>customers calling for support on things they shpuld be capable of figuring out themselves in is probably where AI is going to shine as first line support.

It certainly won't be cheap to run real-time AI voice chat, or any real-time AI chat. The AI costs that you currently see are heavily subsidized, just like OP's example of "VC backed competitors who are OK burning $$ to gain market share", it's the same. These AI companies are far from profitable, burning billions to insert themselves into customer support pipelines and everywhere else they can, and then the other foot will drop. Uber and Lyft are far more expensive today than when they started, and the price to run "AI" will also inflate when these companies have to pay off all the billions they've spent but didn't earn. I doubt it will end up costing much less if less at all than human support, with worse results.

AI voice chat can be done for cheap.

Lots of it is RAG and knowledge base lookups, you don't need large fancy models. Indeed you want fast responses, so low parameter models are better.

TTS and ASR models are tiny now days, like a handful of GB tiny.

Last time I priced this all out the VOIP fees cost more than self hosting all the models.