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> I swear they have tuned their models to waste tokens.

Which seems a bit weird, because the customers of the chat interface (ie non-API customers) don't pay per token.

I've heard the theory a few times lately that AI businesses will increasingly move towards usage models over subscription models, so while it is probably accidental, it could also be a longer term strategy to normalize excessive token usage.

I don't know whether the major AI companies will move to usage models. But let's assume that they do.

However: I would expect chat interfaces to be charged per query, not per token. End users don't understand tokens, and don't want to have to understand tokens.

If you charge per query, you don't gain anything from extra wordy responses.

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