Bloomberg Intelligence
Most consumers don't want to pay to chat with a chatbot, according to a recent poll by Bloomberg Intelligence. That means advertising -- rather than subscription-based services -- will be the route to monetizing large language models.
"The propensity to pay for generative-AI tools remains low," writes the author, Mandeep Singh, Bloomberg Intelligence senior industry analyst, with the help of Damian Reimertz, contributing analyst, in the report, "Generative AI's trillion-dollar disruption."
"About 25% of the users who use gen AI have paid subscriptions and are willing to shell out up to $20 for a monthly subscription for features including search, copilots, image and video generation," writes Singh.
Also: Only 8% of Americans would pay extra for AI, according to ZDNET-Aberdeen research
The Bloomberg Intelligence survey, conducted in the first week of May, asked 1,000 respondents in the US, Europe, and, to a small extent, Asia, a series of 20 questions about the use of chatbots.
Respondents were stratified primarily by age and income. Among the respondents, 49% were 18 to 34 years old, 20% were 35 to 44 years old, another 20% were 45 to 54, and the remaining were older than 54. In terms of income, 47% reported an income of over $50,000 annually.
Disparity between LLMs and keyword searches
In an interview, Singh expanded on the report's findings. When it comes to subscriptions, it's really all about OpenAI, he said, given that Perplexity and others are looking to either advertising or corporate seat licenses akin to a more traditional software sale.
The numbers already show a stark disparity between LLMs and keyword searches, among the biggest traditional free products on the Internet.
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