A 200 euro mobile normally does everything you need. A mobile of 1,000 euros simply makes it faster and better. A 25,000 euros car takes you perfectly from one place to another. But experience is different and better in a 60,000 car. Contemporary economy has taught us how life can work at two speeds. And with AI is happening exactly the same.
AI at the balance price. Yesterday Deepmind announced The availability of Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite, a reasoning model “for those looking under cost and latency.” It is not Google’s most powerful model, much less, but it is one thing: cheap. Costs Between three and six times less than its standard model, Gemini 2.5 Flash, and that makes more than ever a clear trend.
Welcome to the McDonalization of the AI. Since the AI models began to be marketed, we were seeing how we had a two -speed AI. On the one hand, free or very cheap chatbots –even local– With “minced meat” models for the big masses. On the other, the superpotent and capable chatbots, the most advanced and also the most expensive.
Free and ia at $ 250 per month. That division was enlarging over time. AI plans of $ 20 per month have already become “middle range” plans for users. Now we are living a clear phenomenon in which if you want the best, you will have to pay a lot for it. The most advanced models of Openai and Google They cost 200 and $ 250 per month respectively. Before we had super -premium mobiles. Now we have overemium.
Free AI is still (very) good. The most striking thing is that this McDonalization of AI is not bad at the moment. Free models, those who use the vast majority of users, They are fantastic for many scenarios And they fully meet their needs. Here we have benefited from an ultracompetitive market: AI companies have had to offer better benefits on their free platforms so that we would not run to use others that did the same for free or cheaper.
The cost per million tokens (in dollars) has not stopped falling for two years. He will continue to do so. Source: Epoch AI (click on the image to access the interactive graph).
And the AI will continue to be reduced. A few days ago OpenAi The price of O3 was cut by 80% and offered its advanced version, O3 Pro. The latter is an even more capable model, but it is also 10 times more expensive than the standard O3 model. It is intended for very specific users who get all the juice to these models with very detailed prompts and contexts. O3 Pro is not helpful for typical consultations (often not too specific) that we do in Chatgpt, for example. That tendency to the reduction of AI is constant.
But also more expensive. The opposite is also true: the cost of inference does not stop lowering, but access to the best models could be further increased. Especially if, as the companies that offer them look like they propose them as substitutes for human employees. Sam Altman already pointed out that an agent of the hyperavanzado with the ability of a human doctorate will not leave for 200, but for $ 20,000 per month. But if you meet expectations – and as always, maximum uncertainty here, Altman is a specialist in generating Hype-, that AI will be able to do the job of many employees, and also do so constantly, 24/7.
The price of exclusivity. We are also seeing how these ultra -premium models are those that give access to characteristics that consume many resources, such as Spectacular capacity Video generation of Vist 3. although it is possible to generate a few videos with the “mid -range” accounts of Google (Google Ai Pro, 21.99 euros/month), to use that option much less limited we can sign up for the Google Ai Ultra Plan, 250 euros per month.
Maybe 250 euros a month is a bar. We can consider that paying 20, 200 or 250 euros per month for accessing an advanced AI model is somewhat absurd considering that free models are already very good. However, there is another overwhelming reality: those advanced payment models can be an absolute bargain. If you produce double or do your work in half of time, what are 20 euros per month, or even 250? It all depends on how you squeeze them, of course. As said Javier Recuenco (@recuenco), Author and academic: “Something that takes away 80% of the work and that lets you do what you are good, that cool you and what you are good? Please give me more.”
Supply and demand. Alberto Romero, author of the Newsletter ‘The Algorithmic Bridge’, I reflected weeks ago About that potential gap. As in the rest of the market industries, for it OpenAi and the rest of the companies of AI will operate in the market “with the only rule that matters, that of supply and demand.”
Winners and losers of the AI. But it is also true that That for the poor and for rich will cause A new digital gap. Those who can pay the best AI models can do more things and better – if they really take out the juice – than those who only have access to free or cheap models. There will be no equal opportunities for each other. We could see something like that with access to promising AI agentswhich will be especially intensive in resource consumption but theoretically they will also do many things for us autonomously … but not those who cannot pay for them.
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