There's some problems with this take of "the unpaid level is about a year behind".

1. This is absolutely idiotic marketing. "Here, try our free service to see what you're getting. Oh, it's absolute shit, completely useless, and in fact damaging? Give us money!" The whole point of free trials is to show off your strengths. If your free trial is a piece of shit, it's not going to convert into paid subscriptions.

2. If we use this logic, well, let's rewind a year. The current free level is the same as what the pro level was a year ago. A year ago they were selling their pro levels as the greatest things since sliced bread. As "Ph. D. equivalent assistants" in fact. And here we are a year later, so the public level should be at the "Ph. D. equivalent assistants" that were advertised a year ago. And they're basically Ph. D. assistants with a diploma from a mill, wearing clown shoes. So ... colour me suspicious of claims that the commercial grades are any better.

Now for point 1, I wouldn't put it past the techbroaidudes to be absolute shit at marketing. A lot of their marketing, in fact, seems like it was dreamed up by an LLMbecile. But point 2 is a harder one to counter. They were saying the same thing a year ago that they're saying now, and the free tier now is supposed to be what the paid tier was a year ago. This doesn't add up.