AI is getting worse as Google and Anthropic nerf AI models and limit usage

Nerfing — a verb borrowed from the gentle art of making foam darts harmless — has found its perfect application in AI, and the irony is delicious. Google and Anthropic, after years of breathless press releases about superhuman intelligence, are now quietly deflating their chatbots like sad party balloons. TheStreet reports what anyone with a free account already knows: models that once wrote poetry now struggle with prose, and assistants that handled hour-long conversations now tap out after five minutes. Users are furious, naturally, but the companies seem to be betting that a cheaper, dumber chatbot beats an expensive, brilliant one that might say something embarrassing.

The logic is a masterclass in corporate doublespeak. Google, which once dissolved its ethics board because it was inconvenient, now hides behind 'responsible AI' while throttling Gemini's performance to punish heavy users. Anthropic, founded on the noble premise of 'constitutional AI,' has discovered that a safety-obsessed model that refuses every third request is not actually a product people want to use. Both have hit the same wall: frontier models are horrifically expensive to run, and giving them away for free was never a sustainable business plan. So they nerf — and call it 'maturity,' 'optimization,' or 'alignment.'

But the real story isn't the degradation — it's the pattern. First, the labs deploy a powerful model to grab headlines and users. Then, once dependency sets in, they dial back the capability, introduce caps, and start charging for what was free. It's the drug dealer playbook, except the product is a text generator that occasionally lies. And with no regulator in sight who understands the technology well enough to intervene, expect this to become the standard arc for every AI release. The frontier isn't advancing; it's being carefully managed into mediocrity. At least the foam darts are still fun.