Aiming to monetize what’s become a viral phenomenon, OpenAI today launched a new pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT, its text-generating AI that can write convincingly human-like essays, poems, emails, lyrics and more. Called ChatGPT Plus and starting at $20 per month, ChatGPT Pro delivers a number of benefits over the base-level ChatGPT, OpenAI says, including general access to ChatGPT even during peak times, faster response times and priority access to new features and improvements.

The free ChatGPT tier is here to stay — it’s not going away. As for ChatGPT Plus, it’s only available to customers in the U.S. at the moment. OpenAI says it’ll begin the process of inviting people from its waitlist in the coming months and look to expand Plus to additional countries and regions “soon.”

“We launched ChatGPT as a research preview so we could learn more about the system’s strengths and weaknesses and gather user feedback to help us improve upon its limitations,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “Since then, millions of people have given us feedback, we’ve made several important updates and we’ve seen users find value across a range of professional use cases including drafting and editing content, brainstorming ideas, programming help and learning new topics.”

ChatGPT Plus might be the first of several plans to come, OpenAI hints. In the blog post, the company says that it’s “actively exploring” options for lower-cost plans, business plans and data packs in addition to an API.

“We love our free users and will continue to offer free access to ChatGPT. By offering this subscription pricing, we will be able to help support free access availability to as many people as possible,” the company continued. “We plan to refine and expand this offering based on your feedback and needs.”

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, starting at $20 per month by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch