After Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan charged a fee, iFlytek Spark, Tongyi Qianwen, 360 Zhinao, etc.AI Big Model, will they follow suit? After all, ChatGPT4.0, MidJourney, etc. have long begun to refuse "free rides".
However, many users of these paid AI models share the bill. But in the process of sharing, they are not only prone to "slipping away" and "taking advantage of the situation" scams, but also prone to information leakage, access jams, and over-limit usage.
Even though there are risks of being defrauded and having a discounted user experience, more young users still choose to join group-buying memberships in order to save money and computing power. Finding someone to recharge on their behalf or integrating interfaces, although also risky, has become the choice of some people.
Nowadays, AI big models are becoming a rigid need for many people, and with the broad market prospects, some free big models seem to be showing signs of being charged.
As the charging trend comes, user experience seems to have become the core competitiveness for domestic large model manufacturers; after all, if the AI large model is not easy to use, it will not be used next time.
Group buying encounters harvest
In order to improve productivity, the AI model for group buying was created. However, before productivity could be improved, its IQ was ridiculed. What is the reason?
Recently, college student Xixi wanted to try ChatGPT4.0. In order to save money, she shared an account with an online friend and paid the other party 50 yuan every month. Unexpectedly, less than a week later, when Xixi logged in again, she found that the other party had changed the account password and performed cyber escape. No matter how Xixi shouted online, the other party remained silent.
This kind of "get away with it" scam has made many big model group buying users realize the evil of human nature; and more AI big model scams adopt the "take advantage of the situation" approach.
For example, netizen A Zuo told Brother Pan: "I spent 150 yuan to group order GPT4.0, but my account was blocked after three days of use. I contacted the other party to apply for a partial refund, but was told that those whose accounts were blocked in China would not receive a refund from openAI."
In this regard, programmer Xiaowen told Brother Pang: "This is most likely a scammer. I have been blocked before, and then I received two emails from openAI, one indicating that the account was at risk of being blocked, and the other indicating that the membership fee would be refunded to the payment account."
At the same time, Xiaowen also said: "Many large model makers are scams. The seller deliberately lets the account be blocked, and then the merchant refunds the money to his account, but he will not refund it to the people who placed the order. As for those who say that they will compensate you if the account is blocked, it depends on the price they offer, because it is not certain how many people are placing the order."
As for how sellers can make their accounts more vulnerable to being blocked, Xiaowen told Brother Pang: “Frequently switching login IP addresses may be judged as risky by the system, which may eventually lead to the account being blocked.”
On the other hand, Zuo also told Brother Pang: "If the seller uses a black card to pay, but the merchant does not actually receive the money, or if the money is paid by improper means such as gift cards, it may lead to the merchant blocking the account."
Is the shared rental experience good?
In addition to the possibility of fraud, the large-scale AI model for group buying does not seem to provide a good experience for normal users. Brother Pang communicated with many users and found that there are three main drawbacks:
First of all, it is easy to leak personal privacy.
Because AI large model accounts are shared, your usage records can easily be discovered by other teammates, resulting in personal privacy leaks.
For example, when Brother Pan was writing, he borrowed the account of his colleague Wen Xin Yi Yan and found that in his question and answer record, he had asked Wen Xin Yi Yan for his opinion on a hot search event.
On the other hand, in the drawing tool MidJourney, only the $60 per month package has the privacy protection function. If group-buying users upload private photos during the drawing process, they can easily be discovered by their partners.
Secondly, access speed will be slowed down during peak hours when users are busy.
Sharing an account with others and logging in at the same time is a taboo. If several group-buying users use the AI big model at the same time, not only will the access speed be slowed down, but the Q&A conversations of others will also interfere with themselves, affecting the efficiency of using the big model.
In this regard, user Anan told Pango: "Unless the seller purchases a large number of accounts and sets a lot of keys, the peak access will definitely be stuck."
Finally, if multiple people share an account, the limit may be reached.
For example, user Doubao told Pangge: "According to the existing Plus limit, GPT4.0 can only answer 50 times within three hours. If others use the shared account many times, it will not be available to you."
Xiaowen also told Brother Pang: "It is not recommended to share an account with strangers because you don't know if he is using it 24 hours a day." At the same time, Brother Pang also learned that GPT may launch a team service in the future for multiple people to use together.
This province should save money and spend money
Since finding someone to share a bill with may result in being defrauded, and the user experience is not good when sharing a room, why do many young users still take the risk to find a partner? Brother Pang found that this seems to reflect the idea of young people, "ride a bicycle to the bar, save where you can and spend where you can."
Brother Pang learned that: the current GPT4.0 users need to pay $19.9 per month; Wenxin Yiyan 4.0 is priced at 59.9 yuan per month, and 49.9 yuan per month for a continuous subscription; MidJourney, an AI drawing tool,lowest$10 per month for 200 drawings.
If you are looking for a ride partner online, GPT4.0 costs 50 yuan per month, and an account can be shared by three or four people; Wenxin Yiyan costs 25 yuan per month, and MidJourney costs 30 yuan per month, both of which are much cheaper than individual accounts.
At the same time, young people don’t want the computing power of large AI models to be wasted easily. For example, one netizen said: “The MidJourney package I bought can generate up to 200 pictures per month, which is completely useless. I might as well share it with others.”
On the other hand, some netizens said: "I use GPT4.0 just to polish my paper. There is no need to buy an exclusive membership for it. I won't use it many times anyway."
In addition to the group-buying AI model, some users have found new ways to pay.
Brother Pan discovered that on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Pinduoduo, there are sellers who recharge memberships of GPT, Wenxin Yiyan, etc. Among them, the monthly card of Wenxin Yiyan is priced at less than 20 yuan, which is much cheaper than the official one.
On the other hand, there are sellers selling integrated interfaces, so users do not have to purchase large AI models separately, such as GPT, MidJourney, iFlytek Spark, Wenxin Yiyan, Tongyi Qianwen, etc. Now they are integrated into one and can be used whenever they want.
However, this kind of "unconventional" membership seems to have hidden secrets. For example, user Mi Xi told Brother Pang: "I found someone to top up GPT4.0 for me, but my account was blocked after half a month of use. I chased the seller to refund my 29 yuan."
At the same time, netizen Mian Mian also told Brother Pang: "I have accounts on both GPT and MidJourney. The total cost is more than 400 yuan a month, and the integrated version is only 200 yuan. If there is no other profit channel, the seller will probably run away after the user growth decreases."
AI big model, start the race
It seems that various services surrounding AI big models have gradually become a business; however, there are also some "freeloaders" who are not interested in paid big models and are only looking for free versions.
For example, after Wenxin Yiyan became charged, many netizens said that they still have version 3.5 to use; however, many Wenxin Yiyan 4.0 users said that the two experiences are completely different.
Brother Pan talked with several Wenxin Yiyan members and found that version 4.0 was indeed significantly better than 3.5 in terms of question-answering, drawing, etc.; for example, Wenxin Yiyan was also required to draw a "running athlete". Compared with the paid version 4.0, the work of 3.5 was so hilarious that it made people laugh.
Today, AI big models are in full swing, and the scale of users is constantly increasing. At the Wuzhen Summit in early November, Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng said: "Since the launch of Wenxin Yiyan, the scale of users has reached 70 million, covering 4,300 scenarios."
Also in early November, Altman, founder of openAI, said at the press conference: "Since the release of GPT, it has more than 100 million weekly active users and more than 2 million developers. Among the Fortune 500 companies, 92% companies are using this product."
AI big models such as iFlytek Spark and Tongyi Qianwen have had more than 10 million users since their release, and have served hundreds of thousands of corporate users; the domestic AI big model track seems to have entered a blowout period.
Perhaps, it is precisely because of the vast market demand that Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan announced that it would charge fees, in order to recover research and development costs while improving user experience; and other domestic large model manufacturers may also plan to charge fees.
After all, the R&D cost of large AI models is not low, and after rapid growth, each company will eventually face the issue of user retention. For domestic large model manufacturers, the competition in the next stage may not be in terms of user scale, but user experience.