Google plans to charge users for searches using artificial intelligence

Google appears to be making a plan to make its AI jobs paid when searching online. If this plan finally comes to fruition, we will face a historic change in Mountain View's business model.

This is the absolute most radical change that Google currently has in its portfolio A natural consequence of the high costs of overlapping “vitamin” searches with artificial intelligence. It is no coincidence that the use of ChatGPT (at least in its most advanced version) is also subject to paid subscriptions.

according to Financial Times, Google wants to offer its AI functionality to perform online searches only and exclusively for users of its premium subscription servicesWhich the internet giant's customers are already paying if they want to take advantage of the Sundar Pichai-led company's AI assistants in tools like Gmail or Google Workspace.

Gemini, Google's AI, is able to answer user questions based on a single answer It used a conversational approach similar to that used by ChatGPT and other AI chatbots.

“AI searches are more computationally expensive than traditional Google searches“So paying for it is a way to recoup the costs involved in some way,” Heather Dow, chief data scientist at digital transformation consulting firm UST, explains to guardian.

AI models represent a huge expense for technology companies and the only way to offset them is to charge the end user

AI involves enormous expense because it requires a significant amount of computing power to be able to train the most advanced generative AI models. For example, last week OpenAI and Microsoft announced their intention to build a $100 billion data center to train AI models. In January, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that Meta plans to invest a whopping $9 billion in Nvidia GPUs alone.

However, the cost involved in training AI models makes up only a very small portion of the total costs associated with the AI ​​sector. According to Brent Thiel, an analyst at investment firm Jefferies, More than 90% of the expenses that AI brings under its arm are expenses directly related to running AI models (Not so much with his training).

For this reason, and given the high costs resulting from artificial intelligence models, A large part of companies operating in this field of activity have paid subscription plans. The AI-powered search engine Perplexity, for example, does not display ads, but it does offer its users a premium subscription of $20 per month that guarantees unlimited use of its tool and access to more advanced functions.

However, other players continue to fly the freeware flag in their products.. Bing's (Microsoft) AI features are, for example, inherently free, although they are tied to the Edge browser. Arc, a browser with AI functionality, is currently completely free, although it is considering charging companies in the future to provide them with access to specifically business-oriented functionality.