OpenAI is apparently sort of floating trial balloons as to what their business model should be for ChatGPT. We’ve seen the free teaser access garner huge interest, and the huge MS follow-on investments. Both of those lead to finding a way of deriving income. Thus there’s now the experiment with a $20 a month plan CGPT Plus…while continuing the free access…testing what model of subscription might work.
It won’t be the last test, and they seem likely to offer tiers of service sometime in the future. It also remains to be seen what the market will offer as competition for users of similar tech.