ai pricing

OpenAI’s decision to start testing advertisements inside ChatGPT has forced a practical trade-off: keep using a cheaper, ad‑supported tier, or pay to escape ads — or simply switch to another assistant that promises ad‑free chat...

OpenAI's decision to begin testing advertisements inside ChatGPT has redefined what "free" means for conversational AI — and it forces a practical choice on users: pay to escape ads, switch to a competitor that promises ad‑free chat, or accept a world where some AI answers come with sponsored...

I’m a fan of AI, but the cheerful honeymoon phase where advanced generative models felt like free, magical helpers is over — and for ordinary users and IT buyers that means real sticker shock is coming. The message in a recent opinion piece is blunt: AI features are being folded into everyday...

China’s apparent rush toward AI supremacy collided with a set of deeper structural limits long before headlines about market shocks and “Sputnik moments” began to dominate tech feeds this year, and two prominent Chinese scholars at Stanford argue those limits will likely cost Beijing the race...

The industry’s shift from subsidized experimentation to priced precision has arrived: AI’s “Uber moment” — the transition from heavily discounted or loss‑leading access to market‑priced, metered services — is already reshaping vendor strategies and enterprise budgets, and 2026 looks set to be...

The tech industry is sounding a clear alarm: the long era of cheap, always‑on generative AI is giving way to a new commercial reality that looks a lot like Uber’s pivot from subsidized rides to market‑priced fares — and for many companies that means a genuine risk of “sticker shock” in 2026...

The era of dirt‑cheap, “always‑on” generative AI—with free tiers and razor‑thin margins—is giving way to a more sober commercial model: vendors are folding powerful models into core suites, introducing metered credits and premium tiers, and signaling that businesses should expect meaningful...

AI’s promise of supercharged productivity is colliding with a less glamorous reality: the bill for that intelligence is increasingly landing on ordinary users and businesses rather than being absorbed by the technology firms that built it. This shift — visible in subscription price hikes, new...

Microsoft’s sales organization has quietly reset expectations for how quickly enterprise customers will pay for the company’s newest AI products — a tactical retreat that underlines a broader, stubborn problem: promising AI features are not yet converting into predictable, high-volume enterprise...

Microsoft, Nvidia and Anthropic today announced a sweeping, multibillion-dollar alliance that remaps who builds, powers and sells the large language models shaping enterprise AI — a deal that reportedly includes up to $10 billion in Nvidia commitments, up to $5 billion from Microsoft, and a $30...

Big tech’s AI arms race is no longer just a back‑office capital story — it’s showing up on consumer bills and business invoices as companies weave generative AI into the software people use every day, then raise prices or fold AI into new subscription tiers so the cost of massive datacenter...

Australia’s competition regulator has launched Federal Court proceedings accusing Microsoft of misleading roughly 2.7 million Australian Microsoft 365 customers after the company folded its Copilot generative‑AI assistant into consumer Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans and raised renewal...

Australia’s competition watchdog has launched Federal Court proceedings against Microsoft, accusing the software giant of misleading roughly 2.7 million Australian consumers by tying a substantial Microsoft 365 price rise to the integration of its AI assistant, Copilot, while obscuring a...

Australia’s competition regulator has launched a high‑stakes Federal Court case accusing Microsoft of misleading roughly 2.7 million Australians by bundling its Copilot AI into Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions and, the ACCC says, concealing a lower‑priced “Classic” option until...

Australia’s competition regulator has launched Federal Court proceedings accusing Microsoft Australia and its U.S. parent of misleading roughly 2.7 million Microsoft 365 subscribers by bundling its Copilot generative-AI assistant into consumer Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans, raising...

Microsoft is facing a high-stakes legal showdown in Australia after the nation’s competition regulator filed proceedings alleging the company misled millions of subscribers about the way it rolled Copilot — its AI assistant — into Microsoft 365 consumer plans, and about the options available to...

Microsoft’s consumer-facing Copilot rollout has landed the company in federal court in Australia after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accused Microsoft of misleading roughly 2.7 million subscribers by bundling Copilot into Microsoft 365 personal and family plans while...

Australia’s competition regulator has launched Federal Court proceedings against Microsoft, alleging the company misled roughly 2.7 million Australian Microsoft 365 subscribers when it bundled its Copilot AI assistant into Personal and Family plans and raised renewal prices without clearly...

Australia’s competition regulator has launched a Federal Court action accusing Microsoft of misleading roughly 2.7 million Australian consumers after the company bundled its Copilot generative‑AI features into Microsoft 365 and raised subscription prices — and the case now tests where...

Microsoft’s new MAI family—MAI‑1‑preview and MAI‑Voice‑1—marks a deliberate pivot from dependency to orchestration: Microsoft is building first‑party foundation models tuned for product speed, cost and audio-first experiences while continuing to route high‑capability workloads to external...