Technology

Yeah, what's the surprise here? Turns out it's expensive.

It wasn't profitable. This bait and switch was a long time coming.

Man, enshittification is happening so fast for ai. Imagine the next big thing. It'll be enshittified prior to release.

Sigh. None of this is surprising in the least. The cost of AI infrastructure and compute (coupled with the complexity of the chain) makes it prohibitively expensive.

It only has appeared cheap because of investor money flowing like Niagara on the off-chance that it could be made cheap enough to be profitable after getting everyone addicted to using it. I really don't think it's there, and it's definitely not cheap enough to continue flying for free much longer.

~~GitHub~~ Microsoft just switched Copilot to metered billing, and developers are watching months of credits vanish in a single day

Everyone could've seen it coming from mile away

I have pro+ and I filed an FTC complaint when the billing change was announced and encouraged others to do the same, with the hope that it may lead to a class action settlement in the future.

Good luck, buddy!

I'm not sure why anyone is surprised. The new pricing is closer to what it actually costs to provide the service.

They can't keep subsidizing AI forever. The same thing is going to happen to other providers too.

Ever run an AI model locally? If you want the most capability you need a fast GPU with 32-48gb RAM. And that's all for you, ONE user.

Copilot has millions of users, with tens or hundreds of thousands of them hitting the AI all at once. Each one needs $thousands worth of GPU and RAM dedicated to them for the length of their query processing.

Where do you think the money to buy all that hardware comes from? You see OpenAI buying a double digit percentage of the world's RAM production, you think they got it on clearance sale?

No, there are investors. Investors who are pouring hundreds of billions into this AI stuff. And they don't do this because it's fun, they do it because they expect a BIG return.

So what's going on is just like your neighborhood drug pusher, only the drug pusher is more honest. He says 'first hit's free, man'. AI company says 'AI models are an easy and cost effective way to modernize your workflow!'; they don't tell you that once you've integrated them and fired all the humans who know how to do the work, the price is gonna go way up.

Because the fact is, there IS a real cost of AI compute. GPU time, or at the large scale, datacenter space, power, cooling, etc.

In another few months to few years, the C-suites will stop huffing the koolaid and will start doing cost-benefit analysis on where AI is and isn't cost-effective vs. humans. With any luck (for the AI people) by that time the AIs will be good enough that it's a clear benefit. If not this bubble's gonna pop.

I've been using it for well over a year now.

Hit my limit in 1 day and canceled.

Just trying to squeeze it out before the pop.

Watching github news from my codeberg safe place 😎🍿🍺

Not me. As soon as my boss said, "Use the tool thoughtfully," I pretty much don't use it at all anymore.

Weird, I'm not having this problem.

The squeeze could not happen soon enough 😌

I think this is "stupid money', again.

I hope this makes companies stop being "AI native"

*plays the world's tiniest violin*

Good.

The faster slop code stops, the more reliable our software will get.

Just wait until OpenAI and Anthropic get their IPO and the front slowly falls off. A recession will happen shortly thereafter.

Now suddenly everyone will care how horrible it is when you have to pay for said garage.