Yeah, you can use it to write text or code, make images and videos, speak and listen, you can chat with it. But... it's useless. It doesn't make you any money, and talking to it doesn't bring you any work. I've been using GenAI and developing GenAI frameworks and apps, apps made using GenAI, etc. since 2022. And it hasn't made any money. It's just... useless.
No one wants to pay for anything because you can just GenAI it, and because of that, you don't want to GenAI it because no one wants to pay for it. Welcome to the Mexican stand-off of "I ain't gonna do it." And if you do feel particularly hobbyist some time and make something, folks just GenAI it and .. you don't make money, and they don't make money. If there is a way to make money with GenAI, it's usually about using GenAI to make something that already makes money more efficient. But those things were pretty much maximally efficient already, so GenAI doesn't pay for itself there either.
I mean, it's great for uh, if you need something, GenAI can make it for you. But you won't be able to sell the results. And the result is not good enough to really be what you need. So you'd have to buy something to replace the GenAI thing, but no one can make it because they use GenAI to make it, and you don't want to buy it because you can just GenAI it yourself, but it's not going to be good enough, so you might as well save your money by convincing yourself that you don't need it.
As a result, it's not worth it to buy anything, and it's not worth it to make anything. No one is willing to pay you for anything, and you're also unwilling to pay anyone for anything either.
Now, you ask, "but whatabout the fact that it takes you time and tokens to GenAI the thing, surely there's value in that that can be wrapped into a dollar value and such aforementioned value can be sold and bought?" To which the answer is "when the time and effort required to buy something equals the time and effort of making the thing yourself, why would you buy it?"
The same applies to AI tokens: the best models are the free ones, and the non-free ones lose users until they become free and start losing money. Adding ads to AI output doesn't drive clicks or purchases, because you're using AI as the act of purchase, not as a way to find something to purchase. And even if you were looking for something to buy, you can't, because you don't have any money, because, again, why would you buy anything from anyone?
There's no real answer to this problem, it's like MAD. You know that every move you can make is a losing one, so the least-losing move is to not move. If you pay for GenAI, you lose money because the output can't be sold. If you don't pay for GenAI, you lose money because you spent time on getting an output that can't be sold. If you don't use GenAI, you lose money because you can just GenAI it so no one wants to buy it.
Because of this dynamic, whenever there is something that people are still willing to pay for, there's an immediate gold rush to GenAI it until it can be had for free.
No comments:
Post a Comment