this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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This has nothing to do with AI.
Don't rely on software or workflows or really anything that you can't easily switch if said company decides to stop doing business with you.
If you do, it better be a strategic partnership where something like this can't happen.
In this case, their workflows should have been AI provider agnostic or had a way to continue functioning if Claude went down.
This definitely has to do with AI. Because CEOs are losing their stupid minds over it. I agree with you in principle, but let's not lose sight of the fact that this specific technology is what CEOs are drooling over. Even in my company I had to tell the owner/CEO, "What problem are you trying to solve with AI?" His response was his mouth being open with a dumb look on his face.
So no business should rely on AI (or, to your point, any software) that it becomes detrimental to their business or workforce should that access be revoked.
Yes, this has everything to do with AI, because this is an AI vendor locking out a customer from their ordinary workflow.
At the same time, this is a generalizable example not limited to AI, where any form of vendor lock-in on a critical business function becomes a potential point of failure when the vendor drops the customer or stops working. It's true of a cloud provider, an email provider, an ISP, any software provider that can revoke access/authority, or even non-tech vendors like a landlord or a temp agency or an electric utility.
Landlord lock in, that's a funny one. So what's the plan, move to another town because you can't find a 4 story building available for next week to avoid rent increase?
This is actually a pretty common concern for businesses on dealing with whether and how to protect themselves when installing improvements, business-critical equipment, or other hard-to-move stuff on land or in a building without a long term lease in place.
The tenant deals with it by either building out a portable infrastructure to where they can move their business quickly if need be, or by protecting themselves legally to where the landlord can't kick them out on a short notice, by negotiating a long term lease.
Vendor lock in for today’s software is almost impossible to avoid unless you are running on owned bare metal which is not really an option for many mid size companies.
It can be hard, but its not impossible for many things.
Like if you use AWS S3 there are S3 compatible APIs at cloudflare and likely other cloud providers.
If youre using a service that offers cloud functions and one offers the programming language you want to use, but others dont, maybe its better to use the more common language that all the platforms offer even if its not youre preferred choice.
If you were using Slack, have a plan to switch quickly to Teams if something goes wrong and slack drops you so you can get comms up quicker.
For those where alternatives arent an option, it should be a very conscious choice with the knowledge it might bite you in the ass with no quick recovery.
I absolutely agree. Many just don’t think the benefit of being nimble is worth it. Glad to see it being a bigger discussion.
I was (un?)fortunate to work at a company early on in my development career that ran into a problem where poor design choices (not mine) limited our ability to be nimble. Ive been able to carry that lesson on. Not that im perfect at it either though haha.
It has worked out to my benefit many times though.