I’M OK WITH THIS: Big Tech Struggles to Turn AI Hype Into Profits.

AI often doesn’t have the economies of scale of standard software because it can require intense new calculations for each query. The more customers use the products, the more expensive it is to cover the infrastructure bills. These running costs expose companies charging flat fees for AI to potential losses.

Microsoft used AI from its partner OpenAI to launch GitHub Copilot, a service that helps programmers create, fix and translate code. It has been popular with coders—more than 1.5 million people have used it and it is helping build nearly half of Copilot users’ code—because it slashes the time and effort needed to program.

It has also been a money loser because it is so expensive to run.

ndividuals pay $10 a month for the AI assistant. In the first few months of this year, the company was losing on average more than $20 a month per user, according to a person familiar with the figures, who said some users were costing the company as much as $80 a month.

Microsoft and GitHub didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether the service is earning money.

Then it isn’t.