CEO Of Genius Spent $2,400/Month To Purchase ChatGPT Plus Accounts For 120 Staff To Increase Productivity.

Founded in 2017 with the headquarter in Los Angeles (CaliFornia, America), Genies is a startup specializing in avatars, providing users with a method to create and use their 3D avatars in some apps such as Snapchat, iMessage, Instagram. Many celebrities like Justin Bieber, Cardi B, or Rihanna have used Genies. Currently, Genies is valued at around 1 billion USD.

Akash Nigam, the founder and also CEO of Genies, has been spending $2,400 per month to purchase ChatGPT Plus accounts for all of his 120 employees ($20 per month for each of them) as part of an experiment to increase productivity and reduce the cost of hiring additional staff. Insider magazine has verified Akash Nigam’s purchase of ChatGPT Plus accounts for all employees through receipts.

Akash Nigam - CEO of Genies (Source: thevibely.com)

In March, Akash Nigam started encouraging all teams of Genies (R&D, development, engineering, product, finance, design, and accountant) to learn how to use the AI chatbot of OpenAI to automate mundane tasks. In spite of $2,400 monthly investment, Akash Nigam believed that the integrating ChatGPT Plus into the teams' working processes will help them increase productivity, save time and reduce costs for the company, thereby improving profitability.

Akash Nigam said with Insider magazine, “I'm a pretty economical and frugal person, but in my mind, this (subscribing ChatGPT Plus accounts for all employees) is for the health and growth of the company.”

Although it has been just one month since Genies' employees are provided ChatGPT Plus accounts, Akash Nigam stated that he had already seen many tasks accelerated.

For example, the R&D team of Genies used ChatGPT Plus to answer programming and Math questions, receive advice about how to debug codes, and create scripts for presentations based on outlines. Other Genies employees have used ChatGPT Plus to generate creative summaries, write legal documents such as internal policies, and answer technical questions.

Employees take advantage of ChatGPT to do many tasks (Source: blog.silver-storm.com)

Akash Nigam stated that ChatGPT Plus has been most helpful in creating detailed technical plans or outlining the company's strategies around launching new products. He said the process of crafting a plan "usually takes hours" of brainstorming with colleagues. Alternatively, Akash Nigam provided ChatGPT Plus with all necessary information in the plan, then asked AI chatbot to organize it into a chart and assign tasks to the appropriate teams.

“It's nearly similar to having the smartest operational partner readily available to support you, helping you focus quickly and ensuring you stay on track," Akash Nigam explained. He believes that ChatGPT Plus can help Genies reduce expenses because the company will need to hire fewer employees. 

ChatGPT Helps Increase Productivity But Not All Employees Use It

Akash Nigam mentioned that the majority of Genies' staff are “actively using ChatGPT Plus”. However, a minority of staff in Genies has not actively utilized ChatGPT Plus and has not fully integrated the AI chatbot into their work, possibly due to lack of time or disinterest. 

Genies organized an unofficial conference where “enthusiastic” and “dedicated” with ChatGPT Plus taught less experienced colleges to use AI chatbot to perform specific tasks across teams.

Akash Nigam stated that everyone at Genies must commit to using ChatGPT in order for the company to reap the benefits of workload reduction and a smaller workforce.

“You really need to spend time learning this skill, as it is extremely important in the future”, said he. 

Akash Nigam even prepared a plan to list the use of ChatGPT to the performance evaluations for employees in the coming year. He mentioned that a portion of the evaluations will consider how Genies employees utilize tools like ChatGPT to "drive efficiency" across their departments.

Moreover, Akash Nigam proclaimed that employees who are “using AI effectively" will be promoted and receive salary increases, while those who do not use AI will fall behind.

Genies is not the only company integrating ChatGPT into the workflow. Amazon’s staff is using this AI chatbot to develop codes, reply to customers' questions, and write training documents. And because users can access GPT-4 with ChatGPT Plus accounts, the working time can be saved more, and the quality will be much better. 

David Litwin, the CEO of Pure Fusion Media design company, mentioned that ChatGPT has saved him over 30 hours of work per week. Even Microsoft allows its employees to use ChatGPT as long as they don't share confidential information with OpenAI's chatbot.

At the end of February, a job consulting app - Resumebuilder.com - conducted a survey among 1000 business managers who use or intend to use ChatGPT. About half of these leaders stated that ChatGPT has replaced employees in their companies. A typical example is Octopus Energy - a British energy company. ChatGPT replaced 250 employees at this company to reply to customers’ emails and has been highly valued by their customers.

Octopus Energy (Source: omerkirk.blogspot.com)

Stacie Haller, the Chief Career Advisor of Resumebuilder.com, stated, "There is a lot of excitement about using ChatGPT. Because this technology is still advancing in the workplace, workers certainly need to think about how ChatGPT might impact their current job responsibilities. The results of this survey indicate that employers are looking to rationalize certain job roles with ChatGPT."

The business leaders told Resumebuilder.com that their companies had used ChatGPT because of many reasons, including 66% for coding, 58% for writing advertisements and content, 57% for customer support, and 52% for summarizing meetings and other documents.

During the hiring process, 77% of companies using ChatGPT stated that they utilize the chatbot to write job descriptions, 66% for drafting interview questions, and 65% for responding to job applications.

“In general, almost all business leaders are impressed with ChatGPT. 55% of them said that the quality of jobs ChatGPT created are awesome, while 34% of them reviewed them as very good.”