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New Research Papers Question ‘Token’ Pricing for AI Chats
- New research highlights issues with token-based billing for AI services, where providers can manipulate token counts to overcharge users without detection.
- Token pricing in AI chat interfaces, like ChatGPT-4o, relies on invisible units of text counted precisely for billing, leaving users in the dark about actual costs.
- The lack of visibility in token calculation leads to users paying for more than perceived, as hidden steps and inflated counts impact billing.
- Tokens represent text units like words or fragments, but users have no way to verify counts during AI interactions, creating a disconnect.
- Research exposes how providers can overcharge by manipulating token counts invisibly, leading to users paying more than justified.
- Proposed solution suggests character-based billing to promote honest reporting and fair pricing in AI chat services.
- Transition to character-based pricing may require legislation, but it could deter token inflation and reward efficiency in output.
- Second paper discusses hidden operations in AI models, where users are billed for unseen internal processes, leading to opaque billing practices.
- Auditing frameworks are proposed to address hidden charges and ensure transparency in AI service billing to protect users from unverified costs.
- Authors highlight the need for auditing systems like CoIn to verify hidden tokens without revealing contents, aiming to prevent token count inflation.
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