ChatGPT and generative AI are booming, but the costs can be extraordinary

Before OpenAI's ChatGPT emerged and captured the world's attention for its ability to create compelling sentences, a small startup called Latitude was wowing consumers with its AI Dungeon game that let them use artificial intelligence to create fantastical tales based on their prompts. But as AI Dungeon became more popular, Latitude CEO Nick Walton recalled that the cost to maintain the text-based role-playing game began to skyrocket. AI Dungeon's text-generation software was powered by the GPT language technology offered by the Microsoft-backed AI research lab OpenAI. The more people played AI Dungeon, the bigger the bill Latitude had to pay OpenAI. Compounding the predicament was that Walton also discovered content marketers were using AI Dungeon to generate promotional copy, a use for AI Dungeon that his team never foresaw, but that ended up adding to the company's AI bill.