Chinanews.com, February 10th (China News Finance Wu Jiaju) ChatGPT became popular. Two months after its launch, the monthly active users at the end of January 2023 had exceeded 100 million.
The popularity of ChatGPT has aroused the enthusiasm of many people for "trial play", and at the same time, some people have made a quick fortune with it.
ChatGPT's current testing service is free, so who earns it?
middleman
Zhongxin Finance found that with the explosion of ChatGPT, WeChat has emerged a number of public accounts and small programs that contain "ChatGPT" in their names or introductions, or imply that they are related to ChatGPT.
These products claim that conversations with ChatGPT can be easily carried out through them.
There are even some products that use the same or similar avatars as the official ChatGPT icon.
It is understood that some of these products act as intermediaries between users and ChatGPT, one end is connected to the real ChatGPT, and the other end is connected to domestic users.
According to the Beijing Daily, the reporter entered a WeChat service account named after "ChatGPT". After calling the staff of the company that provided the account, the other party said that all dialogue replies sent through its platform were directly connected to the OpenAI company interface. acquired.
When faced with the reporter’s question about the charging standard, the person in charge replied, “We also need to pay OpenAI for every question and answer, and we have to pay a lot of money. The specific cost is determined by the length of the characters in the dialogue. If you have the technology Ability can also be developed by oneself.”
According to Jiemian News, the replies of some products do come from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and the developer should have connected to the ChatGPT interface to serve as a two-way connection intermediate station, forwarding the user’s questions to ChatGPT, and then forwarding the real reply to the user.
Dialogue with an official account
"Lee Ghost"
Another type of official account may be an out-and-out "Li Gui".
These official accounts may not be linked to the ChatGPT service at all, but use some other AI dialogue model.
Zhongxin Finance found that a company certified as a company in Shenzhen claimed to provide "openai-based AI question-and-answer services, such as chatgpt" public account.
The official account said in the dialogue interface that "the server returns slowly, which is caused by the slow return of the ChatGPT service." However, to the question "can you introduce yourself?" the other party replied: "Hello, my name is xxx, from Hunan , now working in Shenzhen..."
A public account certified as a certain company in Hebei wrote in the introduction that it "connects to the official interface of Open AI." When asked about introducing himself, the other party replied: "I am xxx, I am 24 years old, and I am from xxx..."
These responses are far from ChatGPT's answer to this question.
Picture from ChatGPT
Who earned it?
ChatGPT's current testing service is free, but some people earn money with ChatGPT.
Many products that contain "ChatGPT" in their names or imply that they are related to ChatGPT have adopted a model of free trial and then charging.
An official account entered by Zhongxin Finance shows "Click the link to use the Chinese version of chatgpt for free." However, before clicking on it, it displays "Your free experience today has been used up."
The VIP service provided by the official account costs: 19.9 yuan for a one-day membership, 199 yuan for a monthly renewal, and 999 yuan for an annual renewal.
Picture from a public number
According to Beijing Daily, a WeChat service account named "ChatGPT" provides users with 4 free conversation quotas.
When the free number of conversations is used up, the system will prompt you to recharge the amount before you can continue to use it. The recharge amount is divided into five levels and time limits, such as 9.99 yuan for 20 times, 199.99 yuan for 3000 times, and the highest level is 999.99 yuan for unlimited The dialogue quota is valid for one year.
Some people in the industry told the Beijing Daily reporter that after registering a ChatGPT account through the official website, the free quota provided in the account supports about 3,600 conversations between users and ChatGPT.
In contrast, among the entrances provided by domestic companies, the free dialogue quota is only 4 times, and it costs 199.99 yuan to purchase 3,000 dialogue call services, and the profit margin can be imagined.
In addition, Zhongxin Finance and Economics previously discovered that some merchants have started the business of asking questions and registering on the e-commerce platform.
When searching for "ChatGPT" on an e-commerce platform, entries including "ChatGPT account" and "ChatGPT registration" will pop up, and a certain amount of sales have been achieved.
Where did it go?
On February 9, China New Finance and Economics found that some of the official accounts previously reported by the media could no longer be found on WeChat.
Some have changed their names, such as the names related to "AI", and changed their avatars, but they still indicate in the official account that they can provide ChatGPT related services.
Some public accounts also stated that ChatGPT-related functions will be suspended.
At the same time, when searching for "ChatGPT" on the e-commerce platform on the afternoon of February 9, nothing was found.
(over)