In early 2026, OpenAI began placing advertisements in the free tier of ChatGPT, appearing underneath answers like sponsored links. Around the same time, one major AI lab raised the price of its budget model line for the fourth time in under 18 months, and another AI lab reserved its longest-context queries for top-tier customers at double the price. This pattern was described as “enshittification,” a term coined by Cory Doctorow for platforms that delight users, then betray them, and finally squeeze everyone. The article questions why companies start innocent and end in disgrace, suggesting that without guardrails, the siren song of financial markets leads to losing one’s soul. It cites Jeff Skilling, who would become Enron’s CEO, whose non-negotiable condition of employment in 1990 was mark-to-market accounting, allowing decades of hoped-for future earnings to be booked as profit in a single year.