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People are being weird about this. ChatGPT has no moat because switching costs are zero. There's no investment into a particular AI service.

ChatGPT has mindshare but that's not the same as it being a moat. The fact that people will continue to use ChatGPT after some gentle frog boiling is true of any service. Adding ads is going to be a measure of how real people tolerate ads more than anything about ChatGPT. Normal people really don't care that much and it bothers me—and probably most of HN.



> ChatGPT has mindshare but that's not the same as it being a moat.

Short answer: For a casual user using the chat interface, there is almost no moat.

Long answer: there are either zero or negligible

- switching costs ("would take me weeks to migrate all my files from Google Drive to Dropbox")

- network effects ("can't leave Whatsapp, all my friends are there")

- ecosystem lock-in ("I can't switch from iPhone to Android, my other devices would break (iMessage/iCloud/AirPods))"

Right now AI is pretty much a commodity.




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