Sam Altman's 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

Sam Altman-led OpenAI earlier this week announced it will give away 500,000 ChatGPT licences 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.

 

“By giving students powerful tools early, these companies build long-term trust and affinity. A generation that learns, experiments, and creates with their platforms is more likely to stay loyal as they move into professional lives,” said Jaspreet Bindra, cofounder of policy think tank Ai&Beyond.

 

For instance, OpenAI, which is offering 500,000 free ChatGPT licences in India for six months, is not planning to monetise these users — primarily students and educators — according to the company’s Vice-President of Education Leah Belsky.

 

The aim, Belsky said, is to provide access to platforms like ChatGPT so that students and teachers become more familiar with the tools. 

 

The focus on partnerships with students, teachers, and educational institutions is all the more critical for companies like OpenAI, given nearly 50 per cent of its user base in India is under the age of 24.

 

Most of these users come to the platform to explore new concepts, complete homework, and learn complex lessons, Belsky pointed out.

 

Similarly, Google offers college students a year-long access to Gemini’s latest model to help with homework, examination preparation, deep research, and other aspects, such as generating audio overviews of research projects.

 

Allowing such access to students and teachers is also a way for these companies to integrate with India’s vision of inclusive, technology-enabled education, said Kazim Rizvi, founder of public policy think tank The Dialogue.

 

“The integration of AI into pedagogy has the potential to reduce disparities between urban and rural classrooms by ensuring that even resource-constrained schools can access world-class tools,” Rizvi said.

 

Another benefit, Bindra observed, is training the upcoming workforce in AI literacy and bringing much-needed diversity of thought into the training of LLMs.

 

“Tomorrow’s workforce must understand not just how to use AI, but how to engage with it critically and ethically. Free access is an investment in shaping that capability at scale,” he said.

 

India, with nearly 300 million students across different stages of education — including 50 million in higher education — is also an essential market for developing the next generation of products and tools using AI and LLMs, said Raghav Gupta, OpenAI’s head of education for India and Asia-Pacific.

 

“If implemented responsibly, it could accelerate digital empowerment, strengthen learning outcomes, and position India as a model for how AI can be harnessed to serve the public good in education,” Rizvi added.