OpenAI Looks to Go Beyond Data Sets With 'Back-to-School' Move

Experts Say Free AI Access Will Build Trust and Shape Long-Term Use

- AASHISH ARYAN

Sam Altman-led OpenAI earlier this week announced it will give away 500,000 ChatGPT licenses free of cost to Indian students and educators for six months as part of its learning accelerator programme. With this, ChatGPT joins Google's large language model (LLM) Gemini, which is also being offered free for a year to Indian students.

Apart from OpenAI and Google, Aravind Srinivas-led Perplexity AI is offering a year-long subscription to its LLM's Pro version to Bharti Airtel's Indian customers.

While the most obvious driver behind these firms' largesse is access to new data for training their tools and LLMs, experts believe companies are not looking at this only through that lens.