Long term, you're right. But if you approach the ChatGPT plugin opportunity as an inherently time-limited opportunity (like arbitrage in finance), then you you can still make some short-term money and learn about AI in the process. Not a bad route for aspiring entrepreneurs who are currently in college or are looking for a side gig business experiment.

And who knows. If a plugin is successful enough, you might even swap out the OpenAI backend for an open source alternative before OpenAI clones you.