OpenAI, Google roll out freebies for Indian users

India is the second-biggest smartphone market with 730 million devices

OpenAI and Google have begun an unprecedented competition for artificial intelligence users in India, rolling out freebies in a strategy seen as a way to harvest troves of multilingual training data in the world’s most populous nation.

India is the second-biggest smartphone market with 730 million devices. On average, Indians consume 21 gigabytes of data each month, paying 9.2 cents per gigabyte, one of the world’s lowest mobile data rates.

To lure price-conscious users, Google in November started giving its $400 Gemini AI Pro subscription for free for 18 months to 500 million customers of Reliance Jio, India’s biggest telecom player. Last week, it added India to dozens of countries where it is offering its heavily discounted “AI Plus” package.

OpenAI has also made its ChatGPT Go plan, which offers extended but not unlimited usage compared with existing plans, free for a year. The plan incurs charges in more than 100 countries and was $54 in India before being made free to everyone in the country in November.

Just like Google’s AI Pro, the free package is only available in India.

Early download data suggests a jump in usage due to the free plans, with daily active users of ChatGPT in India surging 607% year-on-year to 73 million as of last week, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower compiled for Reuters.

Gemini’s daily users in India rose 15% from when it launched the Reliance Jio offer in November to hit 17 million last week, the data showed.

Such adoption has made India the biggest market by daily users for both the AI chatbots, Sensor Tower said.