I expect a few things to happen in the next year:
1) Exclusive MCP server deals/API integrations
2) Significant switch to B2B marketing, even moreso than we've seen before, with API interfaces being paid and chat-client interfaces becoming more and more free, perhaps just with limits more on integrations or data visualization/analysis
3) US restrictions on B2B contracts with non-US hosted models that do any sort of contracting with the government
Obviously there's a bunch of stuff I'm not foreseeing. But it really does feel like the bottom of the market is collapsing into free. I assume OpenAI and Anthropic think their next generation of models will restore their halo tier status and that the cash burn is justified to just get there, but this has to really mess up IPO plans.
1) Back then, even as a free user you'd be able to use the strongest model (even if with tight limits). Now, you need to pay to use Sol, and you need to pay to use Opus or Fable. It does seem fairly premium in that sense. Idk about 5.6 Luna, but the previous Instant was really bad, even for very casual users. It would hallucinate non stop.
2) When $100 and $200 per month plans launched, they were received as outrageous even here. Nowadays they are pretty common among power users.
Back when coding for me still meant copy-paste from the web version, it was only worth the $20/month for me.
They only added the $100 Pro plan in April during GPT 5.4 times.
Today I happily pay $400/month for Codex and Claude Code.
This is kind of what I'm saying though. Bottom has fallen out, differentiation is just can you be much more premium than the competition. Currently that remains unanswered.
EDIT: I'm basing this off the assumption that for chat, premium is not a point of differentiation at all. For coding/analysis, it is.
This clearly implies that they believe ChatGPT models are AGI and are now willing to say it out loud.
Which I think is a fair interpretation of the term. They are general purpose intelligence in that you can get help from them about almost anything. They are not like narrow single purpose AI models.
I don't think we need that term to mean "can completely emulate a human" or "can do every task any human on earth can do as well as them".
It also needs to be differentiated from ASI with godlike powers many times greater than human.
Well, the models are smart enough to point out why this is wrong.
So 5.6 Luna is just their next version of what they used to call 5.5 instant tier
And 5.x instant models were never much to write home about anyway so the default ChatGPT free model hasn’t been particularly distinctive since 4o
It seems like giving it a time limit or a budget in dollars would be clearer, though?
Or, keep searching until I come back to the computer and ask about progress.
(This is a subtle nudge at anyone from OpenAI who reads this to make sure they get updated.)
OpenAI have a model called "chat-latest" - I wonder if that's running this new model yet: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/chat-latest
It's described as "points to the latest Instant model currently used in ChatGPT" - so presumably that's "GPT-5.6 Instant" in the app.
Serving cheaply at that scale means routing, batching, and cache hits, not a better model :D
luna is very good
Maybe Luna efficiency gain was actually significant enough that putting all the free users and giving them super generous limits makes sense.
They might be doing this to improve the messaging of AI among causal users since right now there is a huge amount of datacenter backlash in the US due to AI grievances.
Maybe they have too much excess capacity or they really want to juice token numbers and market share on their dashboards for marketing.
I also wonder if being given access to an actually a decent model like luna with actual thinking budget instead of brainless "instant" modes will start to make causal users understand the real capabilities of these models.
All of this is of pretty minor importance though. You can't read as many tokens as a subcription can produce so more chat is not the value add nor super important.
I mean there are literally so many providers for free chat if you are willing to use several seperate apps.
The real value in these subs is using codex cli, much like the real point of anthropic subs is using claude code. Because agentic work actually does require a lot of tokens.
Definitely this. The recent 80% discount was a reaction to Deepseek's update so that they still position near the frontier. My theory: Luna has always had a much higher efficiency. You do know that the model didn't get faster after the discount?
Every week, 1 billion people turn to ChatGPT for everything from quick questions and web searches to planning, research, advice, and complex decisions.
[0] Won't put it past OpenAI (and/or Google) to open weight larger models!
But seeing the graphic with the visual weather report: that makes me think that is not the goal at all. :)
Even after identifying the 0% chance of rain, it still drags the conversation on and on and on