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A $200 ChatGPT subscription could cost OpenAI $14,000 if you actually used it to its full potential (www.techspot.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 37 points 4 months ago (5 children)

This is just Gym Economics though, right? They work on the assumption that only a small number of their member will actually use the service heavily, but the overwhelming majority will turn up to use the treadmill a few times then never visit again.

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  • [–] 36 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Ok but it would take 70 users paying $200 to cover the cost of $14,000. So if one person maxes out their usage, there needs to be 69 users who do not use their account at all but are still paying. And that’s just the break even point, still no profit for the AI company.

    I’m struggling to believe that many people would pay that much and then underuse the subscription. It seems far more likely to me that this pricing model isn’t sustainable.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    For a consumer service, absolutely. That's too much money for a household to ignore and they are actually paying attention.

    For a business user? Quite possible. My company bought subscription to one of the providers for every single employee, no matter the role. A large number don't use it at all (if they do anything, it's using a chat that's either free or included with something else), and most of the rest use it lightly. We have only a handful of folks trying to use it as much as possible. Companies frequently just buy for everyone instead of micromanaging who needs or doesn't need a service.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I thought that Anthropic et al. were charging enterprise accounts based on token usage rather than just a flat subscription fee. That’s why you see things like this.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    For example, Microsoft copilot has a monthly price with a token quota and a company can choose to just make it stop working when the quota is hit.

    I think I recall other plans having at least the option of token quotas, because most companies don't want to give employees a blank check for anything. I also believe that generally the token bill is on top of a fixed monthly cost too.

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