You are 100% correct, and I don’t mean to refute your comment by saying this:

For me personally, the moment AI has ads, I’m out.

I’ve drawn this line with search engines as well. I now pay for a no-ads search engine.

But for AI, I think I’d rather buy some hardware or use my existing desktop PC and run something local with search engine integration.

I know this won’t be a popular option but I think this time around I’ll just skip the ensgittification phase and go straight to the inevitable self-hosting phase.

I second that, trust is broken if there is ads. The line of great ads to weird ads to pushy-borderline-scam ads into personal context is thin. Hopefully the price of local will go down and maybe apple will be able to push most of it on-device. The day chatGPT push ads in a conversation I stop using it.

  The thing is with llm, it went so fast to get that many users, it means people are used to adopt new stuff as well. With proper marketing and specific feature I won’t be surprised to see people switch service as easily they start  using it in the first place because the barrier is so low.

> the moment AI has ads, I’m out

HN users run adblockers.

The usual estimate is that people who run adblockers are with $0, so don’t worry about them.

Now — normal people did not used to run adblockers, although in my circles (young demographic) that has changed more than I expected.

They will certainly offer privacy focused ad-free models. Enterprise demands it.

However you will have to pay the full true cost of each token. Not the promo pricing like we have now or the ad-subsidized plans that will be offered.