The tollbooth? I would imagine so unless until the compute cost comes down and the hardware becomes more accessible/integrated at the consumer level.
If you mean my preference for subscription over ads, that is guaranteed. I'm fine with an ad model for consuming content (like watching YouTube) but never with content generation (like using Photoshop).
Plus, I really like these technologies and want to see them go further and I'm more than happy to pay for my product when the deal is good, which AI costs currently are relative to the hardware cost. Having to pay for these services + having big tech compete with each other for the best cutting edge release = a lot of money, time, and focus in that area to win the consumers on the merits of their products, whether that consumer is an enterprise customer or not.
I don't see this kind of competition in any most other marketplaces for content generation tools, that's partially by virtue of AI being new tech but also because the race for dominating the AI marketplace has only just begun.
