Given how much it can cost to run and develop LLMs (or outsource it to someone else), I would be willing to pay for an "ai-free" tier that is slightly cheaper than the default, with a guarantee that none of my money is going to be wasted on "AI", and will instead be used only on search, the product I actually wanted to pay for and use. Investment in building a new and independent search index is a far more valuable proposition than chasing after the latest trend, and as the web becomes ever more polluted by slop, if they can build an index that can prioritise real sites when no-one else can, that's where the money is.
