Users saying 'please' and 'thank you' to ChatGPT costs OpenAI millions

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that users politely saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT is costing the company tens of millions of dollars.

“Tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never know,” commented Altman on April 16 via X, when asked to estimate the cost of courtesy messages.

This statement sparked a discussion about why users interact politely with AI models.

Some users believe that treating AI with politeness might influence how future sentient AI treats humans.

“Treating AIs with courtesy is a moral imperative for me. I do it out of self-interest. Callousness in our daily interactions causes our interpersonal skills to atrophy,” said engineer Carl Youngblood.

A December 2024 survey by Future found that 67% of American AI users are polite to AI assistants.

Of those, 55% said they do so because it is the right thing to do, while 12% feared that mistreating AI could have negative repercussions.

The conversation also touched on ChatGPT’s electricity consumption.

A 2023 study by Alex de Vries estimated a single ChatGPT query uses about three watt-hours of electricity.

However, data analyst Josh You from Epoch AI argued this figure is an overestimate, suggesting it is closer to 0.3 watt-hours due to improvements in model efficiency and hardware.

One user questioned why ChatGPT does not filter out courtesy words like “please” and “thank you” to reduce electricity costs.

Altman recently noted that AI output costs have been decreasing tenfold annually as models become more efficient.

OpenAI expects its revenue to more than triple this year to $12.7 billion despite rising competition from companies like China’s DeepSeek.

However, the company does not anticipate becoming cash-flow positive until 2029, when it projects revenue will exceed $125 billion.