Each question will cost a few cents. We may have to pay more for longer and more detailed answers. Alternatively, there could be a monthly subscription option that covers everything you want to know. It remains to be seen if Google will introduce fees for its Artificial Intelligence products and, if it does, whether other emerging tech giants will follow suit. However, one thing must be absolutely clear. As consumers, we should beg Google to make us pay. While free is great to start with, it also means that everything is ad-driven until it becomes unusable. Paid AI will be much better and much more useful in the long run, and the customers will benefit.
It could be the biggest strategy change in the company’s 25-year history. According to reports this week, Alphabet, as Google’s search empire owner is now called, is considering whether to put its AI-based search functions behind a paywall, forcing consumers to pay to use them, or to keep them completely free, like its basic search function, email server, maps, and other current services. Other AI services are facing a similar dilemma. ChatGPT, the market leader by far, has a free version and a slightly higher paid model, and most other AI tools are opting for something similar.
It’s not hard to understand why it is such a difficult decision for Google. After all, giving things away has worked wonders for the company. It has created a business valued at an astonishing $1.8 trillion. Its advertising revenue amounts to $175 billion a year, mostly coming from its search engine and other related products. It’s been a winning formula, and it will be very difficult to change now. However, AI poses two major challenges. It’s possible that we may all gradually stop searching for information and products on the Internet and simply ask an intelligent chatbot to do it for us. If that happens, their search ads will become less valuable. Moreover, AI uses so much server power and sophisticated chips that its operation is much more expensive than traditional web pages. Caught between these two forces, Google could see its profits start to decline.
We will soon know what the company decides. However, one thing is clear. As consumers, we should be pleading with Internet giants to charge us for AI. Of course, we all like to get something for nothing. The explosion of web services in the last twenty years means that we all get a range of incredibly sophisticated products for free. We can search for what we want, email anyone, find anything on maps, chat with friends and family on social networks, and store our photos forever, and besides a broadband connection, it costs us nothing at all. In a way, it’s a great deal.
The problem is that everything is funded by advertising. Over time, searches became more and more useless, as the answers to any question were dominated by “sponsored results”. Email systems were filled with business messages, and maps were dominated by pushes towards one store or another. Meanwhile, everything we said on social networks was packaged and sold as a commodity that marketers traded on. The list goes on. As a former web designer, ironically from Google, once said, “if you don’t pay for the product, then you are the product.”
It’s not hard to see how Artificial Intelligence could quickly follow the same path. Chatbots will start casually throwing product recommendations into every conversation. They will suggest different stores or restaurants you might want to visit. Gradually, each question will turn into a list of things you might want to buy. Worst of all, they may start making us feel guilty for “donating” every time we connect, like Wikipedia, or even The Guardian. And then, of course, they will keep a record of every conversation and question, analyze your responses, and sell the data to get more revenue. This is what tech giants like Google and Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, did very successfully with the first version of the Internet, and it will be very tempting for them to repeat the trick with AI. After all, if done right, they could make even more billions in revenue.
However, it would be much better for us to pay a small monthly subscription and get a better product. If we don’t, AI will follow the same path as the rest of the Internet, and we will all end up being the “product”. The operation of intelligent chatbots is expensive. It is estimated that the operation of ChatGPT already costs $700,000 a day, and that’s before adding all development costs. As AI systems start to pay for the “content,” as it should be, and as they become faster and smarter, as they will, they will become more and more expensive. In reality, it was a mistake to make everything free the first time, and it doesn’t make sense to repeat that mistake again. It would be much better if we all paid a few dollars, euros, or pounds each month, the product kept getting better, and most importantly, it wasn’t saturated with advertising. It’s true that, at first, we may be reluctant to pay. We’ve gotten used to everything digital being free. But, given the potential of the technology, it’s peanuts. In reality, we should be begging Google, and the rest of the AI giants, to charge us. In the long run, it will be much better for us.
