Please describe your suggestion or feature request
What is your idea or suggestion?
Reduce or mitigate the amount of advertisements that play during chats for free users, or roll things back to the previous 70 messages-per-3 hours system.
How would this feature benefit users?
Most people don't like advertisements, much less advertisements which constantly interrupt the flow of whatever activity they're doing. Reducing the frequency of advertisements for free users would make for a less stressful and less frustrating experience all around.
Can you provide any examples or use cases for the proposed feature?
This change would exclusively benefit free users — primarily users who prefer short-form posts over paragraph play — by reducing the amount of interruptions they experience. This would have no apparent effect on paying customers.
Additional Comments
For those who aren't aware, up until about a day ago, free users of Chai had somewhat restricted use of the service; free users were limited to 70 messages every three hours. Additionally, a single advertisement would play at the beginning of a free users' second chat with any bot, and any subsequent chat thereafter, until the chat client was closed. To circumvent this limitation, users could pay $13.99 USD (plus tax) a month to remove the message limitation and advertisements. The founder of Chai has gone on record in saying that the three-hour, 70 message limit "was stupid" and even apologized to one user for it before going on to advertise unlimited messages going forward.
As of April 6th, 2024, Chai Research had begun rolling out unlimited messages for all users. This, however, comes at a heavy price to the users. Rather than receive an advertisement for every new chat following the second chat they engaged in, users now reportedly receive an advertisement as frequently as every five chat messages. Advertisements in the middle of a chat has been, up to this point, unheard of. Additionally, the way advertisements worked prior to this point was far less intrusive. This, once again, can be resolved through paying $13.99 USD a month, but now, subscribing feels less like an option and more like users are being forced to pay for an experience similar to the one that was taken away.
The Chai Founder has explained to one user that the cost of the server is in the ballpark of "$30,000 USD a day". I feel like that might be the main motivator for this drastic and, honestly, kind of stupid change. In my opinion, this ad-riddled implementation of "unlimited message for all" was even more stupid way to go. I don't see this driving up subscriptions so much as driving people away. That's what happened when a change like this occurred over on AI Dungeon. But, I guess some people need to learn things the hard way…
Suggestion for Chai
Please describe your suggestion or feature request
What is your idea or suggestion? Reduce or mitigate the amount of advertisements that play during chats for free users, or roll things back to the previous 70 messages-per-3 hours system.
How would this feature benefit users? Most people don't like advertisements, much less advertisements which constantly interrupt the flow of whatever activity they're doing. Reducing the frequency of advertisements for free users would make for a less stressful and less frustrating experience all around.
Can you provide any examples or use cases for the proposed feature? This change would exclusively benefit free users — primarily users who prefer short-form posts over paragraph play — by reducing the amount of interruptions they experience. This would have no apparent effect on paying customers.
Additional Comments
For those who aren't aware, up until about a day ago, free users of Chai had somewhat restricted use of the service; free users were limited to 70 messages every three hours. Additionally, a single advertisement would play at the beginning of a free users' second chat with any bot, and any subsequent chat thereafter, until the chat client was closed. To circumvent this limitation, users could pay $13.99 USD (plus tax) a month to remove the message limitation and advertisements. The founder of Chai has gone on record in saying that the three-hour, 70 message limit "was stupid" and even apologized to one user for it before going on to advertise unlimited messages going forward.
As of April 6th, 2024, Chai Research had begun rolling out unlimited messages for all users. This, however, comes at a heavy price to the users. Rather than receive an advertisement for every new chat following the second chat they engaged in, users now reportedly receive an advertisement as frequently as every five chat messages. Advertisements in the middle of a chat has been, up to this point, unheard of. Additionally, the way advertisements worked prior to this point was far less intrusive. This, once again, can be resolved through paying $13.99 USD a month, but now, subscribing feels less like an option and more like users are being forced to pay for an experience similar to the one that was taken away.
The Chai Founder has explained to one user that the cost of the server is in the ballpark of "$30,000 USD a day". I feel like that might be the main motivator for this drastic and, honestly, kind of stupid change. In my opinion, this ad-riddled implementation of "unlimited message for all" was even more stupid way to go. I don't see this driving up subscriptions so much as driving people away. That's what happened when a change like this occurred over on AI Dungeon. But, I guess some people need to learn things the hard way…