SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI may drop unlimited ChatGPT subscription plans as it rethinks how it charges for the service. Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, said, "There's no world in which pricing doesn't significantly evolve when the technology is changing this quickly."

He added, "Obviously I want to be really thoughtful about the way that we evolve our plans."

ChatGPT offers a free version with usage limits. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month and offers higher usage limits, and ChatGPT Pro costs $200 per month and unlocks faster performance and unlimited prompts.

Turley described how the company arrived at paid plans, saying, "We stumbled into subscriptions." Subscriptions were introduced to manage overwhelming demand for ChatGPT.

The ChatGPT large language model was initially launched as a temporary demo. OpenAI planned to shut it down after a month.

Turley compared unlimited AI usage to another utility, saying, "It's possible that in the current era, having an unlimited plan is like having an unlimited electricity plan." He added, "It just doesn't make sense."

OpenAI is exploring how to better align pricing with usage while still expanding access. Turley said, "North star is access," as the company considers changes to its plans.

OpenAI is also experimenting with advertising to reach users who may not be able to pay for subscriptions. Turley said he would be "incredibly surprised if it didn't change, given the magnitude and profoundness of the technical breakthroughs that we've had and the product breakthroughs that follow."

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, described another way AI services could be priced, saying, "AI could be sold like electricity — metered by usage — as demand for the technology surges." Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said the company is already talking about charging per agent rather than per user as AI becomes a coworker.

Major tech companies are set to spend hundreds of billions of dollars this year on compute to meet the soaring demand for AI.

Other parts of the AI market already use usage-based billing, with cloud and model providers like Anthropic and Google pricing many services on a pay-as-you-go, per-token basis. Vendors in services and consulting like Globant are experimenting with token bundles and AI Pods — monthly subscriptions that include a token allotment — to align revenue with usage rather than hours.