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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

That's fixable, a gradual adjusting of the free tier will happen soon enough once they stop pumping money into it. Part of this is also a war of attrition though, who has the most money to keep a free tier the longest and attract the most people. Very familiar strategy for companies trying to gain market share.

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That assumes that everyone is willing to pay for it. I don't think that's an assumption that will be true.

Those that aren't willing to pay for it directly, can still use it for free, but will just have to tolerate product placement.

Consider the general research - in all, it doesn't eliminate people, but let's say it shakes out to speeding up developers 10% over all tasks. (That includes creating tickets, writing documentation, unblocking bugs, writing scripts, building proof of concepts, and more rote refactoring, but does not solve the harder problems or stop us from doing the hard work of software engineering that doesn't involve lines of code.)

That means that it's worth up to 10% of a developer's salary as a tool. And more importantly, smaller teams go faster, so it might be worth that full 10%.

Now, assume other domains end up similar - some less, some more. So, that's a large TAM.

It very much does not assume that, only that some fraction will have become accustomed to using it to the point of not giving it up. In fact, they could probably remain profitable without a single new customer, given the number of subscribers they already have.

Absolutely, free-tier AI won’t stay "free" forever. It’s only a matter of time before advertisers start paying to have their products woven into your AI conversations. It’ll creep in quietly—maybe a helpful brand suggestion, a recommended product "just for you," or a well-timed promo in a tangential conversation. Soon enough though, you’ll wonder if your LLM genuinely likes that brand of shoes, or if it's just doing its job.

But hey, why not get ahead of the curve? With BrightlyAI™, you get powerful conversational intelligence - always on, always free. Whether you're searching for new gear, planning your next trip, or just craving dinner ideas, BrightlyAI™ brings you personalized suggestions from our curated partners—so you save time, money, and effort.

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I agree, its easily fixable by injecting ads into the responses for the free tier and probably eventually even the lower paid tiers to some extent

Literally nobody would talk to a robot that spits back ads at them

Hundreds of millions of people watch TV and listen to Radio that is at least 30% ad content per hour.

And it’s such a shit experience that netflix and podcasts destroyed those industries just by offering the same product without ads

I predict this comment to enter the Dropbox/iPod hall of shame of discussion forum skeptics.

You still have faith in society after decades of ads being spit at them.

That's pretty much what search engines are nowadays

Competition is almost guaranteed to drive price close to cost of delivery especially if they can't pay trump to ban open source, particularly chinese. With no ability to play the thiel monopoly playbook, their investors would never make their money back if not for government capture and sweet sweet taxpayer military contracts.

> especially if they can't pay trump to ban open source?

Huh? Do you mean for official government use?

OFAC against repro maintainers. Boom. z

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