It feels like a self-imposed trap though.

Just loading the one article results in:

335 requests 7.9 MB transferred 23.6 MB resources

Hosting would be less expensive if they didn't bloat up what could be a simple static document.

I doubt their hosting costs matter compared to other expenses. Journalists still gotta get paid.

The hosting is terribly inefficient, but ultimately peanuts in cost. It's labor to worry about, as usual.

That's exactly why this AI hype is a capitalists wet dream. Even if the overall cost doesn't go down, it's the potential to produce products without any uppity employees demanding raises, or pushing back on your clearly brilliant idea that you totally didn't need experts for. With workers who work 24/7 who will never threaten to leave, and no pesky labor laws to worry about.

> It was inevitable when ads were no longer enough to sustain websites, I suppose. It is a shame how critical news may be paywalled out from the public, though. Tragic, but fitting.

Also when any public content started being gulped up by scrapers and resold as AI.

true, that defintiely accelerated things. But the paywalls were coming up a few years before AI really hit the scene.