Fewer Americans are paying for AI. Should I do that? : NPR

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Kirby Plessas does not have an AI subscription. She has two.

Outside of work, the self-proclaimed technophile has used chatbots to plan family parties, tweak cocktail recipes, and even diagnose a broken wine cooler motherboard. All of the help Plessas is getting from AI justifies the $40 per month she pays for both OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

“I believe that within a year, I’ll probably be subscribing to Claude as well,” she said.

But she believes free AI is enough for most people. And, judging by their spending, Americans agree.

just about 3% of households It paid for AI in February, using the most recent numbers available from the Bank of America Research Institute, which studies consumer trends based on bank customer transactions.

Although the number of individual subscribers remains small, many workplaces and universities subscribe. do Pay for AI services — their ranks are growing rapidly. According to the institute, the number of households that completed their payments in February increased by about 10% compared to the previous year.

“If you think back to Netflix and streaming services, they were growing quite slowly in the beginning,” said Sekur Krastev, co-founder of Decision Lab, a behavioral science-focused research firm. Krasteve said paying for AI is still not common.

“Once that status quo is established, subscriptions will definitely start to grow exponentially, just like we’ve seen with streaming services,” he said.

Presas said: “The idea is that we will all become addicted to using AI, so if the free stuff goes away, everyone will have to pay.”

Save even more with a subscription

Even if they anxiety Most Americans use AI when it comes to how it impacts their daily lives. In fact, one study found that 51% of Americans say they use AI to research things they’re interested in. Quinnipiac poll Released in March.

they just use free version. Most AI platforms offer them to some extent. For example, OpenAI allows users to submit a default model. 10 messages every 5 hours before starting with a weaker version.

“You get a little notification that says, ‘You’re out of time,'” says Pam Dean, who currently subscribes to both ChatGPT and Claude. “You get stuck in the middle of something and then you can’t continue.”

The main selling point for subscribers is the ability to ask smarter models more often and more questions. A $20 monthly ChatGPT Plus subscription allows users to send up to 1,280 messages per day before downgrading.

Subscribers also have access to more advanced features, such as the ability to create customized versions of ChatGPT to suit their specific needs.

In preparation for his move from Los Angeles to Mexico, Jim Arnold created a ChatGPT version of “Francisco” to serve as his Spanish tutor. Francisco corrects Arnold’s Spanish and converses with him through his computer’s speakers. Arnold nudged Francisco to speak more slowly and pause longer before responding. This gave Arnold a chance to think of a suitable Spanish word before Francisco interrupted.

Still, Arnold had never tried the free version of ChatGPT and wondered if it was worth the money. So he asked the AI. “And of course, you know, ChatGPT’s answer was, you should make sure you protect what you’re doing,” Arnold said.

The current version of ChatGPT remains free…

OpenAI has approximately 50 million subscribers. Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, believes there is room to quadruple the number of paying users.

Still, subscribers will always be a minority of those who use ChatGPT, Turley said. He said the company’s mission is to keep this technology accessible for the benefit of everyone, “and one of the ways we do that is by making sure people have access to it for free.”

Turley said ChatGPT subscriptions were not created for revenue, but to allow people to continue using the site. AI requires expensive computing power, so in the early days after ChatGPT’s launch, putting up a subscription paywall allowed the company to meet demand while providing deeper access to those willing to pay.

“We weren’t trying to make money,” Turley said of the subscription launch. But he added, “It’s also a really nice side effect of generating revenue and building a great business.”

…but you may have to pay for the next version

Turley believes it’s likely that OpenAI will always offer a free version of ChatGPT. But he’s not promising a free version of the eventual successor.

It will likely be agent AI, a type of AI that can operate on its own to perform tasks on behalf of a user or organization. Think about an AI agent that plans your vacation or does the shopping for you.

OpenAI already offers agent services, but Turley envisions a version that would function more like a personal assistant and figure out how to improve your life while you’re away from your screen. And that assistant may be so sophisticated and expensive to run that it has to stay behind a paywall.

“If we do our job right, a lot of people will want to pay and subscribe,” Turley said.

Can AI companies use advertising?

AI companies have an alternative option to cover the cost of their services: advertising. That’s why many of the biggest websites, like Facebook, have kept their services free for years.

But Jeff Hancock, director of Stanford University’s Center for Technology Impact Policy, said there’s a reason AI companies are cautious about adopting advertising models: “People hate it.”

Ads give social media companies an incentive to keep users scrolling. The more time you spend, the more ads you watch. And endless scrolling has raised concerns about people’s mental health and attention spans.

“People don’t like how social media is integrated into our lives now,” Hancock says.

A second reason to be careful about advertising adoption is because AI is a different type of technology than social media platforms, he said. The kind of AI personal assistants Turley described would ideally work in the background, so users would actually be spending money. few Due to the amount of time spent looking at screens, it is not a good fit for business models where the main revenue is derived from viewing advertisements.

“AI platforms have the potential to create completely different economic models, driven by the motivation of, ‘Is this useful?’” Hancock said.

Sarah Womer subscribes to several AI platforms. In fact, she rotates her subscriptions with different AIs, and says each has its own benefits and personality. “Just like ice cream is not limited to one flavor, AI is not limited to one flavor,” Woomer said.

She prefers using OpenAI when booking vacations. However, Open AI Advertising pilot Woomer worries that AI companies could skew models to favor advertisers.

in Statement from OpenAI When the ad test began in February, the company promised that ads would be clearly labeled and would not influence ChatGPT responses. Users and ads will be matched based on “topics of conversation, past chats, and past interactions with ads,” according to a statement. But even those promises didn’t reassure Woomer. So when it comes to AI-powered research for products you want to try, like the best red light face masks, instead subscribe to Kagi, an AI and search engine platform that boasts privacy standards and no ads.

AI may be paid through bundles

Although ChatGPT launched less than four years ago, the revenue model for AI services remains very fluid.

Global investment advisory firm BlackRock held a national infrastructure summit in March, where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman floated the idea that AI services could: sold like electricity – Basically, you bill your customers based on usage.

Companies could also bundle AI with other subscriptions, such as Amazon Prime or internet services, said Greg Portell, lead partner at consulting firm Kearney.

He thinks this is likely because Americans are already tired of subscriptions. Rather than having consumers sign up for another monthly fee, it would be easier to just add it to the fee they’re already paying.

“Every consumer is saying they have too many subscriptions, but every subscription provider is looking at how they can bundle them together,” Portel said.

Of course, many Americans already use paid versions of AI at work. These corporate accounts often have restrictions on personal use, but Portel believes that in the future, those restrictions will be lifted in the workplace. Perhaps being paid for the job for personal access to Claude or Gemini is a perk for new employees.

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