OpenAI temporarily suspended the ChatGPT Plus upgrade
OpenAI has temporarily suspended the paid upgrade option to ChatGPT Plus, leaving users unable to upgrade for the time being. The official reason for the suspension is overwhelming demand, with no announcement as to when it will reopen.
It is understood that the subscription fee for ChatGPT Plus is $20 per month, and upgraded services include regular access during peak times, faster response times, and priority access to new features.
This news has sparked heated discussions on social platforms such as Reddit. Numerous users question whether this is a marketing tactic, closing the feature to generate conversation. Others have called on Microsoft to provide more computing resources to accommodate ChatGPT users’ needs.
Microsoft has previously invested hundreds of millions of dollars to create a dedicated supercomputer for ChatGPT, composed of thousands of NVIDIA A100s, and adjusted server architecture to provide better computing power for ChatGPT and the new Bing. However, it seems that these resources are still insufficient. Additionally, Bing experienced slow response times on Sunday, indicating that the scarcity of computing resources has become an industry-wide challenge.
Last month, individuals including Elon Musk co-signed an open letter, urging all AI laboratories to temporarily halt the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months, ensuring that humanity can effectively manage the associated risks. Two days later, Italy’s data protection authority announced a temporary ban on ChatGPT and stated that it had launched an investigation into OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
