Comment by observationist

They don't change the prices, they just modify the amount of compute allocated - slower speeds and fewer tokens, they can set everything in the background to optimize costs and returns, and the user never realizes anything has changed.

Sometimes they'll announce the changes, and they'll even try to spin it as improving services or increasing value.

Local AI capabilities are improving at a rapid pace, at some point soon we'll have an RWKV or a 4B LLM that performs at a GPT-5 level, with reasoning and all the bells and whistles, and hopefully that'll shake out most of the deceptive and shady tactics the big platforms are using.