In summary, the original point of this thread is wrong. There’s essentially no future where these tools disappear or become unavailable at reasonable cost for consumers. Much more likely is they get way better.
OpenAI’s potential issue is that if Google offers tokens at a 10% gross margin, OpenAI won’t be able to offer api tokens at a positive gross margin at all. Their only chance really is building a big subscription business. No way they can compete with a hyperscaler on api cost long run
From my view chatbots are still in the "selling dollars for 90 cents" category of product, of course it sells like discounted hotcakes...
They make a loss overall because they spend a ton on R&D.