Comment by serf
I don't really believe that premise in a world with competition, and the strategy it supports -- let AI companies produce profit off of old models -- ignores the need for SOTA advancement and expansion by these very same companies.
In other words, yes GPT-X might work well enough for most people, but the newer demo for ShinyNewModelZ is going to pull customers of GPT-X's in regardless of both fulfilling the customer needs. There is a persistent need for advancement (or at least marketing that indicates as much) in order to have positive numbers at the end of the churn cycle.
I have major doubts that can be done without trying to push features or SOTA models, without just straight lying or deception.