Following the launch of ChatGPT Plus in February, OpenAI has made yet another move to monetize ChatGPT by rolling out an API on Wednesday. This will now enable all businesses to integrate ChatGPT into their websites, applications, products, and services.
Meant for large enterprises, these plans enable customers to pay for the allocation of compute infrastructure to run API models.
Considering the massive popularity the AI chatbot has earned, the API is likely to drive high revenues for the San Francisco-based startup. Alongside the ChatGPT API, OpenAI also launched dedicated capacity plans.
The newly launched API is likely to find uses in various areas, from eCommerce to educational apps. Shopify, Instacart, Quizlet, and Snap have already adopted it, and more companies are likely to follow. Snapchat’s recently launched chatbot My AI uses the ChatGPT API and offers a demonstration of its capabilities.
However, OpenAI President and Chairman Greg Brockman stated that the API also serves well for non-chat applications. Instacart’s new AI-powered grocery shopping experience is a perfect example. The API has been priced at $0.002 per 1,000 tokens, which should be around 750 words.
Dedicated capacity plans
The dedicated capacity plans mentioned earlier aim to allow large enterprises deeper control over system performance. Customers will not only gain full control over the instance’s load but can also enable features like expanded context limits. Larger context limits allow the engine to “remember” more text, which helps address bias and hallucination issues.
Customers with dedicated capacity plans will enjoy GPT-3.5 Turbo models with up to a 16k context window. This will quadruple the number of tokens these models can take compared to the standard GPT model.
Powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology, ChatGPT has essentially become a huge success.
The advanced AI chatbot was launched on 30th November 2022, and its number of monthly active users passed 100 million in December.
Thanks to the advanced language processing models backing it, ChatGPT quickly found plenty of usage in professional areas. As of mid-February, more than 200 eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle store had ChatGPT credited as a co-author. The actual number might be even higher, considering not all authors disclose having used ChatGPT. The AI chatbot has also been credited for at least one scientific research paper too.
OpenAI’s monetization of ChatGPT
The basic version of ChatGPT that OpenAI initially launched was free, and it remains that way. This is certainly one of the biggest contributing factors behind the chatbot’s widespread popularity and dominating success. Accessible for free to businesses, entrepreneurs, and casual users alike, it quickly became a centerpiece of attention with social media platforms flooded with ChatGPT memes.
OpenAI’s first step towards monetizing ChatGPT was the rolling out of ChatGPT Plus in February.
However, at the end of the day, OpenAI is a business (a capped-profit one, if it matters) and needs a way to monetize the chatbot. As revealed by CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT costs the company a few cents in computing costs for each chat. Considering the chatbot’s vast user base, the expenses are massive for OpenAI.
However, Brockman revealed that launching a ChatGPT API was always in the plans. Looking at the widespread adoption of ChatGPT by businesses, it’s easy to guess the lucrative profits the ChatGPT API will bring home.
