Note that more topics will be added to this page as time goes on
1. When will
the new AI/LLM features be available?
In mid-August 2025.
2. How will the "AI credits" work?
First, it is important to
realize that every time we send an "API call" to an LLM (GPT,
Gemini, Claude,
etc), the LLM charges us for that access. Imagine that each of the
75,000
monthly users do just 12-15 LLM-based searches each month (and some
people will do many more than that). That would be more than one million
API calls to the LLMs, and this would cost us thousands (or tens of
thousands) of dollars each month. As you can imagine, it's not realistic
for us to pay that cost by ourselves; the corpora would cease to function
within a few months.
So the plan is that most people
will purchase "AI credits" in advance -- for as little as $5.00. Each time they do an
AI/LLM-based query, it will deduct $0.03 or $0.04 from their credits (depending
on the type of search and how much data is sent to and received from the LLM). So they will have
anywhere from 125 to 170 API-based queries (if they have paid $5.00) before they
need to purchase more credits. And the corpus interface will let them know at
all times how many credits they have left. Payment will be made by credit card at PayPal, as
is done currently for the premium licenses
(with the option of payment by AliPay or WeChatPay for users from China).
It will also be possible for people
to use their own personal API key, so that they are charged directly (rather
than having it go through the corpus).
Note that these AI credits will be
separate from (individual) premium licenses. In other words, if you already have
a premium license, you would still need to purchase the "AI credits". But you
can also buy the AI credits even if you don't have a premium license -- they
are two completely separate things.
And most importantly, the AI
features (via API access to the LLMs) are completely optional. If you
want to keep using the corpora as you have in the past (without the insights
from AI/LLMs), that would be perfectly fine.
3. What about
users of academic licenses?
Academic licenses are
"university-wide"; they include all of the users at a university. One
(non-optimal) solution is to have individual users pay for their own AI credits.
But a better option is to have people at a university use a university-wide API
key. See how this will work from the point of view of the
university and the
end
users.
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