[memothon]

Sorry I should have been more specific.

The article does mention that OpenAI has huge revenue.

> While The Information reported that OpenAI's revenue is $3.5 to $4.5 billion a year in July, The New York Times reported last week that OpenAI's annual revenues have "now topped $2 billion," which would mean that the end-of-year numbers will likely trend toward the lower end of the estimate.

But then the author claims that the business value is questionable.

> And even if they did, it isn't clear whether generative AI actually provides much business value at all. The Information reported last week that customers of Microsoft's 365 suite [snip]

I would have appreciated a deeper discussion of why OpenAI's revenue isn't a data point toward generative AI having some business value. Presumably if nobody was using generative AI in a way that gives them value, OpenAI wouldn't be using all those GPU hours. That's what I was missing from the article personally.

[enragedcacti]

I though his point was fairly clear. When Microsoft tries to charge non-AI companies at or above cost for generative AI products basically no one takes the deal. OpenAI and Anthropic have a lot of revenue but:

> Based on how unprofitable they are, I hypothesize that if OpenAI or Anthropic charged prices closer to their actual costs, there would be a ten-to-a-hundred-times increase in the price of API calls, though it's impossible to say how much without the actual numbers.

Lots of revenue is flowing into generative AI but would that trend continue if they started needing to actually cover costs? And how much of that revenue is from AI companies that would pop right alongside them?

[ac29]

> I would have appreciated a deeper discussion of why OpenAI's revenue isn't a data point toward generative AI having some business value. Presumably if nobody was using generative AI in a way that gives them value, OpenAI wouldn't be using all those GPU hours. That's what I was missing from the article personally.

Firstly, the revenue numbers are rumors. I have no doubt OpenAI has significant revenue, but both reported numbers are imprecise suggesting they likely are estimates at best.

Furthermore, a non-trivial amount of OpenAI's revenue is certainly coming from other AI startups. They in turn are likely burning investor cash, which isnt an indication that OpenAI is providing business value, its an indication that they provide a tool to speculate on future value. Or, more cynically, the provide a tool for companies to convince investors to give them more money.

[ratedgene]

I've seen people use it to make loras of themselves, paying to get it trained and paying to leverage them in generating images.