DeepSeek Will Pressure Microsoft, Salesforce to Drop AI Prices, Software Executives Say

The falling cost of artificial intelligence—underscored by the arrival of DeepSeek—is likely to pressure software firms to stop charging customers for ChatGPT-like features such as summarizing documents and automatically drafting emails, which are fast becoming a commodity, executives from security firm Palo Alto Networks and file storage firm Box told me. 

The executives didn’t name names, but they’re likely referring to companies such as Microsoft and Salesforce that have been charging their customers for chatbot-like features in existing products over the past two years. When those companies started the practice, the cost of running such AI was five to 50 times higher, depending on which AI model they used, and they essentially passed those costs on to customers, betting they would find enough value in the cutting-edge features.