Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been talked about a lot in Vietnam for a long time. Many solutions from domestic and foreign technology companies are being applied by many businesses for operation. However, with thousands of AI solutions being provided as of now, it is not easy for businesses to choose a free or paid solution.

AIfree
Businesses should use free versions of AI to test before choosing a paid solution. Photo: Le My

According to Mr. Dang Hai Loc, CEO & CTO at AIV Group, to popularize and create a habit of using AI for users, many AI tools currently still have free packages. Domestic enterprises can take advantage of these packages to popularize it to employees.

Because the operating costs of AI are so high, in the long run, providers will also limit free plans and switch to charging more. For example, ByteDance's Coze platform recently reduced its free usage by nearly 100 times and started charging a relatively high fee. This surprised many free users on the platform and forced them to look for other alternative platforms.

Therefore, according to the CEO of AIV Group, businesses should take advantage of the free period to learn and experiment, thereby identifying the categories where AI applications will be effective. After that, they need to prepare a budget for long-term use.

Another issue raised by Mr. Dang Hai Loc is that, looking at a broader perspective, if domestic enterprises depend entirely on foreign AI solutions, they will have to bear high usage costs, not to mention data security issues... To apply AI to domestic enterprises at low cost and safely, there needs to be policies to promote the development of domestic AI platforms and encourage enterprises to use these platforms, once they have been evaluated and ranked by management agencies.

Mr. Dang Huu Son, co-founder of LovinBot, also shared that the AI market currently has more than 3,000 popular AI tools, from ChatGPT, Gemini to tools serving many fields. Most current policies follow the freemium model, meaning basic features are free and advanced functions are paid for.

If 2023 was the year of the explosion of free AI tools for individuals, then by 2024, a series of AI tools have changed their pricing policies and focused on businesses as well as paid users.

The top AI tools in the US in 2023, with a free policy for individuals, are Copy.ai, Jasper, Runway. But by 2024, they have focused 80% on business customers and users who are willing to pay for premium features.

According to Mr. Dang Huu Son, every time a new feature or new AI model is added to create better quality and better results, customers must upgrade to use it, it is no longer the default as before. For example, ChatGPT, Gemini has a free version, but the new paid version has useful features such as GPT-4o integration, data analysis, image creation and AI is also smarter.

Therefore, the co-founder of LovinBot believes that if businesses are just getting into AI, they should use free tools to learn how to use them and see if they are really useful. Then, they can consider upgrading to paid versions for more advanced and in-depth functions.

Ms. Tong Ho Tra Linh, AIcontent Product Manager, Unikon Company, also analyzed that using the paid or free version depends on the goals, methods and scale of AI application in the business.

For example, in the testing and research phase, for personal use, free versions can be used to evaluate the quality and find the best way to apply AI. Or for very small businesses, each department has only one individual working, they can take advantage of using free versions.

However, most free versions have limited features, limited configurability and flexible integration with business data, so they are only suitable for short-term use, for individuals and on specific tasks.

According to Ms. Tong Ho Tra Linh, if a business has determined a long-term strategy to apply AI to the business to increase productivity and improve output quality, it should invest in research and application of paid versions; The larger the scale, the cheaper the cost of use and the higher the productivity.

Sharing the same view, Mr. Tran Viet Huan, CTO of Son Kim Group, Chairman of CIO Vietnam shared that depending on the needs of the business, it is possible to use free or paid AI tools. For example, Microsoft's Copilot integrates popular Office 365 applications in the business, so it is very convenient and this version requires a fee.

Mr. Tran Viet Huan is personally using the paid version of ChatGPT because it has more advanced features than the free version. However, the free version is also quite functional for most office workers.

Mr. Tran Viet Huan believes that copyright costs are not a barrier to popularizing generative AI in businesses, because they can all find a free version that is good enough for their initial needs. Then, depending on each case, businesses can buy additional paid versions for some employees to use.