This Week in AI: Running Artificial Intelligence Isn't Cheap
For June 28, 2024: Google adds Gemini to Gmail, recording labels sue AI song makers, AI goes to the Olympics.News

Google became a behemoth in part by offering internet essential tools for free. Before Gmail, many people had to pay for their email accounts. Before Docs, Sheets and Slides, most of us had to pay licensing fees for productivity software. But in the age of artificial intelligence, this trend is changing.
Google this week released new Gemini tools for its Gmail service, but with a big caveat: You have to pay. That's right, the company that made its name giving away stuff for free is asking us to pay up. The new tools are only being made available to paying businesses, education institutions, or users who sign up for a personal Google One AI Premium account at $20 per month.
What's the deal?
There are many factors that appear to be pushing these changes. Industry watchers say costs for AI are not as easy to offset as new technology costs were before. Part of this is because every time we interact with an AI, it eats a massive amount of energy before spitting out an answer (which is why running AI locally on your PC requires high-end components, but may be more cost-effective in the long run).
Google offers a helpful sense of scale to understand. Last year, SemiAnalysis estimated that OpenAI's cost per query for ChatGPT is more than 33% higher than a standard Google search. That means much lower potential profits, if any.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella began raising alarms about costs during an interview with the Financial Times after announcing Bing's AI overhaul in early 2023. "From now on, the (gross margin) of search is going to drop forever," he said.
That's just for search. At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported Microsoft's GitHub Copilot was losing $20 per user every month, even though the company was charging them a $10 subscription. One anonymous source told the WSJ that more active accounts cost even more, with net losses reaching as high as $80 per month per user.
Recording companies sue AI companies
Major record companies, including Sony, Universal, and Warner, announced they were suing two AI music app makers for copyright infringement. The two companies, Udio and Suno, offer technology that can create a song from a simple text prompt. But, the recording companies said the technology was trained on music stolen from their artists. As proof, the companies pointed to examples including viral videos of the AI reproducing near-exact recreations of popular holiday songs.
“These are straightforward cases of copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale,” Ken Doroshow, the chief legal officer of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a statement to the New York Times.
For its part, Suno said its technology is "designed to generate completely new outputs." Udio, meanwhile, defended itself by referring to its AI as learning, rather than copying. "Just as students listen to music and study scores, our model has ‘listened’ to and learned from a large collection of recorded music," the company wrote on its website.
Meanwhile, YouTube is in talks with major record labels to allow it to create AI tools with licensed music, according to the Financial Times. This would seemingly be in addition to existing agreements YouTube has set for its music streaming service.
OpenAI delays ChatGPT voice, but expands Mac app
Excited users are going to have to wait a bit longer to reproduce OpenAI's viral demos of voice conversations with ChatGPT through a smartphone's microphone and camera. The AI startup said in a blog post that it will be delaying its Voice Mode, saying that the technology needs more refining particularly to "detect and refuse certain content," without providing more detail. The company also said it is working to "scale to millions while maintaining real-time responses."
In the meantime, the company said more people will have access to its popular Mac app, even if they don't pay a subscription price. Initially, the app launched only to subscribers paying $20 per month for ChatGPT Plus.
More tech giants getting into AI
Some of the biggest tech news this summer has been about the differences between Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Apple's approach to AI. But this space is evolving rapidly.
Amazon is reportedly developing a competitor to ChatGPT, which Business Insider says is internally referred to as Metis, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Apparently, Amazon is planning to charge a subscription fee for access to it as well.
Meanwhile, Google is working on customizable chatbots, modeled after celebrities and other personalities, according to a report in The Information. This comes as apps like Character.AI and Butterflies rise in popularity, offering personality-driven chatbots that are defined by users. Meta has also created chatbot personalities, though those characters are portrayed by big-name celebrities like the rapper Snoop Dogg and YouTube sensation James "Mr. Beast" Donaldson.
AI Al Goes to the Olympics
NBC has created an AI voice clone of sportscaster Al Michaels, and AI Al's first assignment is to deliver recaps of the Paris Olympics on Peacock. After selecting what events and news you're interested in on the Peacock website or iOS/iPad app, the virtual voice, trained on Michael's years of on-air audio, will deliver a daily update that sounds (at least based on a demo released by NBC) pretty lifelike. The 2024 Summer Olympics start July 26.
Read more: AI Tools and Tips
- Microsoft Surface Laptop Review: The First Copilot Plus PC
- How To Use AI to Convert a Photo to a 3D Model
- What is TOPS? The AI Performance Metric Explained
- Copilot Plus PCs vs AI PCs: What's The Difference?
- Microsoft Launches a New Era of Copilot Plus PCs
- Hands-on with the Faster, Smarter ChatGPT-4o AI
- Why Coders are Learning to Love Copilot
- Roll Your Own GPT: Setting Up Your Computer for Local AI
- How to Get NVIDIA Chat with RTX: Local AI for Everyone
- How to Make Sure Your Next Computer Is AI Ready
Ian Sherr is a widely published journalist who's covered nearly every major tech company from Apple to Netflix, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and more for CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and CNET. His stories and their insights have moved markets, changed how companies see themselves and given readers a unique view into how some of the world’s most powerful brands operate. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer -- the kind with swords -- and began woodworking during the pandemic.