A God for Them, Slop for the Rest of Us
Has anyone else noticed that the base-tier paid subscriptions on most “frontier” AI platforms have steadily gotten worse?
Multi-agent features quietly vanish. File generation (PDF, word, etc.) becomes unreliable or restricted. Usage limits shrink. Etc.
No one is under the illusion that the owners of these models experience such cancers. The playbook is now standard: give new users a strong trial while cleverly noting that “some features are still in beta”, get them to subscribe while they expect the trial version is the standard, then deliberately throttle the model after the trial ends to reduce company compute costs.
AI has become a refined bait-and-switch, just useful enough to keep people subscribed.
A tip to the wise: do not purchase any yearly subscriptions. AI is the new phone plan: After the trial period is over, go find someone else offering a reasonable experience, even if its only for a short time. Rinse & repeat.