I think it's been clear from the beginning that the per-token price of usage was far below what it will be when firms have implemented their profit-maximizing price plans. "AI winter" will happen when these firms start maximizing profit. At that point it'll be too expensive for all but certain use cases to use the best technology for work.

We'll see AI chat replace Google, we'll see companies adopting AI in high-value areas, and we'll see local models like Gemma 4 get used heavily.

AI winter will see a disappearance of the clickbait headlines about everyone losing their jobs. Literally nobody is making those statements taking into account that pricing to this point is way less than the profit maximizing level.