Screenshot by the author. Photo: Microsoft .
Generative AI is nothing but a con dressed up in big promises that become harder to believe with every passing month. After narrativizing chatbots and image generators into the next big thing, to such an extent that credulous governments now believe access to the technology is key to their geopolitical position in the world, tech companies can’t allow the bubble to burst.
But keeping the bubble inflated costs hundreds of billions of dollars, and that money needs to come from somewhere without destroying the balance sheets of the tech monopolists. One of their answers is deception: to pull more money out of the pockets of their existing customers while trying to make them believe they have no other choice.
For months, I’ve been reading the stories about Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and any number of other companies hiking prices while pushing generative AI tools on their existing customers. It’s not just a clear abuse of market power, but turns your stomach when you know these tools are not nearly as useful as the companies try to make them seem.
I felt that disgust in a much more visceral way when an email from Microsoft landed in my inbox last week.
The price of my Office subscription — or I guess it’s Microsoft 365 these days — is going up, the email announced. I’d been paying $79 CAD a year, but starting next month the price will jump 46% to $115 CAD. It’s quite a hike, and supposedly in response to the company’s need to “address rising costs” and “continue delivering new innovations.” That’s code for “generative AI bullshit.”
Given I’ve already been searching for an Office replacement and hope to have one by the time my subscription has to be renewed, I decided to take a look at the process to cancel, and that’s when I saw it: the offer to hold on to my existing subscription without generative AI.
There was nothing in the email from Microsoft telling me I didn’t need to pay for its expensive new AI tools. Instead, it made me believe my plan was the same as it had always been and that now I had to pay more for it. But as soon as I tried to cancel, the truth was revealed to me.
After expressing my desire to stop paying for 365, I was met with two options: I could keep my “current” subscription, that included “new!” productivity apps with “Copilot build in” and “Al-powered image creation and editing,” or I could choose a “lower cost without AI” plan, which was exactly what I had before Microsoft tried to hike the price of my subscription.
I just want to be clear here: the price of my plan did not change. Instead, Microsoft moved me to a new plan that contained generative AI features I never asked for; a plan that cost a lot more than I was already paying. Then it lied to me, claiming my existing plan had increased in price and that there was no version of a plan without generative AI — until I tried to stop paying them altogether.
... continue reading