OpenAI has launched a new ChatGPT “pro mode,” which gives users more reliable answers for $200 a month.
Subscribers get unlimited access to the tech giant’s “smartest” model yet – OpenAI o1 – along with o1-mini, GPT-4o and Advanced Voice. Crucially, the deal also includes o1 pro mode, which uses more computing power to provide better answers to difficult problems.
What Is ChatGPT Pro?
Currently, all paid ChatGPT users can already access the “reasoning” model, o1, but you need the ChatGPT Pro subscription to get access to the latest and best version, o1 pro mode.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its hefty price tag (ten times the price of ChatGPT Plus), OpenAI were keen to stress the improved capability of the newest version.
The company released a series of charts outlining how o1 pro mode outperformed o1, and o1-preview, in tasks including competition math, coding, and answering PhD-level science questions.
“ChatGPT Pro provides a way for researchers, engineers, and other individuals who use research-grade intelligence daily to accelerate their productivity and be at the cutting edge of advancements in AI,” Open AI said in an official statement.
The new version “thinks longer” to produce more reliable and comprehensive answers to difficult problems.
Max Schwarzer, from OpenAI, spoke in a YouTube video uploaded on December 5 about the news. He said: “One problem piece of feedback we received about o1 preview constantly was that it was way too slow – it would think for 10 seconds if you said ‘Hi’ to it, and we fixed that.”
Max added: “o1 will now think much more intelligently, if you ask it a simple question it’ll respond really quickly, and if you ask it a really hard question it’ll think for a really long time.”
He told viewers that the model made major mistakes about 34% less often than o1 preview while processing information about 50% faster.
Pro users can access the new functionality by selecting “o1 pro mode” in the model picker. Unfortunately for ChatGPT power users, the more reliable answers will take longer to generate. It may simply be that the o1 pro model ups the “reasoning” time it takes before replying. While the responses are being produced, a progress bar will be displayed, and users will get an in-app notification when they’re ready.
OpenAI revealed they would award ten grants of ChatGPT Pro to medical researchers at top US institutions.
Summary
It will be interesting to see how OpenAI’s new $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro subscription influences the adoption of AI in professional and research environments.
It certainly signals OpenAI’s push to position itself as a product that is capable of meeting high-stake business demands.