The infamous company, OpenAI, just launched their new privacy policy. The things that were updated include, being able to sync your contacts to see who else is using the service, ads may appear on two of the new plans launched, better age prediction, and safeguards for teens.
The most concerning addition is of course the new paid-for plans. They have stated that now, of the seven available plans, two will have ads: the “Free” and “Go” plans. The other five, “Plus”, “Pro”, “Enterprise”, “Business”, and “Education” plans do not include ads but do have other features. The payments for these plans start small but exponentially increase in payment value.
The Free plan is free, but the Go plan is $8 per month which adds to $96 a year and it allows for chatting longer, uploading more content, and get more memory for smarter replies.
The next plan Plus is $20 a month, $240 a year. It removes ads, write code, plan travels, and solve more complex problems.
The next plan is Pro which is $200 per month and a whopping $2400 a year. You get maximum memory, video creation, deploy code with Codex, and get early access to experimental features.
The Business plan is $25 a month if billed annually and $30 if billed per month, adding to $300 and $360 a year respectively. The Business plan allows for unlimited messages, produce media for presentations, data protection, share projects, and capture meeting notes with transcription.
As for the education plan, it is free for K-12 educators through June 2027. All they have to do is make an account with their school district email.
The problem behind these plans is it makes ChatGPT exclusive and far more limited than before. Making people pay $200 a month for some more memory and a few more features. ChatGPT has unfortunately become another app that basically requires a paid for subscription. A lot of apps nowadays have some kind of paywall, and it is a problem that is growing as some gatekeep features that have no reason to be hidden, and now even information usage is being paid for.
Contrarily, having a paid subscription for an AI service is not the worst because as the release of resources like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have increased, the number of students who cheat on assignments and tests have also done so exponentially. Having a paid subscription is unavailable for most students and thus more students will be required to do their work instead of plugging it into AI. However, this doesn’t limit the damage AI has and can cause. Don’t disregard AI entirely but try not to give in either. AI is the future of technology, but we need to be responsible with AI, or it might be used for the wrong reasons.
