That's the more general issue, isn't it? Users demand software, guarantees, ... and refuse to pay for it.
That goes for the AI industry itself, but equally for everyone using it.
Microsoft won when it found a way to extract software fees as a tax from hardware manufacturers.
FANG won when it found a way to extract software writing and hosting fees from advertisers, effectively making it a tax on everything you buy.
Both of these (Operating systems and basic cloud services like email hosting) can be done for a lot cheaper if they were paid for by end users, but those just won't pay. In fact, for a while they were paid by end users (microsoft did that, gmx.net, infomaniak, ...). Then everyone switched to "free" and here we are.
And we all know there's no way back, so what's the point discussing it? We all know most people will just not have email or web search if they had to pay even 5$ per year to get it, and I seem to recall an article stating Google effectively earns over $100 per year per account.
Reality is: give it another 2 years and the "art, music, articles, newspapers, books and open source code" industries will reach absolutely nobody except through AI providers. That could be avoided if every creator paid $1 per year to have free infrastructure for their services, but there's no way in hell they will do that ... so here we are. In 2 years instead they'll pay $1000 every time they want someone to actually look at their art.
And yet, the situation with banking services is far worse, imho. So bad, in fact, that even charging $0.01 per year for internet services would be a nonstarter.
why would they start investing now when they can just continue to plunder the commons uninterrupted?