this is already happening, openai introduced a new cheaper subscription tier to chatgpt called chatgpt go for $8/month and now on the free tier you get one or two file uploads per day and less than 20 messages allowed per conversation, which used to be unlimited.
gemini is honestly the best free major llm at the moment.
↩ repost
at some point, ai and it's users are going to wind up in the same position as adobe and it's users, where projects, companies, or even career fields become dependent on a certain product/service, and the company providing that service will freely abuse their position and their customers, and the users will continue to swear by the service and just suck up whatever the company does instead of seeking alternatives
ok