They want you to have to pay for an advantage. If a single AI provider gets enough advantage, they'll be able to charge whatever they want.
Given that models seem to be converging to similar capabilities and that there are plenty of open weights models out there market competition should drive prices towards the marginal cost of inference.
Given that models seem to be converging to similar capabilities and that there are plenty of open weights models out there market competition should drive prices towards the marginal cost of inference.