During the first day of OpenAI’s holiday-themed campaign, “12 Days of AI,” the company launched its most expensive subscription plan yet. The new ChatGPT Pro tier is ten times the price of ChatGPT Plus, and it comes with the latest o1 Pro model along with some other features.
The o1 model has been available to Plus users for a while now as a preview. With the announcement of the ChatGPT Pro, open AI also removed o1 from the preview. This means all paid users can access the release version of the o1 model. According to a ZDNet report, the final o1 model makes mistakes 34 percent less frequently and responds 50 percent faster to user prompts.
o1 is not a successor to 4o as they function differently and are suitable for different tasks. o1 is mainly used for complex science and math problems that require reasoning. o1 pro builds on that by offering more computing resources to allow more advanced reasoning.
In its blog post, OpenAI used benchmarks to show how o1 Pro is capable of reasoning through “PhD-level science questions” along with “competition math” and “competition code.”
Now, is o1 Pro worth the $200 monthly subscription? Just on its own? Maybe not. However, o1 Pro is not the only thing this Pro plan includes. ChatGPT Pro will also give you unlimited access to all the current models (o1, o1 pro, o1-mini, 4o), advanced voice, and more features that are still being announced. They already announced on day 3 of the OpenAI event that their new AI-generated video platform, SORA, will be available to the Plus and Pro subscribers.
The capabilities of these models can help large-scale operations, and we believe that is the target audience for this plan. It’s mainly aimed at research, computer science, and engineering professionals. However, with that price tag, it clearly isn’t for the individual user. So, businesses that deal with research, data science, and software. Other than that, it can also be used to streamline and automate office tasks.
OpenAI also wants to add “more powerful, compute-intensive productivity features” to this plan. The promise of future updates is not really a valid reason to spend $2400 a year. But with all it offers now, the price does not sound too bad. However, it is also important to figure out if ChatGPT Pro will add any real value to your work that you cannot achieve with a plan that is 1/10th of the price.