OpenAI is launching a new program called ChatGPT for Academic Researchers that will offer free access to the company's AI models to 100,000 scientists, mathematicians and engineers. OpenAI says offering free access to its AI tools "is part of a commitment of more than $250 million through 2027 to support external scientific research and discovery." As the company notes, researchers are already using AI models to sift through data and write grants — this just makes the relationship a bit more formal. While the least charitable read of the program is that OpenAI is looking for new sources of training data, the company says that by default, researchers' data will not be used to train models. And making more scientific fields dependent on the company's tools could also pave the way for future revenue from for-profit research.