OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has revealed the insane cost of users saying “please” and “thank you” during their conversations with the chatbot.
If you thought being polite to ChatGPT was the right thing to do, the company that created the chatbot might disagree. It turns out that saying “please” and “thank you” to the AI results in enormous electricity costs for OpenAI.
It all started when a user on X (formerly Twitter) asked how much the company has lost since 2022 due to people being polite to ChatGPT.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, revealed that this politeness has cost the company “tens of millions of dollars.” However, he added that it was “money well spent.” “You never know,” he joked on his X profile.
tens of millions of dollars well spent–you never know
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 16, 2025
His joke refers to a trend of users being polite to AI “just in case.” After all, if robots take over the world, they might remember that you were always kind to them.
“I like saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’; it puts me in a good mood—sets the tone and, who knows, maybe the AI will remember I was nice to it,” one user stated.
“We teach kids to say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’ not because it’s efficient, but because it inspires empathy, respect, and emotional awareness,” another user commented.
Photo and video: Unsplash / X @sama. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
