Google is purportedly in the process of developing strategies to monetize AI-enhanced search functionalities, marking a significant departure from its traditional revenue model.
This shift is deemed necessary due to the substantial costs associated with delivering such services, prompting industry experts to predict that major players in the field will adopt subscription-based models to offset expenses.
As per reports from the Financial Times, Google’s proposed approach involves offering its advanced search feature exclusively to users subscribed to its premium services. These services are already prerequisites for utilizing AI assistants in various Google tools like Gmail and its office suite.
The ongoing beta trial of Google’s new search experience showcases the utilization of generative AI to provide direct responses to queries in a conversational manner akin to ChatGPT and other competitors.
Heather Dawe, chief data scientist at UST, highlighted the higher computational costs of AI search compared to Google’s conventional search processes. By introducing charges for AI search, Google aims to recover these additional expenses.
While much attention in the AI realm is focused on the substantial costs of training state-of-the-art generative models, the running costs far exceed the training expenses. Analysts suggest that over 90% of AI compute spending is allocated to inferencing rather than training, with the former witnessing a more rapid growth rate.
Various companies have adopted diverse pricing strategies for AI features, with some opting for monthly rates or per-usage fees to cover operational costs or drive user growth. Competitors like Perplexity offer subscription tiers for enhanced AI models, while others like Microsoft’s Bing and Arc provide AI functionalities for free, leveraging different monetization approaches in the future.
