alt Hacker NewsI think the big difference is that Google is free: everyone is using Google because it doesn’t cost anything and for a long time was the best search engine out there. I am sure that if Google would suddenly charge a few dollars per month for access, Bing market share would explode overnight, because it would become “good enough but cheaper”.
With the AI models, using a model that is “good enough but cheaper” is already an option.
There's no reason that a sizeable portion of LLM usage can't and won't end up free/ad-sponsored. Cutting edge stuff for professional use will probably be monetized via subscription or API credits for a long time to come. But running an older and less resource intensive model works just fine for tasks like summarization. These models will just become another feature in a "free" product that people pay for by watching or clicking ads.
I imagine the split will look a lot like b2b vs b2c in other technologies, b2b customers tend to be willing to pay for tech when it offers a competitive advantage, reduces their operating costs etc. b2c customers mostly just guzzle free slop.