"Right now, AI feels like Christmas morning every day. ChatGPT helps app designers fill wireframes with microcopy. Midjourney conjures up mood boards from thin air. Claude can debug web developers' wonky code faster than you can say "syntax error". It's intoxicating, productivity-enhancing, mostly free stuff. (See here how AI is impacting graphic design.) But let's be realistic: this golden age is as sustainable as a chocolate teapot."
"OpenAI didn't raise $6.6 billion to run a charity for struggling copywriters. Google isn't pouring billions into Bard out of algorithmic kindness. These companies are playing venture capitalist roulette, with money that makes Netflix's early losses look like pocket change. Training these AI models costs more than some countries' GDP. Running them requires server farms that could power small cities."
"And once they've got us hooked? Once every creative depends on AI to stay competitive? That's when the meter starts running. It's a playbook we're all familiar with, from price hikes in services such as the Adobe Creative Cloud or Microsoft's Office Suite. Which is exactly why the recent Black Mirror episode Common People, in which a woman with a brain tumour needs a monthly subscription to stay alive, hit home so viscerally."
AI tools currently provide powerful, mostly free productivity boosts across design, coding, and creative work. Tech companies have invested enormous sums to train and run large models, creating dependence on costly infrastructure rather than offering charity. Once users and industries become reliant on AI workflows, companies can monetize that dependence through tiered pricing, watermarks, query limits, and higher subscription fees. The pattern mirrors past platform playbooks in media and software where initial accessibility led to consolidation and rising costs. The consequences are especially serious because AI integration touches creative and critical professional functions, raising higher stakes than prior entertainment disruptions.
Read at Creative Bloq
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