Pro service also allows you to make unlimited requests. This is otherwise limited. You get access to the Advanced Voice Mode, i.e. the latest version of the voice mode, which can respond in real time. You can also use the Sora video generator to create 500 videos per month, with a limited length. ChatGPT Plus allows 50 videos per month.

Altman now says that he came up with the price for the Pro service himself and that he thought he could make money with it. Apparently this is not the case. But why Altman is now communicating this publicly is questionable. However, the company and the CEO tend to communicate a lot. They often focus on the danger of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which appears to be a marketing strategy.

Altman writes itself into the new year

In a blog post, Altman also wrote about how difficult it is to build a company from scratch. He thinks back to the beginning of the year. They had so little experience before ChatGPT became so big. Conflicts and misunderstandings are common in such a rapidly growing environment. He is referring to his own brief dismissal and writes that it was a chain of unfortunate circumstances. But it was also a nightmare for him. He does not mention the numerous departures; many employees have left OpenAI, started their own business or moved to competitor Anthropic.

He also writes that they are much better at developing things than naming them. And Altman believes that OpenAI now knows how to build an AGI – in the traditional understanding of an AGI, i.e. an all-encompassing intelligence that is smarter than humans. What's more, they want to create a superintelligence.

(emw)