DOES SAYING PLEASE COST OPEN AI MILLIONS OF DOLLARS?

You may heard from social media that it cost millions of extra money to Open AI because the user is typing “please” in the prompt. But in this blog we will see how much of this rumor is true so let’s dive in.

The viral post saying please to ChatGPT will cost millions to OpenAI comes as a satire post but people believe it, thus it become more and more viral because of this, In addition to that some people don’t know how chat model cost and they misunderstood it and share with their thousands of followers.

Typing please doesn’t cost Open AI anything but the overall prompt itself cost Open AI as it run on a super powerful system which cost some money.

1. Powerful machines (GPU & TPU):

ChatGPT runs on machines called GPUs and TPUs. These are way stronger than regular computers and are really expensive to run.

• Every question you ask uses a bit of that power.

• The more people use ChatGPT, the more those small costs add up.

2. Electricity & Energy:

Running all that hardware 24/7 needs a lot of electricity both for the machines and for keeping them cool.

That means more energy bills for OpenAI, and yes, it adds up over time.

3. Time and Effort to Answer:

ChatGPT doesn’t just copy-paste answers—it thinks (sort of). Every response is created in real time by crunching numbers at high speed. This process is called "inference."

• A longer or more detailed answer takes more computing power.

• A short “please” doesn’t matter much but a long prompt with polite wording uses more tokens (words), which means slightly more cost.

How much Does It cost per prompt

Here’s a simple estimate:

• A short, basic request with GPT-3.5 might cost around 1/10 of a cent

• A long GPT-4 request might cost up to 10 cents or more

That’s not much on its own but when millions of people use it every day, those small costs turn into millions of dollars per month.

I still remember during 2010’s as I first started to search on internet for cheats I use to type “Please give me the cheat code for GTA vice city”, so it doesn’t mean google has to spend extra money as I say please and I am sure many of you had done this in childhood also.

It Is better to be polite then sorry so If you are being polite than it’s good but if you are doing so that Open AI has to spend millions of money then I am sorry to break it cant be happening.