Chloe Wang, a 26-year-old fund employee in Shenzhen, said she “definitely wouldn’t” pay for a subscription to Doubao, Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s artificial intelligence chatbot, at its proposed price.

“I’m willing to pay for AI tools, but I don’t think it’s worth that much – even though I find Doubao relatively easy to use among domestic AI products,” said Wang, who uses the app occasionally for work-related queries.

“If I had to pay for an AI tool as a productivity aid, I’d probably rather subscribe to ChatGPT,” she added, referring to US firm OpenAI’s chatbot.

Wang’s hesitation highlights the challenges ByteDance may face as it moves to offer paid subscription plans on Doubao amid soaring computing costs. The South China Morning Post spoke to 12 AI users in mainland China, and found that 10 were reluctant to pay, citing high prices and relatively weak performance in work-related tasks.

Zhang Zonggai, a marketing professional in Guangzhou, was one of only two respondents willing to consider paying. He said, however, that it depended on how good the paid features were.

“The only question is whether it’s necessary to choose a general-purpose app like Doubao, or a specialised AI tool” that could satisfy particular needs, he said. Zhang used Doubao to search for information, translate, edit photos and even help grade his child’s homework, but said its reliability for professional tasks was “rather ordinary”.