A model is an ingredient in an AI product. The product includes the UI, tools / RAG, apps on various platforms, system prompts and personality, and so on.
Lots of products have been successful without a technical moat. Facebook has network effects, Apple has UX (though silicon has become a technical advantage if not moat), Adobe has “everyone knows how to use these tools” switching costs, Google has brand synonymous with search.
Companies are betting that models will be commodities but AI products will be sticky.
ChatGPT.com does much more than for example Llama3.2-vision. It can search the web automatically, write code and run it just to answer you, much more agency.
Lots of products have been successful without a technical moat. Facebook has network effects, Apple has UX (though silicon has become a technical advantage if not moat), Adobe has “everyone knows how to use these tools” switching costs, Google has brand synonymous with search.
Companies are betting that models will be commodities but AI products will be sticky.