Who's paying for AI, a show of hands please

[VidJunky]

Recently I was trying to use Assistant for some pretty basic stuff that I've asked it to do in the past and guess what, it couldn't do it. I tried so many ways and nothing. I assumed it was broken to push us to Gemini AI. After giving up, I went to enable Gemini and noticed a subscription tab in the Gemini settings and Oh My Goodness, they have to be kidding, that or they think we're made of money. The basic subscription was 19.99 a month. When they said it was free for x amount of time I pictured $20 dollars for the year or maybe a few bucks a month for a subscription but no, $20 monthly. Oh and that isn't the heart stopper. No, $124.99 per month interdictory for 3 months and then $249.99 PER MONTH after that. Say what? For what? That's more than most people's whole cell phone bill and doesn't give you anything but AI features. Not cell service, not internet to access the AI, no just the AI. Who do they think we are? I

I could maybe see numbers like that for some large Corp. but for everyday bums like many of us, I can't even imagine.

I said last year that I was going to avoid many of these features so I wouldn't be hooked when pricing came out but I never would have believed it would be like this. And then the swing between the two, $230 difference from basic to ultra. I keep wanting to say for that price it better, well you know and even then it would still be a rip off.

 

[Laura Knotek]

That's a complete ripoff. I doubt many regular customers will pay for it.

 

[notforhire]

bold strategy on Google's part, I'll say

 

[Bkdodger1]

I'm one that I'm definitely not going to pay for AI subscription, I do use ChatGPT and Gemini but only basic

 

[me just saying]

nope, not me. I see no need for anything beyond the free version.

 

[mustang7757]

I agree with you Vid junky and the rest .

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh wait, that's why I'm NOT paying for AI.

 

[tube517]

I got the one year for free as a Pixel owner but after that I am not paying for it. Nope.

 

[kirk781]

Bold of Google to assume people will pay. Here in India, Perplexity is bundling it's exceptionally expensive services[atleast on paper] with low end cellphone subscriptions/recharges (with the operator Airtel). I assume they are banking on two things. First, they want to cover more market area and get more people hooked to their product, even if it's at the cost of taking a loss. Second, I really doubt it's a loss in the long term because all the AI models are heck bent on invading your privacy with a cloud first approach.