本周我撰文探讨了消费级人工智能领域严峻的经济现状——在有些人看来这是一场危机，但在另一些人眼中却是个机遇。
I wrote this week about the bleak economics of consumer AI – but where some see a crisis, others see an opportunity.
奥利维亚·摩尔是安德森·霍洛维茨基金会的合伙人，专门负责报道消费级人工智能领域。本周一，她发布了一份关于排名前100的消费级AI应用的报告。目前ChatGPT仍占据绝对领先地位，不过像Suno和ElevenLabs这样的小型企业也展现出了强大的发展潜力。更值得关注的是那些尚未被AI触及的领域：摩尔的报告指出，目前仍有六大消费类领域完全未被人工智能渗透。
Olivia Moore covers consumer AI as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz – and on Monday, she released a report on the top 100 consumer AI apps. ChatGPT is still the biggest player by a mile, but smaller players like Suno and ElevenLabs are showing real staying power. Even more interesting is what we don’t see, as Moore’s report details half a dozen consumer categories that seem to be completely untouched by AI.
摩尔认为消费级人工智能领域存在巨大机遇，尤其是如果行业能够开发出订阅服务与API收费之外的其他营收渠道的话。本周通话中，我同她探讨了消费级AI领域独特的经济特征，以及为何该行业目前仍处于发展初期。
Moore sees a huge opportunity in consumer AI, particularly if the industry can tap into revenue streams beyond just subscriptions and API charges. On a call this week, I talked with her about the unusual economics of consumer AI and why it’s still early days for the category.
眼下发布这份消费级AI报告恰逢其时：今年OpenAI重新将重心转向企业市场，这一举措引发了诸多关于该领域整体营收前景的悲观预期，包括我本人也是如此。不过看来你对此持更为乐观的态度？
It’s an interesting moment for a report about consumer AI, since we’ve seen OpenAI pivot back to enterprise this year. It’s inspired a lot of pessimism about the overall revenue picture for consumer AI, including from me. But I take it you’re more optimistic?
我认同OpenAI正重新聚焦企业市场的观点。不过在我看来这并非战略转向，毕竟他们仍在持续推出面向消费者的产品，这更像是一种业务拓展。不过我也能理解他们的选择——尽管我十分看好消费级市场——因为迄今为止几乎所有AI领域的营收都来自订阅费与API调用费用，而这些收入主要源自企业用户与专业消费者群体。
I agree with you that OpenAI has moved back towards the enterprise. To me, it’s not necessarily a pivot because they’re still launching a lot in consumer. It’s more of an expansion. But I don’t blame them, as much as I love consumer, because almost all of the AI revenue thus far has come from subscriptions and then token usage. And that is much more concentrated on the enterprise and prosumer side.
消费级AI产品该如何解决这一营收难题呢？《市场现状报告》显示，目前仅有2.2%的美国家庭为AI服务付费。是否只有这一比例提升，市场才会真正具备吸引力呢？
How can consumer AI products change that revenue problem? The State of Markets report reminded us that just 2.2% of U.S. households are paying for AI. Do we need that number to rise before the market becomes attractive?
其实我并不希望看到使用用户数量大幅增加。我更期待的是能回归到一种全新的商业模式：消费者无需直接支付订阅费用，也能为AI产业创造收益。
I actually don’t know if I want to see that user number increase. I’m more interested in getting back to a world where the consumer is monetized in a way that isn’t subscription dollars out of their own pocket.
我认为在硅谷，那些收入颇丰且能用公司信用卡支付工具费用的人很容易就会说：“嗯，我宁愿花钱购买产品。”但实际上，大多数人其实更希望能免费使用某些服务，哪怕要看些广告，这样他们才能决定是否愿意花钱消除广告。
I think it’s very easy in Silicon Valley, with people who are high-income and have corporate cards to pay for those tools, to say, “oh well, I’d rather pay for the product.”But I think most people would actually rather have free access to something and see some ads, and then they can decide if they want to or not to make the ads go away.
另一个难题就是人工智能服务的边际成本，目前这一成本仍远高于脸书或谷歌搜索等传统互联网服务。您觉得会有很多这类服务通过采用开源模型或其他轻量级模型来降低运营成本吗？
The other challenge is the marginal cost of AI services, which is still a lot higher than classic internet services like Facebook or Google Search. Do you see a lot of these services finding ways to keep those costs down, whether it’s open-source or other lightweight models?
是的，我认为这方面正在有所改善。如今ChatGPT也推出了每月仅需8美元的Go套餐，我推测该套餐使用的就是成本更低的模型。其实并非所有任务都需要最顶尖的人工智能技术，因此未来可能会出现更多低成本模型，尤其适用于某些面向普通消费者的应用场景。这也意味着会有更多消费类企业基于开源模型开发产品。最近我们的创业伙伴们也多次提到这一点，看来行业趋势确实正在发生变化。
Yeah, I think we’re seeing improvements there. Even ChatGPT now has a Go plan, which is just $8 a month, and I’m assuming it runs on cheaper models. We don’t necessarily need frontier intelligence for every task, and so that could mean cheaper models, especially for some consumer use cases. It could also mean more consumer companies building on top of open-source models. We’ve heard a lot of that from our founders lately, and it really feels like it’s starting to change.
不过目前带来主要营收的用户群体主要从事编程及其他技术自动化工作，这类需求很可能确实需要最顶尖的人工智能技术。我相信随着越来越多人致力于开发面向普通消费者的产品——此时模型本身已不再是核心卖点——低成本模型的使用频率也会随之提升。
The problem is that right now, the users driving the revenue are doing coding and other technical automation, where they probably do need frontier intelligence. I think as we get more people building for the consumer, where the model is not the product, we’ll start to see lower-cost models used more often.
在消费类服务领域讨论技术自动化其实并不常见，这似乎也是人工智能独有的特点之一。这是否意味着消费级市场与企业级市场之间的界限正在逐渐模糊呢？
It’s unusual to talk about technical automation in a consumer service, which feels like another unique feature of AI. Are we starting to blur the lines between consumer and enterprise?
大约一年前我曾写过一篇题为《大扩张》的文章探讨过这个问题。在人工智能出现之前，像Canva这样的企业最初都专注于消费级市场，往往需要六七年时间才推出面向企业用户的服务。而现在，Gamma、ElevenLabs和Cursor这类企业从创立起就面向普通消费者，短短18个月内就转型为以企业客户为主的服务商。
I wrote an article about this maybe a year or so ago called The Great Expansion trying to get at this. Pre-AI, you would have companies like Canva that were consumer-first and often took six or seven years to even add teams or enterprise plans. Now we’re seeing companies like Gamma, ElevenLabs, and Cursor that start as consumer and within 18 months become majority-enterprise businesses.
我认为，我们通常所认为的大多数消费级AI，实际上都是“专业消费者”级AI。这一点在收入数据中表现得尤为明显：付费用户主要消费的产品大致可以分为三类。第一类是用于构建产品的应用，比如 Lovable、Replit 和 Fal；第二类是产品营销工具，例如 Higgsfield 或 HeyGen 这类 AI 广告生成工具；第三类则是通用工作管理工具，比如 Manus、Fireflies AI 和 Granola。这些工具最初确实是由消费者付费使用的，但我认为，它们并不像我们在 AI 出现之前所理解的那种“消费级”产品。
Almost all of what we think of as consumer AI, I would argue, is prosumer AI. This really comes out on the revenue list, where there’s basically like three categories that power users are spending on. There’s product-building apps, so like Lovable, Replit, and Fal. There’s product marketing, which is AI ad generators like Higgsfield or HeyGen. Then there’s general work management, like Manus, Fireflies AI, and Granola. Those are like being paid for by consumers to start with, but I would argue that they’re not consumer in the way that we would think about pre-AI.
此外，还有大量尚未被开发的空白领域，比如社交应用、约会应用、电商平台、零售、旅行、金融和健康。然而，在我们列出的前 100 名中，这些领域完全没有出现任何产品，这一点相当令人意外。我认为，未来六个月我们最需要关注的，正是这些领域的变化。那么，也许我们至今仍未真正看到“真正的消费级AI”呢？目前确实还处在非常早期的阶段。
There are also all these whitespace categories: social apps, dating apps, marketplaces, retail, travel, finance, health. There are no entrants in our top 100 list in those categories, which is pretty surprising. And that’s what I think we need to see over the next six months. So maybe we haven’t really seen true consumer AI yet? It’s definitely very early.