With the sheer amount of money that the rich are throwing at OpenAI via investment firms, they don’t need nor want to charge imo. The fact that they’re being built into Apple’s ecosystem and are getting name-dropped to people inside of iOS is kinda what their investors want.
It’s the age old “walmart opens and operates at a loss for 2 years to force others out of business, then jacks the price” model.
Investors want them to cement this as The AI company & brand so that once it gets giant and starts to be profitable just by being the biggest gorilla in the room, the shares they bought are worth more.
So what I’m trying to say is that our version of capitalism is perfect and makes lots of sense and is in no way insane and degenerate.