The Vibes-Based Pricing of "Pro" AI Software
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 571 Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
AI chatbot premium subscriptions like ChatGPT Pro and Claude Max currently cost around $200, but it’s not entirely clear why. Lauren and Mike speak with WIRED’s Reece Rogers to find out what’s behind these models that AI companies bill as their most powerful, and whether they could become a staple in our future.
Live show tickets at: https://www.kqed.org/event/5459
Articles mentioned in this episode:
- Seriously, Why Do Some AI Chatbot Subscriptions Cost More Than $200? | WIRED
- Cheap AI Tools May Come at a Big Long-Term Cost | WIRED
Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is Mike. |
| 0:02.6 | Before we start, I'm going to share some exciting news with you. |
| 0:05.6 | We're doing a live show in San Francisco on September 9th in partnership with the local |
| 0:10.4 | station KQED. |
| 0:13.0 | Lauren and I will sit down with our editor-in-chief, Katie Drummond, and we will have a special |
| 0:17.3 | guest joining us for a conversation that you will not want to miss. |
| 0:26.2 | You can use the link in the show notes to grab a ticket and invite a friend. We cannot wait to see you there. |
| 0:35.5 | Hey, Lauren. How you doing? Hi, I'm sorry, what's your name again? You've been gone for so long. I've been snorkeling on the moon. |
| 0:38.9 | I missed you a lot. I missed you too. Oh, thank you. |
| 0:45.2 | How is the show? The show has been not the same. Just not the same. We ran a rerun of our episode about Brian Johnson paired with our wellness package on wire.com. Perfect. So that was really fun. |
| 0:52.2 | You know what? Things have been okay, but I missed you. I have to say that. How was your vacation? It was lovely. I couldn't wait to get back here in the chair behind the microphone, though. I don't believe that. Did you eat butter? No. In honor of Katie. I did not. Are you going to tell the folks what you did for a vacation? I went snorkeling on the moon. Incredible. It really was. Wow. Did you post it to the gram? Wow. I'm impressed. Okay. Well, you chose a good week to come back because it's model week. Lots of models here. There's models here? We're going to talk about models. |
| 1:27.8 | Excuse me? |
| 1:28.3 | Your eyes just lit up. |
| 1:29.3 | I mean, are they hiding behind the magazines? I don't see any models. I hate to break it to you. We're going to talk about some really nerdy stuff. These are AI models. Oh, okay. It's a big week for Open AI, by the way. They released two new open weight models earlier this week. |
| 1:45.3 | These are models that |
| 1:46.3 | have set parameters around them, but they also give developers a little bit more access to the |
| 1:51.4 | inner workings of them so they can like tinker with them and build on them and stuff like that. |
| 1:55.3 | And then a lot of folks are excited this week about GPT5. |
| 1:59.1 | GPT5. Yeah, which is coming out. |
| 2:01.0 | And that's a big batch of releases. |
| 2:03.0 | I imagine that we're going to go hands on with them at some point. |
| 2:05.8 | We are. |
... |
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