ChatGPT Plus may be rolling out in Australia sooner than expected

Earlier this month OpenAI officially announced the rollout of a paid version of its viral AI chatbot — ChatGPT Plus. It didn’t seem like Australians would be able to access this subscription right away, but that not actually be the case.

“ChatGPT Plus is available to customers in the United States, and we will begin the process of inviting people from our waitlist over the coming weeks. We plan to expand access and support to additional countries and regions soon,” an OpenAI blog post read on February 3.

Considering this was only 10 days ago, we didn’t expect to see support for ChatGPT Plus in Australia for a while. But at least one Aussie user seems to have gained access.

FORMM chief product officer Josh Rowe took to Twitter on Monday morning saying ChatGPT Plus is available to Australians. And he had the screenshots to prove it.

“Feb 10 update: ChatGPT Plus is available in Australia,” one screenshot read.

There was also information containing some of the additional features Plus provides, which were already outlined in the February 3 blog post from OpenAI:

• General access to ChatGPT, even during peak times;
• Faster response times; and
• Priority access to new features and improvements.

The screenshots also revealed an alpha version of a ‘turbo’ chat mode that is only available to Plus users.

ChatGPT Plus is now available in Australia for USD$22 per month.

How much has Chat GPT become a key tool in your daily work life?

Will you subscribe to Chat GPT Plus? pic.twitter.com/eiJbT1pU13

— Josh Rowe 🤖🧑‍💻 (@joshrowe) February 11, 2023

While OpenAI has said that Plus is US$20 per month, Rowe tweeted that it was US$22. Rowe confirmed the extra US$2.00 is for GST and this was validated by a receipt seen by SmartCompany.

Transaction details also confirmed this worked out to a total of $32.81 at the current exchange rate.

It’s worth noting that ChatGPT potentially being available to Australian users doesn’t mean it’s open season. There is still a waitlist for the subscription service and it’s unclear how OpenAI chooses those who will receive early access.

This is just the latest development in what has been a whirlwind seven days for AI chatbots. ChatGPT’s release in November seems to have turbo-charged both Google and Microsoft’s race into the space, with the former unveiling a competitor named Bard last week.

Unfortunately, this didn’t go so well, with Bard making a mistake during an ad that caused the share price of Alphabet — Google’s parent company — to dive by US$144 billion.

Microsoft also joined the AI ChatBot party, officially announcing a new version of Bing that’s powered by the same technology as ChatGPT.

The difference is that it will be an upgraded version that can actually deliver results on recent events, which ChatGPT can’t currently do.